Out of Pod Experience

I think if we're gonna to make that claim, then I have to point out that according to most analysises (sp?) of Star Trek vs Starwars would leave EVE somewhere in the middle of the two in terms of the ability to muster energy into destructive power. Remember, most capital and supercapital ships are effectively attacking each other with what would the equivalent of multiple relativistic kill vehicles. Realistically, that would mean in a head-to-head fight at sub-light speeds Eve capital and supercapital vessels would destroy even a Borg cube (or at least severely damage it). Remember, more or less all the warp capable canon races of Star Trek don't use things like relativistic kill vehicles nor ballistic weapons of the traditional sort (I don't think anyone could say a photon torpedo fits in the same category as a rail gun). So, their defenses center on fighting off mostly energy based weapons. And their deflector technology largely is for dispersing spacedust by manipulating subspace fields around the vessel (There's one episode of Enterprise which this problem was discussed). Beyond that, canon deflector technology cannot substitute their specific defenses of shields, which deal with energy based weapons such as polaron weapons, photon torpedos (anti-matter/matter explosives), disruptors, and phasers. So, if something massy were to hit their vessels, it would probably punch right through it as it is often shown both in film (ST:Nemesis) and TV shows (DS9: The Jem'Hadar).

Edit: To make the point on the matter of the Borg versus mass driven weapons, there is a scene in Star Trek: First Contact where Picard decided to use a holodeck created tommygun to get around the Borg's personal shields. So, even Borg technology as it exists per canon has not adapted or taken into account primitive weapons of this kind.

I think it is pointless because neither the Star Trek physics and certainly not the EVE physics would work in the real world. Even when leaving any real world physics out, the settings and the mechanics presented in EVE and Star Trek are to different to compare.

Unfortunately, just like with EVE warp drives, these high speeds are only useful for travel, not combat. Star Trek ships might be capable of 0.25c, but they rarely, if ever, fight at those speeds. The vast majority of fights in Star Trek happen at relative speeds that are far, far slower than EVE combat.



And this is exactly what would happen in a war with the EVE universe. When an EVE fleet enters orbit around the homeworld of every Star Trek faction and starts exterminating the civilian population, the Star Trek defenders will have to come in close to fight.



This is laughably wrong, given how frequently Star Trek ships miss even at point blank range.



I'm talking about exterior views which clearly show the ships at extremely close range.



Unfortunately the people who decide what is canon in Star Trek disagree with you. Exactly two things are canon:

1) The movies.

2) The TV episodes.

If you don't see it on screen, it isn't canon. End of discussion.

[quote=baltec1

Personally, I see a galaxy class going toe to toe with a megathron within blaster range getting torn apart by 7 massive car size blocks of antimatter slapping it at close to the speed of light every few seconds while having all of its energy sucked out of it and getting jammed by 5 heavy ECM drones.

At least, untill the technobabble happens.[/quote]


I seriously doubt that. The tech differences is so massively different that there really is no comparison. All the Enterprise has to do is beam a boarding party and whoop the Mega's nonexistant crew's ass. The Mega can't even target subsystem because its not even a feature in game. And how do you expect the Mega to neut through the shields of a Galaxy class starship? LOL

You keep saying "if it is in the movies / TV, it is cannon"

Well, ST: X shows an example of ships fighting at faster than light speeds. So we agree that's cannon, then? Or are you just going to refuse this 'fact' because it's not convenient to you? Let's make this reallll easy for you : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv-Y_PKuXqo

1minute 58 seconds into that clip shows combat at warp speeds.

Other examples:
- Voyager engages Borg ships at warp
- Enterprise engages Borg ships at warp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXvi8uD8qYY&feature=autoplay&list=PL73432B6188954BF0&lf=results_video&playnext=2)
- Voyager, Year of hell: Voy engages in multiple battles at warp or fast sublight speed.
- ST:TUC - Whilst under attack, Kirk orders a reverse course at 1/4 impulse speed, which is defined as "slow"
- ST:TNG in the episode where the enterprise plays "war games" the speed and distance of the target and heading is read several times, this is 1000's of KMs and degrees of impulse speed.
- ST:TNG - enterprise manoeuvres through an asteroid belt at full impulse
- ST:DS9 - defiant often engages in battle at full impulse speed


"So why are photon torpedoes an effective weapon, if Star Trek ships have anti-missile defences with a useful success rate?"

Enterprise shoots down missiles in one episode, I forget the name. It also plans to shoot the missile down in ST:Generations, but wouldn't be able to lock the target in time. Nonetheless, it is an option.
Regardless, here is an example of it tracking small ships - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlobZcUJ9lg - skip to 25secs into it. These ships are 29m long, so a sig radius on par with an escape capsule or light drone. In this clip the Enterprise has just entered the Lysian system, and has slowed to full impulse. The Enterprise is tracking and hitting targets that are 29m long whilst travelling at 0.25c. Yes, this is *completely* at odds with what you see in DS9, which is why you need to move away from those battle scenes and views of relative speed and distance from what you see *on screen* to what is actually *verbally quoted* in the show. One is subject to a terrible budget, the other is what is happening.

