the Warp Bomb

[Ahriman238]

A while back there was a great Trek book called Federation that followed Zefram Cochrane, Kirk and Picard through a parallel (mostly, it's complicated.) adventure. True, all of Cohrane's history is contradicted by First Contact, or would have been had Paramount not seen the wisdom of not trying to milk the franchise for all it's worth in the short term but let TNG meet a gentle and somewhat dignified end in Generations. You hear me? That movie never happened.

Anyway, the story's villain survives through all three periods and is obsessed with getting Cochrane to build the Warp Bomb for him. He got the idea after an accident during Cochrane's early experiments simply erased all matter within an eighteen-meter sphere. So our villain says to himself "Hey! You can totally weaponize this Warp Drive thing! Make an automated device that will create a Warp Bubble, then implode the Warp Bubble. There's no shockwave, no thermal effect, no debris, no radiation or other fallout, you can adjust the desired area of effect to within a few centimeters, and holy crap! It shouldn't be affected by any armor or shielding known to man!"

When approached, Cochrane shoots down the idea, but on shaky grounds. He never exactly denies it's potential as a weapon, he merely says that it is impossible to create a Warp Bubble much bigger than eighteen meters as close to sun as earth or any M class planet will be (which is IIRC contradicted frequently in the shows) and therefore, the weapon will never be practical. "A few grams of antimatter will do the same job" Cohrane says "And it'll be much cheaper." As well as any ship with a Warp Drive being able to save itself from the weapons effects.

And so it goes. The villain is convinced that Cochrane lied to him, and they both become immortals (see 'Metamorphosis' TOS) and live to meet both Kirk and Picard. In Kirk's time, Starfleet was seriously pursuing research into the Warp Bomb, but for stupid reasons. In Picard's, it was taught to all Academy students as a famous fallacy.

My question to you all, if the Warp Bomb existed and worked as advertised. If it could be made a practical substitute warhead for photon torps, as long as your target didn't have Warp Drive. Would that make a substanial difference to the Federation's ultimate fate in these scenarios?

[Darth Tedious]

Could you explain how having warp drives saves you from the warp bomb? Is it because you can quickly escape, or are you to use your own warp bubble as a kind of shield?

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

My question to you all, if the Warp Bomb existed and worked as advertised. If it could be made a practical substitute warhead for photon torps, as long as your target didn't have Warp Drive. Would that make a substanial difference to the Federation's ultimate fate in these scenarios?

No, hyperdrive is still recockulously fast, the Empire's weapons and defenses are still far superior, and most importantly, the Empire still controlls a whole galaxy, with all the industrial and logistic advantages that brings. In the end, the Empire is simply too much for the Feds to take down, even if everything else was equal, which is not the case.

[Ahriman238]

Could you explain how having warp drives saves you from the warp bomb? Is it because you can quickly escape, or are you to use your own warp bubble as a kind of shield?

Unspecified in the book. I believe it is because the Bomb either works by pulling everything within it's area of effect into subspace, and compromising the bubble protecting everything from subspace, or by the actual implosion of the Warp bubble sort of disintegrating everything. In the first case, it won't matter because the ship has it's own protection against subspace, so being yanked there against their will would be only a mild inconvenience. In the second, the ships own warp bubble would act like a shield.

But that is just my own speculation.

[Baffalo]

Could you explain how having warp drives saves you from the warp bomb? Is it because you can quickly escape, or are you to use your own warp bubble as a kind of shield?

Unspecified in the book. I believe it is because the Bomb either works by pulling everything within it's area of effect into subspace, and compromising the bubble protecting everything from subspace, or by the actual implosion of the Warp bubble sort of disintegrating everything. In the first case, it won't matter because the ship has it's own protection against subspace, so being yanked there against their will would be only a mild inconvenience. In the second, the ships own warp bubble would act like a shield.

But that is just my own speculation.

I've read that book. I think my memory blanked most of it out to protect my sanity.

