Romulan War

[Tricky]

First of Two, I was pointing out how ENT season 5 could have done the Romulan war: they would have to keep the Romulan's appearence a secret, and no one could ever knowingly see a Romulan. And if they wanted to preserve the comments about Sub-space comm only, no visual, I guess they could've played up the Romulan's xeno-phobia a bit.

[Sea Tyger]

I think the Babel One arc was a likely precursor to "preserving" Romulan anonymity during the Earth-Romulan war. It's likely they would have shown the Romulans to use a number of drone ships, to prevent discovery. What crewed ships they used probably self-destructed to prevent the allies from gleaning any useful information from the debris.

[tonyg]

A Romulan War stroy arc is certainly "doable". As long as the GM has worked out how closely he wants to stick t TOS continuity (not that there is much of it). Some of the diferences in technology could simply be attributed to the Enterprise being a cutting edge design and that the demands of the war forced the Earth forces into producing some less capable ships. Since the war was a Earth-Romulan one, the Earth forces would need to ramp up production ASAP just to have enough ships to fight a war. Perhaps something along the lines of the Liberty ships of WWII. Cheap, fast produced ships to fill the immediate need. Tossing on some old nukes that were relics of the past might be a faster way to arm a number of ships, as Earth probably couldn't produce photonic weapons fast enough to arm a fleet.

IMO the big obstacles would be the transporter and the sensors. The transporter just makes it too easy for an Earth ship to board a Romulan ship or maybe beam off a prisoner. Sensors just make it too easy for someone to eventuall pick up some "Vulcan" lifesigns crewing Romulan ships.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to have something about Romulan technology interfere with those systems aboard Earth ships. Some sort of distrotion either due to Romulan steath technology and or maybe from the Romulan propulsion systems.

The "no warp drive" issue is another bit of a problem with TOS continuity.

One possible solution would be that the Romulan's singularity drives didn't scan as warp drives since they were too different from what the Earth ships used.

Another possible solution could be that, as warp drives were expensive and rare, perhaps both sides built warp drive mother ships/sleds/tugships, and used them to transport sublight fighting ships. It would make a lot of sense. it would allow for much faster construction of ships, keep the needs for dilthium and antimatter low, make the ships more durable (no antimatter containment problems), make things easier for defensive action (just park the ships in orbit around the planets you want to defend), allow the battle to be fought while keeping the valuable warp caable ships out of harms way, and probably allow for the maximum number of ships to be at a battle (one ship tows several others).

Both solutions could be used. IF the vast majority of the enemy ships had no warp drive, and the handful that did used a different method of propulsion that expected, the myth could be preserved.

[TorItara]

It should be noted that at no time in TOS did they mention that Romulan ships weren't equipped with warp drive - the line in question indicated that the Bird of Prey was equipped solely with impulse power, not impulse drive. In fact, the episode in question gives some evidence to support the view that it was equipped with warp capability - namely, the corrolation of the Enterprise's speed (at 'maximum speed') with the distances between the outposts on the map.

The subsequent interpretation of the one line as meaning it's incapable of acheiving warp is, although common, nothing more than an assumption on the part of the fans - impulse power could simply mean the Romulan ship was powered by fusion reactors (which, as I recall, are used to power Federation impulse drives).

[Tobian]

Fusion reactors are more than adequate to produce the warp effect, but only for relatively low speeds, they simply can't match an antimatter annihilation engine in terms of energy output. So the best explanation to fit the facts is the Romulans could travel at warp drive, but just not very fast, maybe only warp 3 at most. In the enterprise Era warp 3 wasn't that slow, but the newer earth ships would have been orders of magnitude faster (at warp 5+). When the Romulans got Warp drive from the Klingons it was then likelly the whole M/ARA reactor core technology and massively faster drives!

[tonyg]

The whole speed issue is something of a joke anyway. Just checking the star chart in "Balance of Terror" along with the rate at which the romulan ship gets from one Federation outpost to the next strongly indicates a FTL proplusion system.

I think the whole signularity drive concept in TNG was created to account for the lack of a Matter\Antimatter reactor.

