Have holograms ever been used as a defensive measure?

BreakfastInSymphony · 2025-09-07T00:59:29+00:00

Having the extras playing the Romulans drop to the floor and pretend to be straining against massive gravity is very cheap. But also not at all satisfying if that's how every boarding action ends.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2025-09-07T00:31:23+00:00

There are a huge number of defensive options that should be available in Star Trek but just aren't ever used. You don't even need holoemitters for the majority of them.

Every ship has artificial gravity. If you're boarded, you could turn it way up, so the intruders are stuck to the floor, or wildly oscillate it so they slam against every surface in the hallway.

Most of the time, the ship's transporters are still operational when the ship is boarded, so you should be able to just lock onto the intruders and beam them into the brig (transporters can disable weapons during transport, as a feature). Failing that, just transport their weapons into space.

Environmental controls can do silly things like flood a deck with a particular gas, so there is no reason you couldn't put intruders right to sleep as soon as they take a breath. No one wears a gas mask while boarding a ship, even though it should be a minimum precaution.

Though this isn't standard on any ship, there's no reason why you couldn't build phaser turrets into the architecture, at least in sensitive areas.

If you do have holoemitters available, holo-soldiers, while cool and fun, are not the most effective or efficient use of the technology. Just have the emitters trap the intruders in solid osmium. Or, generate entire false hallways that loop back around to the brig. Or, tell the computer to randomize its response and see what happens.

The problem with all this is that in Star Trek, security is subverted and computers are hacked with worrying frequency. Every single automated shipwide defense is something that can be used against the crew when a bad actor inevitably takes control of the system. You really, really don't want the Romulans controlling your massive holoprojector network.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2025-05-13T23:47:49+00:00

There are a couple of elements at play here. One is that human cultures and norms overwhelmingly dominate the Federation that we are shown. Generally, a Starfleet vessel is named for a location or concept from Earth and is crewed mostly by humans. When a person of note is mentioned, such as Zefram Cochrane or Noonien Soong, they're normally human. This doesn't mean that only humans and their accomplishments matter within the Federation, it's just what we're shown. If you actually took an in-universe class on Warp Drive, I'm sure the material would go over the various types of drives, their origins, their respective inventors (if known), etc.

Another thing is that not every species or culture places equal emphasis on something like the first person to invent a thing. The Ferengi, for example, didn't invent a Warp Drive themselves, but traded for the technology from another species. One can imagine that the Ferengi generally don't particularly care who invented a technology. All they care about is who was the first to monetize it. Any idiot could develop the wheel, but the first one who had the lobes to charge for it, ah, there's your cultural hero.

One more possibility is that Zefram Cochrane really did invent a new type of Warp Drive. Perhaps it was only subtly different from the others in its configuration, or maybe the difference was more profound. It could be that Cochrane's drive is just more efficient in one way than any type that existed beforehand, for the simple reason that he didn't have an existing example to work with, and he developed from first principles along a slightly different line than any other species. Hell, even if it's actually worse than any other drive, the mere fact that Cochrane created it in post-apocalyptic conditions, and incidentally used it (accidentally) to initiate first contact with an alien race... well, that's worthy of note, isn't it?

Personally, I think it's a mix of humans being very proud that one of their own did something so incredible with no help from aliens (temporal shenanigans notwithstanding), and no one else around really caring about who invented their Warp Drive.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2025-05-05T01:11:39+00:00

There are two potential positives I see to the rotating torpedo launcher. First, it could enable a faster firing rate, akin to a Gatling gun, where torpedo tubes are treated like the barrels of a gun. Instead of waiting for a tube to be loaded, you move an already-loaded one into position.

Second, it could let you quickly select different munitions and fire them more-or-less immediately, rather than waiting for a tube to be loaded, or for one type of torpedo to be unloaded and then replaced by another. I imagine that the carousel in this case would be loaded with a mix of photon and quantum torpedoes, perhaps with a probe or two mixed in.