However, I will say this. In TNG: Remember Me, Wesley Crusher creates a warp bubble that begins to slowly collapse in on itself with Dr. Crusher trapped inside. Given that the bubbles can be created by warp fields and anything trapped inside is destroyed, the theory is in fact there. However, in order to generate a warp bubble within established canon, you need a warp field large enough for the bubble to form inside of. Now, since the warp field can envelop a volume as large as the warp field, as long as a warp field is possible, a warp bubble is possible. But it's also hit or miss, since Wesley wasn't actively trying to trap his mother. He would need to actively work to create a bubble that destroys everything within its radius without regard. That's not something I see Wesley doing.

So, let's assume that you build a warp drive whose purpose is to create a bubble within its field. You have two options on how to proceed: you can either build a large warp drive to create a large warp field and use a smaller bubble, or you create a small warp drive whose only purpose is to detonate a bubble the size of the field itself. In both cases, you're taking a device that requires a supply of fuel to maintain up to the point of detonation, and it's using some of the most dangerous fuel you can use: antimatter. Sure, you could armor it, but what would be the uses? Sure, it'd be nice to simply implode a huge piece of that Borg cube from First Contact, but you'd need a ship about the size of the Defiant or a shuttle. That means getting close, which is going to be a huge problem with a ship like a cube. You'd need the Borg cube to be distracted by a fleet. So it would act as a modern fireship, sacrificing itself for the destruction of a huge enemy ship.

Suppose you use it on the ground? That would make a bit more sense in that you have a device that has no way of stopping it. If you can get a shuttle down to the surface full of troops, you've got a warp bubble generator. It'll be ungainly for active battlefield use, but if there's an entrenched position, you could simply carry a stripped down simplified generator forward, set it near a fortified position, and run like hell before it deletes the enemy from existence. As a door buster, I think it would do quite well. In that the door will never exist again.

[Simon_Jester]

First of all, it's questionable whether this weapon's ability to penetrate defenses is absolute- "any shielding known to man" in Star Trek does not mean shielding in other settings couldn't withstand the effect, depending on how those shields work and how they interact with the bubble.

But that's not really a very good objection. More to the point, it's questionable whether a missile which replaces a standard torpedo warhead with a warp bubble generator would be more effective than a standard missile. Among other things, the warp bubble weapon is made totally ineffective if it detonates at standoff ranges larger than the radius of the bubble- a Trek ship with ellipsoidal bubble shields might be able to survive a direct hit from a 'warp torpedo' simply by making the torpedo go off too far from the hull to damage anything important. In contrast, a standard photon torpedo is a multimegaton nuke-equivalent, which will still have significant effect on a target even if it blows up hundreds of meters away.

There is also the matter of scale and redundancy. A weapon that takes eighteen-meter bites out of the enemy's hull sounds great... until you realize you're fighting something eighteen hundred meters long. If you were to use this thing to eat a Borg cube, you'd have to take very small bites, and it would take a long time to chew your way to anything critical.

[Ahriman238]

However, I will say this. In TNG: Remember Me, Wesley Crusher creates a warp bubble that begins to slowly collapse in on itself with Dr. Crusher trapped inside. Given that the bubbles can be created by warp fields and anything trapped inside is destroyed, the theory is in fact there. However, in order to generate a warp bubble within established canon, you need a warp field large enough for the bubble to form inside of. Now, since the warp field can envelop a volume as large as the warp field, as long as a warp field is possible, a warp bubble is possible. But it's also hit or miss, since Wesley wasn't actively trying to trap his mother. He would need to actively work to create a bubble that destroys everything within its radius without regard. That's not something I see Wesley doing.

That's the episode I was thinking of when Tedious asked about it's workings. Thanks Baffalo!

However, in order to generate a warp bubble within established canon, you need a warp field large enough for the bubble to form inside of. Now, since the warp field can envelop a volume as large as the warp field, as long as a warp field is possible, a warp bubble is possible.

