Warp Ramming

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-12 04:05pm

I saw the episode with locutus in recently (i think it's called best of both worlds), and when the arbitrary modulating of the deflector dish plan happens, and fails, Riker gets ready to ram the borg cube and says something along the lines of "prepare for warp speed", indicating that it would indeed hurt the ship more than at impulse drive speeds/

Thoughts please?

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-04-12 04:40pm

Definately some warp bubble interference with subspace equipment.

Fuck, I don't know.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-04-12 04:57pm

2 tons of something moving at 100C will do more damage then 2 million tons of something moving at 50 meters per second.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-04-12 05:03pm

It's utterly impossible to determine what kind of effect a FTL object would have on a STL one.

Micheal Ryans, Beta pilot · Post by **Micheal Ryans, Beta pilot** » 2003-04-12 06:03pm

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:It's utterly impossible to determine what kind of effect a FTL object would have on a STL one.

Yeah, but I think a GCS hitting something at max warp will do something bad to it.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2003-04-12 06:45pm

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:It's utterly impossible to determine what kind of effect a FTL object would have on a STL one.

Agreed although we do know that hitting something with an FTL GCS will do more damage than a full impulse GCS, that is about all the incident tells us.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-04-12 07:13pm

Alyeska wrote:2 tons of something moving at 100C will do more damage then 2 million tons of something moving at 50 meters per second.

Except it's not really moving at 100c. That's the whole idea of warp drive; it distorts space around you so that large distances become small. But it would appear to be better than full impulse.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-12 07:38pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Alyeska wrote:2 tons of something moving at 100C will do more damage then 2 million tons of something moving at 50 meters per second.
Except it's not really moving at 100c. That's the whole idea of warp drive; it distorts space around you so that large distances become small. But it would appear to be better than full impulse.

So would it actually do anything to the borg ship, or would it be in a relative bit of space where warp would cause the enterprise to be moving at the equivalent of high impulse? In that case, would warp make any difference, or would it be to make acceleration easier or something?

Or would it stretch out the borg vessel till it broke...i have no idea...

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2003-04-12 07:42pm

The only conclusion we can draw is that it would dosomethingbetter than impulse rammingsomehow.

The actual details of how are unimportant.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-04-12 09:05pm

Well, if nothing else, the antimatter reserves of the Enterprise combining with the rest of the ship would probably make a pretty big (for ST that is) bang. Even if the impact itself doesn't do much, the explosion *might*... then again, the warp drive attempting to distort the space the Borg cube is occupying might have a negative effect on the cube as well. Plus, if the impact at warp is greater than the impact at full impulse... well, 4 million tons of material would probably hurt quite a bit at full impulse, especially given the 'design' of a Borg cube.

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-04-12 09:39pm

Yeah, it would probably set off all that C-4.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-04-12 10:10pm

High-momentum ramming might actually be quite effective against the Borg. Their ships are not particularly solid after all, since we've seen that they use some kind of malleable metal for their exterior structure. The shield generators are likely to be torn out of their moorings by such a large impact, and the ship might crash right into the interior of the ship.

Wouldn't that be a sight to behold; a warship inside a Borg cube, blasting it from the perfect vantage point

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2003-04-12 11:32pm

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:It's utterly impossible to determine what kind of effect a FTL object would have on a STL one.

Actually, the momentum of a tachyon descends from infinity (momentum at c) to a limiting value which depends on the object's rest-mass as its velocity approaches infinity.

However, at warp, a ship is not actually at FTL (it cheats around Special Relativity), but technically sublight. So it has to have something to do with the warp bubble or it is simply an excuse to cheat to high speed real quickly.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2003-04-13 12:08pm

Maybie the warp drive has to reach a certain speed before engaging, and starting the drive accellerates the ship to a high fraction of c before the distortion thingly thaks over. So, it would be like an impact at very high sublight speeds. That could explain the flash most ships give off when they engage--the effects of a large energy burst required to reach critical speed.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-04-13 12:51pm

speed relative to what? compared to the other side of the universe we're all going a very high PSL, but compared to the planet we're orbitting were not going very fast at all.

No, warp is just stretching the fabric of space (not that stretching really works)

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-13 01:01pm

kojikun wrote:speed relative to what? compared to the other side of the universe we're all going a very high PSL, but compared to the planet we're orbitting were not going very fast at all.

No, warp is just stretching the fabric of space (not that stretching really works)

To my recollection, warp squishes up the space in front of it, and stretches it out behind it...but there are other theories.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-04-13 02:59pm

yeah thats supposedly how it works. its a dandy theory so long as you ignore reality.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-13 03:37pm

kojikun wrote:yeah thats supposedly how it works. its a dandy theory so long as you ignore reality.

Shhh, don't say "real" on a trek forum!

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-04-14 01:22am

Something someone mentioned above gave me an idea -- what if you could somehow use a warp field as a weapon by itself, by accelerating an enemy target to FTL unexpectedly? Or accelerating a massive chunk of the enemy target while leaving the rest unaffected?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-14 10:06am

Raoul Duke, Jr. wrote:Something someone mentioned above gave me an idea -- what if you could somehow use a warp field as a weapon by itself, by accelerating an enemy target to FTL unexpectedly? Or accelerating a massive chunk of the enemy target while leaving the rest unaffected?

I've designed a ship with that weapon and i believe someone said a similar tactic to use against ISD, but it's never been seen so it doesnt count as a viable tactic.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-04-14 10:37am

Rye wrote:
Raoul Duke, Jr. wrote:Something someone mentioned above gave me an idea -- what if you could somehow use a warp field as a weapon by itself, by accelerating an enemy target to FTL unexpectedly? Or accelerating a massive chunk of the enemy target while leaving the rest unaffected?
I've designed a ship with that weapon and i believe someone said a similar tactic to use against ISD, but it's never been seen so it doesnt count as a viable tactic.

Untested, certainly. But I think it would be possible to determine, based on what we do know about warp technology, whether such a weapon is feasible, and make fairly solid speculation as to the effects. It certainly wouldn't be useful in the "official" versus debate, but as a speculative weapon, there's no reason not to entertain it.