The Warp 5 capable ships in Enterprise, do clash with the the speeds given in TOS. The NX class spends more time moving at sustained speeds in exces of warp 4 than the Consitituion-class.

I was thinking that maybe the warp scale got readjusted as with TNG. Perhaps Enterprise era ships have a time dilation problem that reduces the effciency of thier warp drives. That would mesh with the "time barrier" line in "The Cage" and help to explain why the NX class can sustain speeds so close to it's max speed, while latter ships can't.

[Tobian]

Warp speeds altered between TOS and TNG, but in Enterprise they specifically stated, on screen their velocity which was accuratelly Warp 5 - and then promptly broke it LOL

In TOS warp speeds are the number cubed I.e. warp 1 is the speed of light, 2 is 8, 3 is 27 etc times the speed of light.

In TNG the warp scale is more complicated, but generally consistent where 10 is a maximum but from 9-10 the speeds increase exponentially (So you get lots of post TNG vessels doing 9.2 + )

And then there's Transwarp.. which is a whole big mess, and is best left under the carpet haha

[tonyg]

Yeah, I know the scale for WF.
But, there is nothing to state that older engines can't suffer from a "time dilation" effect that negates soem of thier speed.

Warp Speeds are messed up in Trek, anyways, especially in ENTERPRISE, where they "moved" Qonos any every other place so close to Earth.

[bpi_jonathan]

My theory is that the Romulans couldn't fire weapons at Warp Speeds. Also the NX-01 had some kind of missiles they were firing that were not photonic (anyone know what those were?). I know they were not nuclear either, but they would be that difficult to equip with nuclear warheads.

[TorItara]

The type of weapons you're referring to were the spatial torpedos, used primarly in seasons one and two, before Starfleet Command developed the photonic torpedos used in seasons three and four (though I recall a reference to 'spatial charges' in one season three episode, and it may potentially be related). I also don't recall them explictly mentioning it lacking a nuclear warheads, though I could be wrong.

Though this is admittedly stretching things for the sake of continuity, and may be a violation of scientific principles - I am not a physicist - it may very well be that spatial torpedos use nuclear fusion to create the explosion. Since, as I recall, fusion reactions are traditionally portrayed in sci-fi as being 'safer' than fission reactions, it may be that the spatial torpedos are indeed safe to carry and use onboard a starship.

[Gaunt_Man]

ENT had plenty of continuity problems, but it's biggest problem was that the first two seasons were incredibly boring. I stopped watching halfway through the second season, unfortunately, and missed the excellent third one.

I'm not the first one to say it, but one explanation is that it was the events of "Star Trek: First Contact" <I>(Edit: And/or the Temporal Cold War)</I> that was the cause of many of the discrepancies. This still doesn't explain the phaser- and photon-type weapons, however.

I agree with what Tobian (and others) said. It's quite possible that by the 4th season they started to sow the seeds of a big "Federation-Romulan war" arc, in size maybe similar to the Xindi arc. But the show got canceled, and we ended with the VERY weak finale "These are the Voyages..." instead. Too bad.[/QUOTE]

[tonyg]

THe forth season was certianly a step in the right direction. I got to see some of it, mostly after the fact. I had stopped watching the show part way through season 2 also. Basically, I needed a reason besides, "hot babe in tight bodysuit" to tune in each week. "Hot babe in tight bodysuit goes into heat" wasn't it.

Fourth season was a bit more careful with its Trek continutity. Stllproblems and yeah ST First contact screwed up stuff too, but most of the foruth season stuff were things that I could accept as possibly happening in the TREK history. Not like first season where the Klingon home world was suddenly close than Alpah Centuari.

[bpi_jonathan]

Not like first season where the Klingon home world was suddenly close than Alpah Centuari.

I enjoyed a lot of the episodes from Season 1, but I had trouble with this...suddenly everyone knew where the Klingon Homeworld was and suddenly at Warp 5 its only a couple days away.

[Ineti]

For what it's worth, there's going to be a trilogy of novels coming out soon that focus on the Romulan War.

News here.