So, let's assume that you build a warp drive whose purpose is to create a bubble within its field. You have two options on how to proceed: you can either build a large warp drive to create a large warp field and use a smaller bubble, or you create a small warp drive whose only purpose is to detonate a bubble the size of the field itself. In both cases, you're taking a device that requires a supply of fuel to maintain up to the point of detonation, and it's using some of the most dangerous fuel you can use: antimatter. Sure, you could armor it, but what would be the uses? Sure, it'd be nice to simply implode a huge piece of that Borg cube from First Contact, but you'd need a ship about the size of the Defiant or a shuttle. That means getting close, which is going to be a huge problem with a ship like a cube. You'd need the Borg cube to be distracted by a fleet. So it would act as a modern fireship, sacrificing itself for the destruction of a huge enemy ship.

I'm... not sure I take your meaning. Isn't the Warp Field/Bubble an interchangeable term for the effect that lets a ship enter subspace protected?

A fireship? The size of a shuttle or even Defiant? First, a shuttle has more passenger space than an SUV, along with a host of secondary systems like life-support and inertial dampening that you need for a crew. Second, Federation shuttles can all do warp five or six at least and sustain that for days. A warhead using the same technology will not have to exceed warp 1 (is it still a time-warp factor if nothing moves?) and will need to acheive that for less than a second. Endurance is not a huge factor here and (warp) speed a non-issue, which should cut down the fuel requirements.

I think a photon torp is much more reasonable as a size. We see several torps over the years fired while in warp. Some have argued that instead of true warp drives the torpedoes have 'warp-sustainers' that keep them moving at warp, but as I have mentioned, a warhead really only needs to acheive a Warp effect for a moment. Plus, the Enterprise has launched vast numbers of warp-capable probes and it would be rather awkward if they were much larger than photon torpedoes, since they're deployed using the photon torpedo tubes.

But that's not really a very good objection. More to the point, it's questionable whether a missile which replaces a standard torpedo warhead with a warp bubble generator would be more effective than a standard missile. Among other things, the warp bubble weapon is made totally ineffective if it detonates at standoff ranges larger than the radius of the bubble- a Trek ship with ellipsoidal bubble shields might be able to survive a direct hit from a 'warp torpedo' simply by making the torpedo go off too far from the hull to damage anything important. In contrast, a standard photon torpedo is a multimegaton nuke-equivalent, which will still have significant effect on a target even if it blows up hundreds of meters away.

Too true. A Warp Torp would be ever so slightly more vulnerable to point-defense than the regular version, but I don't really remember either the Federation or the Empire using effective point-defense tech.

There is also the matter of scale and redundancy. A weapon that takes eighteen-meter bites out of the enemy's hull sounds great... until you realize you're fighting something eighteen hundred meters long. If you were to use this thing to eat a Borg cube, you'd have to take very small bites, and it would take a long time to chew your way to anything critical.

Ah, my apologies for being unclear, when I said "if the Warp Bomb existed and worked as advertised" I was referring both to it's shield-and-armor-ignoring capability and my shared belief with the villain that the 18.3 meter limit is bullshit.

In the book, the Warp Bomb is useless because the sun's gravity imposes an arbitrary limit on the size of a Warp Field. It is simply not possible to create a Warp Field larger than 18.3 meters on Earth or the moon, and the possible field size shrinks more the closer to the sun you get. It would work fine on system fringes or in deep space, but there's no people on Neptune, and a starship in deep space could protect itself with it's own warp drive.

However, in the shows and movies wee see warp drive used near earth, or earth-like planets all the time. Heck, in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' the original Enterprise buzzed the sun at warp speeds, coming much closer to the sun than earth is in a 300 meter starship, and they did it again in Star Trek IV in a bird of prey. I confess to not knowing the dimensions of the BoP, but from just glancing at images of it with people or whaleboats in the frame, I'm going to go with 'a whole lot bigger than 18 meters.'

If anyone can demonstrate good reason that I'm wrong here, I'll relent. Until then, I'm thinking more like a weapon that takes 600 meter bites out, while ignoring armor or shields. that puts us into a whole new territory, one where Carrack cruisers and Dreadnaughts can be one-shoted, and Star Destroyers take a hit only to find the forward third of the ship missing.

I assume that would be inconvenient to the Empire?

The question is, would that technology upgrade the Federation's threat level enough to render the Emprie unable or unwilling to prosecute a war against them?