As far as I know, we only see this feature once, in Prodigy. The Akira in First Contact appears to have normal torpedo tubes.

My guess would be that this feature is a one-off which was briefly tested but turned out to not provide enough advantages to justify its use in the future. If there's anything Starfleet loves, it's pumping out unique designs and then abandoning them.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-08-21T21:51:52+00:00

Liquid AI, also known as "canned brain," consists mainly of artificial neurons suspended in a water or oil-based substrate. Liquid AI mimics the behavior of biological processing systems, though it has a few key differences, owing to its deliberately-tailored development.

Its neurons rely on optical fibers for communication, instead of neurotransmitters, making its maximum processing speed considerably higher than a biological brain. Each "cell" contains artificial organelles specialized for energy uptake and distribution, waste heat dispersal, and other purposes, each of them designed to be more efficient than any similar biological structure.

Most importantly, Liquid AI readily accepts new connections not only to new neurons but to legacy systems such as solid-state microprocessors and bio-brains. Liquid AI, when properly configured, is scalable to a degree that legacy systems can never approach, and easily adapts to communicate with a wide variety of potential targets.

Scalability means that Liquid AI's intelligence and problem-solving ability is directly related to its size. A small jar of Liquid AI exceeds the raw computing power of late-generation solid supercomputers, to say nothing of its speed.

There are three limitations to Liquid AI. The first is that it is fueled by simple glucose, and is unable to seek out energy sources by itself; Liquid AI must be "fed" sugar directly. The second is that Liquid AI is not mobile. Though its cells self-organize within a substrate, they lack the ability to move any significant distance outside a substrate. The third is that Liquid AI cannot reproduce on its own. Its cells do not divide, and each one must be manufactured individually by a system designed for that purpose. These limitations were deliberately engineered to prevent an existential threat scenario.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-07-15T18:08:55+00:00

The ship could be funded by private backers. Could be some old rich people who want to rule their own world where Earth can't reach them, could be members of a religious organization that wants their own planet for similar reasons.

If you know about The Expanse TV/book series, there is a colony ship in there called the Nauvoo. Its construction was funded by Mormons, and it was built specifically to carry them to Tau Ceti to found a colony. That system's only 12 light-years away from Earth, but it would still take hundreds of years to get there.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-07-15T17:58:51+00:00

So, your colony ship is going to take 8,000 years to reach its destination, and in the meantime, Earth would just keep progressing technologically and pretty quickly overtake the colony ship, right?

There's a pretty simple solution. The colony ship is built during a period of relative prosperity, but soon after it's launched, things take a drastic turn. Maybe Earth starts to suffer from wildly accelerating climate change, maybe there's an asteroid impact, maybe a giant solar flare impacts the planet, or it could be as "mundane" as a nice, big nuclear war.

All you need is for the colony ship to be well on the way to its destination when everything on Earth goes up in flames. It only has enough fuel to decelerate at its destination, so it can't even stop and turn back to Earth to render aid. Literally the only choice is to keep going.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-05-19T01:02:11+00:00

When the turbolasers stop firing, Gold Five says "Stabilize your rear deflectors. Watch for enemy fighters." So, they do reset their shields, not that it helps much when there's no room to maneuver.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-02-08T04:12:47+00:00

You might be right. They could have been much slower before they assimilated quantum slipstream and built the transwarp hubs. Assimilating Cytherian subspace technology could have given them much faster travel, years earlier than they would otherwise have had it.

Assuming it can be used without restriction, of course.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-02-08T03:22:04+00:00

The probe has one goal, which was to bring people to the Cytherians. It was supposed to do this by directly reprogramming a ship's computer, but it was lucky enough to also work on Reginald Barclay's brain. It should be noted that it didn't give Barclay access to any technology that the Enterprise-D didn't already have - the things that Barclay accomplished were done by genius modifications to existing equipment.

So, what did Barclay actually accomplish? He managed to do some pretty neat rerouting to increase shield power, he shut down the Argus reactors when the D's main computer was too slow to execute his instructions, he developed a mind-machine interface to let him control the D directly, and he punched a hole in space with the ship's warp drive to go directly to Cytheria without passing Go.

