how to beat Empire with all known Trek tech?

[Kuja]

It basically does whatever will serve the story best.

Which is how sci-fi SHOULD be written, not with Trek's breakdown of the week + longwinded explanations about virtually anything ever seen on a ship.

[Kuja]

It basically does whatever will serve the story best.

Which is how sci-fi SHOULD be written, not with Trek's breakdown of the week + longwinded explanations about virtually anything ever seen on a ship.

I might be sounding a bit harsh here, but it's the truth: a stroy should be written for the story. Tech is fluff, and when done right, good fluff, but essentially fluff. And the fluff should never take precedence over the plot.

Except in vs debates of course.

[Metrion Cascade]

I fucking hate this. Lucas' approach to sci-fi makes half of his tech unassailable by anything (it does incredible feats, but you can't find weaknesses because no effort is made to explain its workings). Meanwhile the fucking Force is essentially magic, and answers to nothing. Not logic, not technology, not any laws of physics. It basically does whatever will serve the story best. I need to come up with a race the way Lucas did - all wanktech and storyline, no explanations.

Come now, the Empire's biggest advantages here have nothing to do with wanktech, and everything to do with sheer scale. Their ships are fast enough for quick pan-galactic travel and powerful enough so that a really big one can blow up planets. The Federation is weaker by necessity because it's smaller.

Really monstrous civilizations like the Shi'Ar from Marvel Comics or some of the real wank-tech sci-fi universes found in books (eg- The Culture) can easily stomp the Empire. The Empire's special abilities can be summed up as "lots of troops, go fast, hit hard". I don't really consider that wank-tech.

I know, just venting. Maybe if Picard had approved Q joining Starfleet...

[Solauren]

There are a few wank-tech that MIGHT give the Federation a chance in a war with the Empire

Anyone remember the Q-Civil-War episode?
The shield modifications Voyager used to survive flying into a Supernova
Belena' said the shield strength jumped by a factor of 10
That could be X10, or X1,000,000,000
If it's X1,000,000,000 That would let Star Fleet ships take more of a pounding from the Empire.
If it's X10, then no dice.

The 'planetary cloaking device' from TNG (those aliens that had radiation poisoning that wanted to use Enterprise kids to repop the planet) and the planetary shield on every federation world with that Factor of 10 boast might be useful.

Mass produced preserver cannons MIGHT be useful as planetary defense weapons (depending on power out put) or as ship weapons.

Problem is, all these techs are VERY iffy.

[NecronLord]

Literally they destroy the ISD group when they supernova the star within that system.

Only if the shields were down. Seriously, Daala's ship survived being hit by Nine supernova blast waves.

[HRogge]

Literally they destroy the ISD group when they supernova the star within that system.

Only if the shields were down. Seriously, Daala's ship survived being hit by Nine supernova blast waves.

Right, it all depends on the distance the ship has to the star going nova. With FTL sensors and engines supernovas are not very usefull to kill ships.

[Howedar]

There are a few wank-tech that MIGHT give the Federation a chance in a war with the Empire

Anyone remember the Q-Civil-War episode?
The shield modifications Voyager used to survive flying into a Supernova
Belena' said the shield strength jumped by a factor of 10
That could be X10, or X1,000,000,000

What the fuck are you talking about? Factor of ten = *10. Factor of one hundred = *100.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Thought interacting with a warp drive.

Sorry about the digression from the topic of the thread, but the concept of though interacting with a warp field is definitely canon. It was in the TNG episode "Remember Me" that Dr. Crusher was accidentally caught in a non-propulsive warp field (a "static warp bubble"), and her thoughts at the instant of capture by the field determined the temporary reality that the field created.

That's certainly canon evidence of the power of thought being able to influence warp fields, and makes the Traveler's assertions less likely to simply be a ploy to get into Mr. Crusher's pants.

[Eframepilot]

Annorax's weapon ship also had a nifty temporal core thingie that not only made the ship immune to all conventional weapon attacks (since it was "partially outside the space-time continuum") but also made the crew immortal. They did not physically age at all for over a hundred years. This of course makes absolutely no sense, but it is how it was presented in the episode. With this technology, Federation ships would be invulnerable to all Imperial weapons up to and possibly including the Death Star superlaser. Unfortunately they would not be able to defend their own planets, but the temporal core is still the most impressive technology to appear in a Trek episode.

[Solauren]

There are a few wank-tech that MIGHT give the Federation a chance in a war with the Empire

Anyone remember the Q-Civil-War episode?
The shield modifications Voyager used to survive flying into a Supernova
Belena' said the shield strength jumped by a factor of 10
That could be X10, or X1,000,000,000

What the fuck are you talking about? Factor of ten = *10. Factor of one hundred = *100.

I know that.