[Darth Tedious]

Imperial ships do have point-defense systems. We don't see them used as such in the movies, because we don't see missile being used against ISDs. Most of the shots we see destroying fighters in the Battle of Endor are made from point-defense guns.

As for how much difference WarpTorps would make overall, they would change the complexion of the situation somewhat. The Federation would actually be able to deal damage against Imperial ships. However, it may not be enough to completely discourage the Empire. Remember, although an ISD can be cut in half in one shot, the remaining half still has more than enough firepower to one-shot the ship that fired at it (and the ship next to it, and the one next to that... Etc.). Adding TIEs to the equation means it's not even a Mutually Assured Destruction-type situation, and that's with just one ISD against multiple UFP ships.

In short, the Empire would certainly be able to persue a war against the UFP, willingness is anybody's guess- though the question of willingness also applies under normal circumstances.

[Purple]

I believe that if anything the Federation possessing such a weapon would make the Empire much more willing to invade. The logic being that an enemy that can actually fight back makes for a much better propaganda piece than the normal Feds would.

[DudeGuyMan]

A weapon that forces the Empire to get creative without actually giving the Federation a road to victory probably isn't really that great for the Feds. If the Empire decides that prologned fleet combat is likely to generate unacceptable losses, they're more likely to decide to bypass it with their speed advantage and start fucking up planets until the Federation loses the will to fight.

It reminded me of playing Birth of the Federation and not wanting to fight the Romulan fleet because of their cloaking devices. I'd always try as hard as possible to just keep their fleet busy and obliterate their ability to build more ships.

A hypothetical Federation superweapon would need to be something that makes war totally unviable, not something that just pisses the Empire off enough to make them fight really hard, in order to be worthwhile.

[Baffalo]

If I had to wage war against the Empire, and had access to all the technology available to Starfleet, here's what I'd do.

I'd form task forces consisting of heavy ships such as the Sovereign and Galaxy classes to serve as command ships. Around them, I'd station smaller vessels such as Akira, Steamrunner, Excelsior and Ambassador classes to provide screening and protect the heavies. Finally, I'd place smaller Intrepid, Miranda, Nova and Constellation class ships to serve as fighter screens. They are not, however, to engage the enemy directly.

Using whatever facilities I can, even if building from scratch in some remote system, I'd have my fleets refitted to include either Quantum Slipstream or Warp 10 propulsion, to enable them to travel quickly from one point to another. This will let them move quickly around to avoid sitting in one spot. Then, depending on how the Empire is deployed, comes the next stage.

Tricobalt torpedoes are to be used, fired en mass towards any Imperial station or fleet. The torpedoes are slow, but very dangerous, and they (I believe) have excellent range. Firing off these torpedoes, the Imperials must maneuver, and will probably be expecting the slower, clumsier warp drive. Using their new drives, they burst through and get into Imperial space via the wormhole, where they'll scatter according to task force assignments. I know I don't have the numbers or the firepower to take on the Empire directly, but I do have ships with reasonably fast engines that can move quickly through enemy territory. And I have one huge advantage, and that's humans. Humans make up the bulk of the Imperial population, and the universal translator will make speaking the local languages a breeze.

While no match for Imperial Star Destroyers, the smaller ships can sneak into systems to conduct trade or contact someone, and arrange a sale of a local transport. After procuring a ship, my goal will be to start the process of reverse engineering it, trying to find out what makes Imperial ships so much better. Also hidden amidst this treasure will be a nav computer. Even if the rest of the ship turns out worthless, I still have a nav computer, which tells me where the enemy has systems, and which ones might be important.

Because I now have a list of systems, I can position ships or use scouts to figure out which ones will have minor Imperial garrisons, and begin conducting raids. My goal at first will be to use the tech I have, then slowly begin procuring bases and weapons from captured Imperial instillations. Minor garrisons might not have the bigger guns but they'll have blasters I can use to equip my men, plus a few transports. Over time, I'm looking to begin using ships and men to take bigger prizes. And for the really big worlds? The ones I can't reasonably take? Trilithium.

