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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
 Posted - 11/22/2005 : 6:21:15 PM
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Ya know....if, in space no one can hear you scream...and i beg to differ...
What about trapped on a boat/ship, waaaay out thar, in the middle of the ocean?
Wow. Talk about a "Captive audience".
See, what i mean is, the movies that take place at sea, are obviously the inspiration for much of what takes place in space.
Conciter the problims.
1 : Keep air in/ Water out.
2 : Find food & water ( Not a lot of fish in space.)
3 : Avoid being shoved out airlock/over railing ( Railing kills!).
4 : Avoid lethal aliens/terrorist/cabin boys ( Whdda ya mean, no tip!! )
Sooooo...and this is inspired by the...captain's log that ABC floated past us last sunday...What other Ocean/Space tropes do come to mind, and how do the differances in the said environments plays out, plot wise?
So, tred water, keep the suit tight, and head towards the light, and i'll see you on the surface.
"Cole, stop handing Dr. Doom the Keys to the Baxter building." Brent Sienna/PvP.
"One Weekend a month my ass!" Crow- The Beginning of the End.
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Edited by - Flangepart on 11/22/2005 6:23:28 PM
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GalahadPC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
380 Posts |
Posted - 11/22/2005 : 11:51:36 PM
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In submarine movies, part of being stealthy is everybody speaking in whispers to make it tougher for enemy sonar to catch you. For some reason, this is one that pops up in space movies now and again, Wing Commander being the most serious offender I can think of right off. Sound in space won't get past the hull for all practical purposes, and any device precise enough to detect sound vibrations in your hull would also be able to the display the distinctive profile of a hull as well, so what's the point, right?
Oh, and there are those settings that insist on having space "torpedoes," but not "missiles" or "rockets." |
Edited by - GalahadPC on 11/22/2005 11:54:28 PM |
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nshumate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
464 Posts |
Posted - 11/23/2005 : 07:14:22 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by GalahadPC
In submarine movies, part of being stealthy is everybody speaking in whispers to make it tougher for enemy sonar to catch you. For some reason, this is one that pops up in space movies now and again, Wing Commander being the most serious offender I can think of right off.
And that one Star Trek episode, playing cat-and-mouse with the Romulan Bird of Prey.
Nathan Shumate
http://www.coldfusionvideo.com |
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KurtVon
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
387 Posts |
Posted - 11/23/2005 : 10:28:13 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by nshumate
And that one Star Trek episode, playing cat-and-mouse with the Romulan Bird of Prey.
Ah, but that almost makes sense. Keep the energy use down and your ship radiates less heat/electromagnetic waves, making it harder to detect the ship against the background of space.
I say almost because you'd have to restrict enery usage pretty hard to keep the hull at 2-5 kelvin. I suppose ships could keep a lump of incredibly dense supercooled material which, when they need to "go silent" they start pumping their heat into.
Could actually make an interesting story -- the material is getting hotter, its container slowly breaking down. Harkens back to the submarine movies. Even if people don't need to keep their voices down they need to shut off more and more unneeded equipment to reduce heat production, the inside of the ship slowly approaching lethal...
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 11/23/2005 : 1:47:31 PM
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| Well, Star Trek II was obviously based around submarine battles, especially in the nebula. Why is it that these two ship lumbering around each other are more convincing than the battles in Star Wars? Or is it just me? |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 11/23/2005 : 3:44:26 PM
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Oh, please, don't get me started...
KurtVon is right, its ship produced energy that get the 'ol sensors going. In SFB ( Star Fleet Battles ), a ship that drops its warp pods can become invisable to another ship....reduced to sub-light speed, but invisable, almost. You have to roll to retain a sensor lock.
As for sound...yell all ya want!
The thing that realy frosts my Polmeek soup, is how they screwed with the range factor.
In Trek/tos. Kirk's ship was fighting at ranges of 40.000 miles per segment, like in SFB, the hexes are about that per side.
Next gen reduced that to spitting distance!
I think...the producers and other "suits" thought the old ways were to, "Abstract", for the "Modern" audience. Hah!
What...is it too much to ask, for to see a cut away to each ship as it fires, and gets hit?
A phaser shot comming in form the distance, the deep black, hits a ship, and they send off, say, a disruptor shot in return.
Cut to : The target getting missed, or hit.
Am i asking too much here?
In SFB, Photons and phasers are, like the TOS that inspired it, ESTABLISHED as trans light wepons! All they had to do, was say they imput a warp field around a phaser beam, to get it there at trans warp speeds....but, Nooooo!....
( Sigh )...Lazy film makeing...thats all it is...Lazy!...
"Cole, stop handing Dr. Doom the Keys to the Baxter building." Brent Sienna/PvP.
"One Weekend a month my ass!" Crow- The Beginning of the End.
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 5:04:38 PM
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Kurt Von is right. Building a stealthy spaceship is incredibly difficult, because using energy causes your ship to radiate heat. Still, doing it right (emissions control, heat pumps, dumping heat while shielded by an asteroid or planet) would make for a fascinating bit of fiction...