However, this is B&B we are talking about (or one of there numbers). If we don't go 10x10x10.. etc, that would give Voyager and other UFP ships 1/10th the power to take being very close to a star that just went boom.

And given how B&B and Star trek in general screw things up, they could mean to the power of 10, (as in shield power times itself 10 times).

[The Kernel]

There are a few wank-tech that MIGHT give the Federation a chance in a war with the Empire

Anyone remember the Q-Civil-War episode?
The shield modifications Voyager used to survive flying into a Supernova
Belena' said the shield strength jumped by a factor of 10
That could be X10, or X1,000,000,000

What the fuck are you talking about? Factor of ten = *10. Factor of one hundred = *100.

I know that.

However, this is B&B we are talking about (or one of there numbers). If we don't go 10x10x10.. etc, that would give Voyager and other UFP ships 1/10th the power to take being very close to a star that just went boom.

And given how B&B and Star trek in general screw things up, they could mean to the power of 10, (as in shield power times itself 10 times).

Come now, if the shields had increased by that much B'lanna would have been spewing Klingon jizz all over her engineering console, not raising an eyebrow.

[Eframepilot]

Oooh, another one. Krenim chroniton torpedos. Are in a state of temporal flux, so they penetrate all shielding but the special temporal shields that Seven invented. Of course their warheads sucked, but those could be replaced.

So... combining several technologies in an ultimate wank-fest: phase-cloaked orbital defense satellites (like the ones around Cardassia but with phase cloaks) armed with chroniton torpedos with quantum torpedo warheads (which we know can be moved to other modes of delivery such as probes from DS9's "Starship Down") around every significant planet. These should be able to one- or two-shot kill any Imperial ship that arrives to commence orbital bombardment. Given the appropriate technologies and the time to prepare (10 years?) this could actually protect the entire Federation from the Empire. Of course the Empire could probably overwhelm the defenses with sheer numbers, but then it would be a battle of attrition, and wasting dozens of Star Destroyers on every Federation planet is a pretty Pyrrhic victory.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

What about the Xindi Death Star? The results would be...curious...if the Federation were able to get there hands on that sort of power.

[Solauren]

What the fuck are you talking about? Factor of ten = *10. Factor of one hundred = *100.

I know that.

However, this is B&B we are talking about (or one of there numbers). If we don't go 10x10x10.. etc, that would give Voyager and other UFP ships 1/10th the power to take being very close to a star that just went boom.

And given how B&B and Star trek in general screw things up, they could mean to the power of 10, (as in shield power times itself 10 times).

Come now, if the shields had increased by that much B'lanna would have been spewing Klingon jizz all over her engineering console, not raising an eyebrow.

For all we know, that's all they do at climax. (A)

Anyway, it was a suggestion based on dialogue interpretation.

If it's just X10, no biggy
If it's x10 e 10, biggy
if it's E10, biggy

Since it's most likely X10...

[Solauren]

Oooh, another one. Krenim chroniton torpedos. Are in a state of temporal flux, so they penetrate all shielding but the special temporal shields that Seven invented. Of course their warheads sucked, but those could be replaced.

So... combining several technologies in an ultimate wank-fest: phase-cloaked orbital defense satellites (like the ones around Cardassia but with phase cloaks) armed with chroniton torpedos with quantum torpedo warheads (which we know can be moved to other modes of delivery such as probes from DS9's "Starship Down") around every significant planet. These should be able to one- or two-shot kill any Imperial ship that arrives to commence orbital bombardment. Given the appropriate technologies and the time to prepare (10 years?) this could actually protect the entire Federation from the Empire. Of course the Empire could probably overwhelm the defenses with sheer numbers, but then it would be a battle of attrition, and wasting dozens of Star Destroyers on every Federation planet is a pretty Pyrrhic victory.

Problem: You would need literally hundreds of thousands of those platforms in operation over a single world to bring down a Star Destroyers shields and get through it's armor.

I agree, that's a feasible tactical option in terms of success, but they lack the resources to do it over every planet.

[Gandalf]

My attempt at uber-wanking: Using the above shield penetrating methods, you can use the Genesis Device on just about anything.

[Darth Wong]

The problem remains that the Empire can wipe out all of the Federation's 150 planets in 6 hours even if they stop for a meal along the way. When the enemy can do that, you need a lot more than one superweapon which might be able to work against one of the enemy's planets if you can get it there in your lifetime.

[Sarevok]

The problem remains that the Empire can wipe out all of the Federation's 150 planets in 6 hours even if they stop for a meal along the way. When the enemy can do that, you need a lot more than one superweapon which might be able to work against one of the enemy's planets if you can get it there in your lifetime.

Indeed and even if one Star Destroyer survives it can destroy the Federation in a matter of weaks.