That's right, trilithium. Taking out a star is more than enough to wipe huge producers such as Kuat yards off the map, leaving the Empire hurt. A major blow to their ability to wage war will put a strain on their ability to maintain control, increasing the political pressure on unstable worlds. Because my ships are darting around the galaxy conducting raids and destroying Imperial infrastructure, the Empire will begin to implode. After a certain point, hopefully, the Empire's own residents will have had enough and begin breaking away. And that will be that.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Then the Empire's retaliation wipes the Federation off the map. You've done enough to actually piss them off, and probablly helped sure the Empire up, being an outside force that has just launched an unprovoked attack that killed billions of Imperial citizens. Nothing brings a nation together better than an attack from outside.

Congratulations, the people of the Empire are now howling for Federation blood, and you've turned the Alpha Quadrant into one big free-fire zone, nice.

[Ahriman238]

The way I see it, with the addition of the Warp Bomb, space battles go from Imperial ROFLStomp to more or less "whoever shoots first, wins."

So if I were the Federation, I would focus more on mass producing Defiants and even those Marquis fighter-things, then go all juene ecol on the Empire.

And Dude, "render the enemy unable or unwilling to continue to wage war against you" is pretty much the textbook definition of victory in a defensive war. Hell, that IS the textbook definition of defensive victory. It's one of those stock military phrases eveyone hears eventually.

Your problem is that you see victory only in terms of following the enemy home and crushing him, the Feds would probably settle for a negotiated peace along the line of "leave us the hell alone."

[Darth Tedious]

"Whoever shoots first, wins" doesn't account for the Imperial speed advantage. (hasn't this already been pointed out?)

[Baffalo]

Wierd question. Suppose you build a warp bomb, and you detonate it... inside a wormhole. Like say, the wormhole leading to the Imperial galaxy?

[Darth Tedious]

Wierd question. Suppose you build a warp bomb, and you detonate it... inside a wormhole. Like say, the wormhole leading to the Imperial galaxy?

[impersonation="Maxwell Smart"]The old 'destroy the wormhole' trick, eh? [/impersonation]

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Your problem is that you see victory only in terms of following the enemy home and crushing him, the Feds would probably settle for a negotiated peace along the line of "leave us the hell alone."

Ah, but would the Imperials settle for that? After losing billions in an unprovoked surprise attack? I wouldn't bet on it.

[Ahriman238]

"Whoever shoots first, wins" doesn't account for the Imperial speed advantage. (hasn't this already been pointed out?)

No, clearly it only describes the tactical situation, the Empire maintains vastly superior industry and FTL.

Wierd question. Suppose you build a warp bomb, and you detonate it... inside a wormhole. Like say, the wormhole leading to the Imperial galaxy?

What, detonate a theorectical weapon inside a theorectical phenomenon, both of which are barely understood? Anything from destroying both galaxies to spawning a race of god-like space unicorns.

Ah, but would the Imperials settle for that? After losing billions in an unprovoked surprise attack? I wouldn't bet on it.

Yeah, Baffalo's tactics will tend to throw out hope for a peaceful settlement. Without that, it depends. If the Federation can't be destroyed easily, Palpatine may get creative, or he may see the value of negotiation. The Hapes Cluster, the Hutts and the Corporate Sector all retained varying degrees of autonomy because they weren't worth the hassle of conquering. And this is the same Emperor who was going to sell one of his planets and all it's inhabitants to the Ssi-Ruuk for a chance to duplicate their droid fighters.

[Norade]

The way I see it, with the addition of the Warp Bomb, space battles go from Imperial ROFLStomp to more or less "whoever shoots first, wins."

So if I were the Federation, I would focus more on mass producing Defiants and even those Marquis fighter-things, then go all juene ecol on the Empire.

And Dude, "render the enemy unable or unwilling to continue to wage war against you" is pretty much the textbook definition of victory in a defensive war. Hell, that IS the textbook definition of defensive victory. It's one of those stock military phrases eveyone hears eventually.

Your problem is that you see victory only in terms of following the enemy home and crushing him, the Feds would probably settle for a negotiated peace along the line of "leave us the hell alone."

You've still yet to prove that it can even harm an Imperial warship let alone shown that the Federation will get within range to launch such weapons. Of course this assumes that Trek ever gets to even fire a shot before losing. It also doesn't account for how fast such weapons can be built and how fast the weapons can be distributed.