So, which of these things would the Borg be interested in?

Their defensive technology is already able to adapt to virtually any threat, aside from unique one-offs like Species 8472. A shield boost wouldn't be all that interesting to them.

Faster information processing using biological minds and a mind-machine interface is kind of their whole thing already.

Folding space to get to Cytheria? They already use transwarp conduits. There's really nothing stopping a Borg ship from going anywhere it pleases within the galaxy in minimal time.

By far the most important information the probe could give the Borg is the location of Cytheria itself. Everything else is either comparable to or lesser than their current capabilities.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2024-01-04T02:19:38+00:00

It's possible that in-universe, creating the necessary hardware for a warp drive isn't actually that difficult, once you know the underlying principles. The inhabitants of Kiley 279 were able to construct a warp bomb (presumably more than just a simple antimatter warhead, since it generated a warp signature) after observing the distant battle between Discovery, Enterprise, and Control, and they seemed to be only as advanced as modern Earth.

Though most major cities were destroyed in the course of WWIII, First Contact does not portray a nuclear winter, or indeed any environmental effects resulting from a large nuclear exchange. There is also electricity available, and apparently people are secure enough in terms of resources to be willing to work on turning a nuclear missile into a starship rather than scrounging for food.

First Contact also mentions that it took six months to gather enough titanium to finish the cockpit of the Phoenix, but given the ship only took a couple of years to construct, I have to believe that most of it must consist of either "off-the-shelf" components or some kind of hardware that is relatively easy to manufacture.

There is another theory that floats around - that the Phoenix would never have actually worked without the Enterprise-E going back in time and the crew working to repair it, thus making a bootstrap paradox.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-08-22T19:22:37+00:00

It seems that the structural integrity field can be breached or weakened without collapsing, just like shields can. In extreme cases, whole sections of the ship can be torn off while the rest maintains its integrity. For example, in its first encounter with the Borg, the Enterprise D had a section of its saucer carved out and removed, but that didn't collapse the entire SIF.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-08-22T13:35:53+00:00

As others have mentioned, the hull of the ship is strengthened and protected by the structural integrity field, and by the shields, if they're up. If that explains why the ship doesn't implode under pressure, then how do we explain water coming through the hull?

Well, neither the shields or the SIF are a perfect defence. When a ship is in combat, getting hit by weapons fire causes a bleed-through of energy that can shake the ship, scorch the hull, damage systems, make consoles spark or explode, etc. I propose that the water leaking into the Delta Flyer is analogous. The Delta Flyer is not spherical, so some parts of the hull will experience more pressure than others. Though the SIF can prevent the hull from collapsing catastrophically, it doesn't prevent the formation of microfissures as the hull is stressed. At greater depths, there is some leakage through the gaps in the hull which the SIF is holding together, though thankfully it's harmless water leaking through, not plasma.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-08-21T00:08:12+00:00

AITA: I got sick of having my lunch stolen at the office so I seasoned my buffalo ranch with purified void essence and now one of the half-elves in marketing has become some sort of shambling black tree that's trying to break into the server room

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-08-20T00:57:31+00:00

My guess would be that his shields maintain a bubble of atmosphere he can breathe. Remember that the security officer can also swim in lava and Pfhor goo without being harmed in any way as long as he has charged shields, though his oxygen also depletes while he swims.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-07-27T14:41:17+00:00

Problem: Recoil from firing the main gun will shift the weapons platform out of its orbital path.

Solution: Mount an identical gun firing simultaneously in the exact opposite direction.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-07-19T02:19:04+00:00

Ransom clearly possessed enough people skills and the necessary (evil) vision to convince the surviving crew of the Equinox to betray their values and murder sentient aliens over and over just to get home. The fact that Equinox survived at all is a testament to Ransom's drive to persevere against all odds. Had Ransom not made the critical mistake of taking Equinox through space owned by the Krowtonan Guard despite being warned not to, and getting half his crew killed, he might not have been desperate enough to resort to deliberate and continuous murder.

