A future history of StarTrek.

[Gil Hamilton]

You have a point there, I remember a story Kahles told Worf were a warrior was standing outside the gates of a city and a storm was coming. The warrior was trying to prove his bravery. Kahles goes out there and tells the warrior he is unwise to stand in the face of certain and pointless death when it can be avoided.

There you go. My point is that any command with a bit of sense knows that bringing back the ship is better than getting it blown up pointlessly.

All I'm saying is that there must be a reason why Picard said the nav shields were imune to EM weapons, I'm offering a possibiliyt. It sounded good because it is similar to what B5 defences do, scatter incoming fire.

Or the distinct possibility that Picard was talking specifically about that ships lasers or that he was simply talking out of his ass.

Then why don't the advanced races use EM weapons, the only reason I can think of is that lasers aren't as effective as particle weapons in Star Trek.

Beats me, but that in and of itself isn't a good reason to say that particle weapons are superior to lasers. Particle weapons have a metric assload of downsides, many which are completely not true of laser weaponry. You are going to have to do better than "Well, none of the advance races in StarTrek use 'em!" if you are going to claim that particle weapons are inferior to lasers. Why are they better and why does this overcome their downsides?

Because it's been shown that shields reform faster when they are down. They should charge at the same rate up or down if shield integrity were a matter of power input.

But the shields have more energy available to them to begin with, so it takes more energy to harm them, more energy to lower their shields per percentage, and more energy is available to recharge them, so they can be recharged quicker. More energy == better shields. Whether shields charge better up or down is irrelevant to the point.

[Major Diarrhia]

There you go. My point is that any command with a bit of sense knows that bringing back the ship is better than getting it blown up pointlessly.

If they think they have even the slightest chance though, they will take it. But you're right, they aren't as bad as I was thinking.

Or the distinct possibility that Picard was talking specifically about that ships lasers or that he was simply talking out of his ass.

When he said it he had a look of seriousness and slight confusion as to why they would even bother fighting, so I doubt he was just saying stuff, especialy since he orders main shields dropped.

Why are they better and why does this overcome their downsides?

Don't know. Dito. I know of the disadvantages of particle weapons as well. It is simply that the use of lasers by an advanced race in Star Trek as a normal offensive weapon is utterly inconsistent with everything we have ever seen. Everyone uses particle weapons or something more unusual.

But the shields have more energy available to them to begin with, so it takes more energy to harm them, more energy to lower their shields per percentage, and more energy is available to recharge them, so they can be recharged quicker. More energy == better shields. Whether shields charge better up or down is irrelevant to the point.

That's all assuming that shield strength has to do with available power. When the Equinox's captain ordered his shields down it was to give time for the shields to "realine". Now to me that certainly doesn't sound like "recharge". Plus we know that the problem with early shields was getting the fields of the emitters to aline with eachother to create a stable field and that with an improperly alined field it only blocked a certain percent of the time. I propose that shield strength has to do with how many emiters you can power and that as shields take damage the emitters loose alinement with each other, allowing more seepage. Also that they have a constant power draw.

{edit} Strike that, it doesn't fit with rerouting power to shields.

[Crazedwraith]

Or the distinct possibility that Picard was talking specifically about that ships lasers or that he was simply talking out of his ass.

When he said it he had a look of seriousness and slight confusion as to why they would even bother fighting, so I doubt he was just saying stuff, especialy since he orders main shields dropped.
.

Borg cutting beams are lasers, and thats just the most obvious trek examble of the E-D being in danger from lasers. When picard says thing like they wont get through our navigational shields he's usally refering to the crude lasers and low-tech barey superlight ships.

[Gil Hamilton]

If they think they have even the slightest chance though, they will take it. But you're right, they aren't as bad as I was thinking.

I don't think so. Warrior codes that involve fighting if at all possible don't tend to survive for any length of time, because they get butchered by people with more realistic battlefield tactics. This is why historically extreme warrior codes die out, like the Bushido did in World War 2. It's natural selection.

When he said it he had a look of seriousness and slight confusion as to why they would even bother fighting, so I doubt he was just saying stuff, especialy since he orders main shields dropped.

Yet his line was nonsensical and you know full well the "no laser" thing has been done to death.

Don't know. Dito. I know of the disadvantages of particle weapons as well. It is simply that the use of lasers by an advanced race in Star Trek as a normal offensive weapon is utterly inconsistent with everything we have ever seen. Everyone uses particle weapons or something more unusual.