For the first bit, we know that against stationary targets ISD's have 10 light minute range which puts them rather far away from any Trek fleet, it also means that even firing from a saner 5 light minute range that any torpedoes will take a while to reach the ship. This isn't to mention the fighter screens which an competent captain will send out, if such a screen contains blast boats then most federation ships never survive the fighters.

Next, when it takes you weeks to cross your own territory and hours for the enemy to do the same you may even get an engagement off. Evidence for this is the low number of ships we see guarding even important worlds like Vulcan and Earth. The way this scenario plays out is that you attack a fringe world with something sure to provoke a large response (a BDZ comes to mind) and while Trek scrambles to respond you send fleets to worlds further in. You only ever need to hit the undefended worlds if you've done a decent job of seeding prob droids and small scout ship along your path of advance.

The last issue that comes to mind even if this tech works as planned is how fast can you build them and how fast can you get them to your ships. Sure the ships nearest to major manufacturing centers will get them, once the machines to build them are setup and production gets rolling beyond the testing stage, but ships further out could take weeks or even months to get them even assuming that supplies ever become large enough.

[Ahriman238]

For the first bit, we know that against stationary targets ISD's have 10 light minute range which puts them rather far away from any Trek fleet, it also means that even firing from a saner 5 light minute range that any torpedoes will take a while to reach the ship. This isn't to mention the fighter screens which an competent captain will send out, if such a screen contains blast boats then most federation ships never survive the fighters.

Ten light minutes? As in, almost 180 million km? That's some awfully impressive range. So impressive, I confess I'm having some trouble asscoiating it with Star Wars where all the battles occur comfortably within visual range. Where is this most impressive figure coming from?

Next, when it takes you weeks to cross your own territory and hours for the enemy to do the same you may even get an engagement off

Ok, I think you're saying here that the Empire will have the inititive because of their superior FTL. It's hard to tell because your sentence sort of breaks down somwhere between implied if and understood then. In anycase, I've never contested that as the most likely aggressor with the most advanced FTL inititive is the Empire's.

The last issue that comes to mind even if this tech works as planned is how fast can you build them and how fast can you get them to your ships. Sure the ships nearest to major manufacturing centers will get them, once the machines to build them are setup and production gets rolling beyond the testing stage, but ships further out could take weeks or even months to get them even assuming that supplies ever become large enough.

Hmm. True. I confess I'd been thinking more in terms of it already being in general deployment. I'm not sure ST humanity is anything recognizable as human if someone didn't look into weaponizing Warp Drive within a few months of the first successful tests. But okay, supose they weren't in general deployment. The Warp Drive is a technology so thoroughly understood that teenagers (Wesley) can build one as a school project. Also, while their ships cannot move that fast, Starfleet has subspace communication swift enough to allow real-time conversations with no visible delay anywhere in the Federation.

Combine this with the 'do-anything' education of a Starfleet officer and matter-replication tech so advanced it bears no resemblance to actual physics, and I'm thinking most starships will have the materials and personel needed to produce their own weapons. Certainly, Voyager never ran out of torpedoes or shuttles, and even built their own advanced shuttle once. I'm thinking Starfleet boradcasts the specs and every starbase and ship has a full load within a day, only allowing time or every ship's engineer to look over the specs and suggest various tweaks and improvements.

[Whiskey144]

Ten light minutes? As in, almost 180 million km? That's some awfully impressive range. So impressive, I confess I'm having some trouble asscoiating it with Star Wars where all the battles occur comfortably within visual range. Where is this most impressive figure coming from?

Page 5 of the Episode III ICS. It's given in the Venator SD entry, under the DBY-287 gunnery section. Logic dictates that later-model SDs are more than likely to have equivalent (or greater!) range.

That said, most of the time combat in SW takes place in ECM/ECCM heavy environments, so naturally drawing closer to the target would be beneficial for the purpose of more accurate targeting.

Hmm. True. I confess I'd been thinking more in terms of it already being in general deployment. I'm not sure ST humanity is anything recognizable as human if someone didn't look into weaponizing Warp Drive within a few months of the first successful tests.