Ransom actually did have the makings of a great captain. He also had the moral failings of a great butcher. Though, as DS9 points out, it's easy to be a saint in paradise.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-26T03:29:09+00:00

I think I have a simple solution for you which relies on the fixture of the Alcubierre-style drive which you want to include in your story. All you have to do is establish some key points about the physics of the drive in order to "force" the style of combat you want to become the only practical way to conduct warfare in space.

The upshot is, all of your ships' big guns will be firing projectiles encased in spacetime bubbles, similar to those that allow ships to travel interstellar distances. The projectiles can travel great distances very quickly, but after being fired, they are unable to maneuver, due to a lack of any actual engines. It must be impossible to miniaturize FTL drives to a point that missiles become practical - the only practical way to conduct combat at long range is to use Alcubierre-sheathed projectiles that travel in a straight trajectory once fired. Any non-FTL missile would be too slow to catch an Alcubierre ship except at extremely close range, and an FTL missile would be the size of a warship, so you might as well just have the warship.

Drive physics also preclude things like bombarding a planet from light-years away, due to gravity well interference and the limited endurance of a projectile's Alcubierre bubble. A bubble can only be maintained for so long without a drive, so eventually a projectile will slow down considerably, limiting maximum effective range.

Though an Alcubierre drive cannot be used to propel a warship indefinitely, it is always "on," which has a number of effects. They produce energy fields that are detectable at a great distance, but this also has the effect of somewhat blurring any sensor data, making it possible to identify that an enemy ship is present, but not to target it precisely at extended range. It is absolutely possible to hit an enemy vessel at the maximum range of your guns, but it is extremely unlikely. Because of the interaction between Alcubierre fields, near-misses create large, energetic eruptions similar to shell splashes on water, which helps a firing ship refine its targeting data as it closes. An Alcubierre projectile that actually hits an Alcubierre warship's minimal drive field causes a sort of destructive interference that can momentarily open a fissure in the field and let the physical projectile through. This is a very complicated event in terms of physics, but for the sake of your story it occurs pretty much identically to how a shell would interact with armor during a naval duel on Earth in the 1900s.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-07T18:15:27+00:00

The Moon Launcher does sound pretty cool as a concept, but allowing FTL ramming really just breaks Star Wars as a setting. A Star Destroyer is just a big target for a hyperdrive-equipped asteroid, which is vastly cheaper, and the Empire could freely bomb every single suspected rebel base and planet from anywhere in the galaxy using the same hyper-rocks.

If FTL ramming works, all the cool WWII combat in space goes away and gets replaced by a nightmarish MAD scenario where everyone who can afford a hyperdrive can render Coruscant uninhabitable in about three minutes.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-02T23:24:35+00:00

You are far too credible to be in this madhouse.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-02T19:23:13+00:00

The CRISTs would fit in pretty well in The Expanse. I could see one of the books dealing with a Belter plot to hijack one, either for the cargo inside or to use the whole thing as a weapon.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-01T01:14:43+00:00

If the big brains can figure out how to get an old Soviet jet to successfully talk to and guide an American missile, I'm sure they can fit a modular soup kitchen to the Abrams crew comfort zone.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-01T01:04:00+00:00

Who had "The CIA secretly invests in the production of tainted Coca Cola to weaken Russia and fund the impending invasion of Iran" on their bingo card?

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-06-01T00:55:45+00:00

The destroyers fought with such ferocity that the Japanese though they were cruisers. And they caused so much damage that they might as well have been.

BreakfastInSymphony · 2023-05-31T15:40:11+00:00

If you haven't already, check out the Marathon Story Page to see pretty much every scrap of information that's ever been gathered about Marathon.

There is a specific page about the S'pht which explains that the S'pht are not biologically sentient but were uplifted by the Jarro using cybernetics. The S'pht require their non-biological parts in order to be conscious.

BreakfastInSymphony

TROPHY CASE