Well, guess what? My advanced aliens use X-Ray lasers. Why? Because X-Ray lasers kick unholy amounts of ass. Does that satisfy you?

That's all assuming that shield strength has to do with available power. When the Equinox's captain ordered his shields down it was to give time for the shields to "realine". Now to me that certainly doesn't sound like "recharge". Plus we know that the problem with early shields was getting the fields of the emitters to aline with eachother to create a stable field and that with an improperly alined field it only blocked a certain percent of the time. I propose that shield strength has to do with how many emiters you can power and that as shields take damage the emitters loose alinement with each other, allowing more seepage. Also that they have a constant power draw.

{edit} Strike that, it doesn't fit with rerouting power to shields.

Yeah, I was going to mention the constant putting all available power to the shield too. It wouldn't make sense for them to do so if available power had no bearing on shield strength or refreshing.

[Murazor]

Perhaps the powerplant is a point zero power source? I have little knowledge about the physical theory, but everything I have heard about it suggests that it is way more powerful than antimatter generation.

[Sarevok]

Zero point energy sources are not more powerful matter-antimatter based power sources.

[Gil Hamilton]

Perhaps the powerplant is a point zero power source? I have little knowledge about the physical theory, but everything I have heard about it suggests that it is way more powerful than antimatter generation.

Despite the hype, that sort of powerplant wouldn't be very productive. Besides, if I did write it, I'd prefer to describe it as the "<name of the alien> powerplant" or the "new Klingon powerplant". The key there is that if you've got a far out piece of tech, you never want to say anything except for what it does, don't try to describe how it works until you get forced into a corner. That way, no one can object to it.

[Setzer]

Here's an idea: How about, in this story's canon, X-ray lasers were adopted by all early spacefaring powers, then scrapped when power generation technologies couldn't keep up with firepower levels.

Or they were used in experimental tests, but abandoned as unworkable.
Sort of how in the fanfic "The Big One," the Germans had abandoned atomic weaponry as an unworkable concept.

The fact that this race could use X-ray lasers as viable weapons can be considered evidence of how advanced they were.

[Xon]

If they think they have even the slightest chance though, they will take it. But you're right, they aren't as bad as I was thinking.

I don't think so. Warrior codes that involve fighting if at all possible don't tend to survive for any length of time, because they get butchered by people with more realistic battlefield tactics. This is why historically extreme warrior codes die out, like the Bushido did in World War 2. It's natural selection.

Given the luddi Klingons have only been in power for ~50-60 years, that really isnt very long, and most of the while was when they were at peace.

So they wouldnt have run into anyone large enought to truely gore them enough to cause the Warrior Klingons to kill them selves off. That event was the Dominion War, with the horrifically suicidal tactics the Klingons used. It practically destroyed their space fleets, and has left the high command in tatters.

So it would actually work is the Klingons had an extreme Warrior code which should have caused itself to be kiled off. Which is what we started to see by the end of the Dominion war, but simply due to its large size the Warrior Klingons it has been taking some time.

[Gil Hamilton]

Given the luddi Klingons have only been in power for ~50-60 years, that really isnt very long, and most of the while was when they were at peace.

So they wouldnt have run into anyone large enought to truely gore them enough to cause the Warrior Klingons to kill them selves off. That event was the Dominion War, with the horrifically suicidal tactics the Klingons used. It practically destroyed their space fleets, and has left the high command in tatters.

So it would actually work is the Klingons had an extreme Warrior code which should have caused itself to be kiled off. Which is what we started to see by the end of the Dominion war, but simply due to its large size the Warrior Klingons it has been taking some time.

This is a good thought and would fit with my fundamentalist fuedal warrior government idea as what the Klingon government we saw in TNG+. My major beef is that any space faring people should know better, but that's just me, I guess.

It would be interesting to explore further the social ramifications of the Dominion War on the Klingon Empire. After all, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that it could have had the same sort of effect on the Klingons that four wars and two incidents with humans had on the Kzinti in Larry Niven's Known Space stories. So many of their warriors were killed in the conflict that their society changed and became more docile, simply because their weren't enough warriors left to keep them as militaristic, so the ones that were less warrior and more docile became the norm. While I don't think that precisely the same thing would happen to the Klingons, as I don't think all that many of them were killed off during the war compared to their overall population, enough of their warriors could die off to effect a major change in their social structure, like the return of the nationalist movement I speculated about existing.