I'd guess that someone did, and then found it to be, at the time, much too unrealistic a proposition or a much too expensive project.

But okay, supose they weren't in general deployment. The Warp Drive is a technology so thoroughly understood that teenagers (Wesley) can build one as a school project. Also, while their ships cannot move that fast, Starfleet has subspace communication swift enough to allow real-time conversations with no visible delay anywhere in the Federation.

Checking up on the main site, ST subspace communications apparently have signal-travel-speeds of 200,000c. So if the Federation was an 8000ly disc (IIRC, this is often claimed), then that would mean a 0.04 second delay between communications on either side of UFP territory. Close enough for government work.

However, I'm pretty sure that some episodes have either indicated that subspace communications can take time, especially over long-range, and possibly made a plot point (minor or major) out of it.

OTOH, real-time communication is vastly different from rapid response.

[bz249]

Checking up on the main site, ST subspace communications apparently have signal-travel-speeds of 200,000c. So if the Federation was an 8000ly disc (IIRC, this is often claimed), then that would mean a 0.04 second delay between communications on either side of UFP territory. Close enough for government work.

However, I'm pretty sure that some episodes have either indicated that subspace communications can take time, especially over long-range, and possibly made a plot point (minor or major) out of it.

OTOH, real-time communication is vastly different from rapid response.

200.000 c and 8000 ly means 0.04 years, thus roughly two weaks of signal delay. Still a government like that can work (with an even longer delay too, since both the Spanish and British Empire functioned without rapid means of transportation and communication).

[Darth Tedious]

Even ignoring the difference between communication and ability to respond, how are subspace comms supposed to help when they are slower than the enemy's ships? Hyperspace travel works out at over 20 million c. Imperial ships could attack a system and be on to the next one before the distress call even got there!
Mind, subspace comms only have a constant average velocity because of the relay network. Without it, they decelerate over distance.

[Whiskey144]

200.000 c and 8000 ly means 0.04 years, thus roughly two weaks of signal delay. Still a government like that can work (with an even longer delay too, since both the Spanish and British Empire functioned without rapid means of transportation and communication).

My bad then; I evidently forgot to properly carry over the units. *bangs head against table for rudimentary mistake*

[Ahriman238]

200.000 c and 8000 ly means 0.04 years, thus roughly two weaks of signal delay. Still a government like that can work (with an even longer delay too, since both the Spanish and British Empire functioned without rapid means of transportation and communication).

In the case of Star Trek at least, I'm not as familiar with published stats as I am with the show itself. Honestly, though? We had real-time conversations with earth from out on the frontier many times in TNG, real-time conversations between Earth and Bajor in DS9, they were even able to arrange real-time communication with Voyager, though for all I know that was a one-shot techno-babble trick that was never mentioned or used again.

Page 5 of the Episode III ICS. It's given in the Venator SD entry, under the DBY-287 gunnery section. Logic dictates that later-model SDs are more than likely to have equivalent (or greater!) range.

Ok, so this is just a stat from a cross-section book, with no context whatsoever? Cause most any weapon used in space will have effectively unlimited range, the important part is how close you have to be to have a realistic chance of hitting the enemy.

At ten light minutes, unless you have magic-tech FTL sensors, you are by definition seeing your target not where it is, but where it was ten minutes ago. And unless you have some sort of FTL weapon system, like the hyper-missiles from Dahakverse, your shots will take ten minutes or more to reach the target. So, at a minimum you must predict your enemy's location twenty minutes (from your perspective) in advance. For a an evading target a few hundred meters in size, more than a 150 million km away. At this point you have to ask yourself what a prophet such as yourself is doing as a gunner. Hence my skepticism.

Even ignoring the difference between communication and ability to respond, how are subspace comms supposed to help when they are slower than the enemy's ships? Hyperspace travel works out at over 20 million c. Imperial ships could attack a system and be on to the next one before the distress call even got there!

Even if you can travel that much faster than an SOS, that's a hell of an operational tempo. This and the ten light-minute range both seem to assume godly capabilities and competence on the part of the Imperials.