"However the overwhelming majority of fights in Star Trek take place at visual range and extremely low relative velocity."

Both are simply a constraint of the *budget*. On the one hand you have verbal commands to perform x or y manoeuvres at impulse, the other, an external shot which suggests an actual speed of a few hundred MPH. Again, you have to look past the on screen representation to what is actually meant to be happening.

For instance, the same stock footage of the enterprise using it's main deflector is used dozens of times. Are we to believe everything it can emit looks the same, or that it's a budget restraint?

You simply have to accept there is more to Trek battles than "that only looks 400m away!" *especially* when Worf is telling the captain / viewer the target is at 5000km

Since I have now offered cannon links and evidence to the show, I would like you to support your claims by showing:

- Any Trek ship needing to slow below impulse (to thrusters) to fight
- A quoted engagement range of less than 250km
- Somewhere someone saying a ship can't fight at warp
- Somewhere someone saying a ship can't fight at high impulse

"Ah, I love it when Star Trek fans try to claim meaningless technobabble "statistics" that only demonstrate the hilarious scientific ignorance of both fanboys and whatever idiot wrote them in the first place."

I know the difference between energy and power. In respect to the phase cannon quote, the cannon is stated *in the show* as being 500gigajoules. That is to say, one shot / pulse contains 500GJ of energy, much in the same way you quote explosive yield in joules. This is a direct comparison to the same quotation in Eve documentation. It's a valid use case. Duration (and any semblance therefore of "power") is meaningless - though I could probably dig up a few quotes from ST:TNG of where the power of phasers are quoted (for instance, when they are used for drilling).

Then why do the fights always happen within less than a kilometer with respect to every ST movie or TV show? Granted, some scenes show multi-kilometer attacks. All of this is for building up a good fighting scene between ships. Regardless, if we were to be using 'realistic' physics for both ST and Eve, at best we would have something like out of Scott Sigler's the Crypt where most of the action is really about waiting for the impact of a relativistic kill vehicle/projectile. Which would mean most fights wouldn't last for long in reality.

Note: I'm referencing the Crypt since one of the short stories deals with a potentially realistic fight between space craft if such a thing were possible per engineering constraints. Sigler tends to take reasonable reference material from engineers and scientists on such matters for his stories (he has quite a few in his fan base, oddly enough).

yet in 99% of the fights they fly around at seemingly 100mph

Come to think of it, most of the ships in TNG just sat there and looked at eachother...

That's your weighting, and it's not true. For instance, they had to re-use a shot of the Bird of Prey exploding from ST:TUC in ST:GEN because they couldn't afford to reshoot it. Either way, you're strawmanning the argument and offering no evidence at all.



Therein lies the problem. No one wants to see 2 green pixels on their screen and be told it's a Romulan Warbird, they want to *see* the ******* thing. Ranges and speeds are quoted that are almost impossible to show on screen because it just doesn't make any sense to. Before DS9 there isn't even any evidence that phasers can miss; you have Worf targeting specific subsystems of a ship and scoring perfect hits. I've shown you a video of TNG era phasers tracking small objects at 0.25c (you ignored this) at yet you still bleat on about tracking. The only time phasers are *meant* to miss is when the ship takes a *random* evasive action after the firing process (someting like 2secs) starts.

But hey, you like quoting things as if they matter, so let's pull it apart a bit.

You said: "Wrath of Khan: visual range and low relative velocity, even outside the nebula"

Whereas the script said:



Enterprise is nearly stationary and Reliant approaches at 0.125c and tracks and hits just fine. Yup, it looks different on-screen, because that's cinematography for you.

- Search for Spock: visual range (a few ship lengths) and low relative velocity

Enterprise is stationary for a reason ;)

- The Undiscovered Country: visual range and low relative velocity

I've quoted you wrong on this already ... but gosh darnit you just won't listen. So look here:



Yep. Enterprise and baddy fighting at impulse speeds.

I could go on, but you get the gist. You've willfully confused cinematography with the presented information and used it to ham together a pathetic argument. You *still* ignored the examples of ships fighitng at warp speeds. You still ignored phasers quoted as being fired over 1000's of KMs.



This is quite pathetic, really. A federation officer confusing 300m for 300km and he has a job?

PLEASE try harder than this, really.

I, too, wanted 2/3 of every episode to be a rotation of crew members we never met in the previous episode

Though, at least in TNG they made the "no captain + first officer" rule, largely as an in-joke to the fact Kirk & Spock went on every single away mission together.