Still, it's probably fair to point out that the "Balance of Terror" episode of "Star Trek" is pretty much the film "The Enemy Below."
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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GalahadPC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
380 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2005 : 1:15:33 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by BradH812
Well, Star Trek II was obviously based around submarine battles, especially in the nebula. Why is it that these two ship lumbering around each other are more convincing than the battles in Star Wars? Or is it just me?
I appreciate that in Wrath of Khan we see ships being crippled in only two or three hits (sans shields, of course). The battles in that movie managed to combine a semblance of modern naval warfare with eye-candy, whereas the old Trek had plenty of the former and the new Trek focused on the latter.
The space battles in the first Star Wars trilogy were nicely done I thought. Well, except for the Imperial pilots who, like their ground-pounding brethren, were barely able to hit a damn thing. Not even a fairly big and chunky target like the Millenium Falcon.
The new trilogy was a bit of a joke, though. I finally saw ROTS a couple weekends back, and really tried not to laugh at the sight of two full-sized cruisiers patiently lining themselves up to broadside each other and troopers actually manning guns sticking out of portholes like in some pirate movie.
Flangpart's issue with range factors reminded me of one of my favorite parts from Ender's Game, especially in light of the dogfight-style ship battles given to us by DS9 and Voyager. Ender's reviewing records of the Second Invasion, and thinks to himself that real space battles look pretty boring from the outside. The ships are all just specks drifting about in the darkness, and occasionally one of them flares up and winks out when it gets hit. |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2005 : 5:38:39 PM
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Oh, yes!
The "Naval Broadsides" of SITH....yee, hee hee hee! And did you notice the "Spent shell caseing" being ejected? I'm sorry, i thought energy could be piped in like water, and focused by the cannon into a pulse shot...silly me...
I can see it with David Drake's "Power guns"...he spends time explaining how it works, and why. But George Lucas is NO David Drake!
GalahadPC : Your quote of Ender's game fits what i said about Trek Classic. When the Enterprise got hit, we saw it from her POV. BTW, they also allowed for what SFB calls the "Leaky shields" rule, where part of a hit gets through to do internal damage, while most is absorbed by what shield is hit.
I can buy that, as real hits don't always get max penitration on real aromr, depending on armor integrity, and angle of impact of the incomming round.
"Cole, stop handing Dr. Doom the Keys to the Baxter building." Brent Sienna/PvP.
"One Weekend a month my ass!" Crow- The Beginning of the End.
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GalahadPC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
380 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2005 : 6:43:18 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Flangepart
And did you notice the "Spent shell caseing" being ejected? I'm sorry, i thought energy could be piped in like water, and focused by the cannon into a pulse shot...silly me...
Yeah, I caught that too. At first I considered that the expended "casings" were basically batteries that held the power required for a single shot each, because energy weapons on that scale might need massive power, and maybe individual batteries are safer than powering them directly, or something.
...Then I realized I probably was putting more thought into it than Lucas and chalked it up to a combination of pointless visual gimmickry and my ignorance of Star Wars science.
How about this for a fun ocean/space trope: ships that actually use hand-operated analog controls to navigate. This is one I haven't seen too often, but it's popped up here and there in the form of a futuristic rudder or wheel-style mechanism.
The one that really gets me though was in Star Trek: Insurrection, where Riker busts out the "manual flight column" or whatever the hell he called it - basically a Microsoft flightstick that he uses to steer the Enterprise through volatile gas pockets or some such. What little excitement value there might have been in the Enterprise running an intangible obstacle course was severely dinged by the idea of Riker using a little pipsqueak joystick far less sophisticated than the one I use to play MechWarrior 4 on my computer. |
Edited by - GalahadPC on 11/28/2005 6:45:05 PM |
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Ubiq
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
347 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2005 : 7:46:47 PM
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You know, a lot of people talk about how bad stormtroopers are at shooting in the original Star Wars series, but they never seem to consider that the bulk of this is based on a sequence in Star Wars where they were shooting at people that they wanted to get away.
quote:
Originally posted by GalahadPC
Yeah, I caught that too. At first I considered that the expended "casings" were basically batteries that held the power required for a single shot each, because energy weapons on that scale might need massive power, and maybe individual batteries are safer than powering them directly, or something.
It's a torpedo housing actually; it's basically a coilgun.
If you watch, the gun actually fires two shots; one is the main gun, a projectile weapon, and the other is an ion pulse, which disrupts the shields so that the torpedo penetrates a bit more before detonating.
As far as the sea-faring aspects that pop up in sci-fi, quite a few starships have vast amounts of empty space. Look at ST:TNG and it's crew quarters, which are ridiculously big.
BM: I should have mentioned this at the beginning. I solve my problems with violence. |
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GalahadPC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
380 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2005 : 8:07:58 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by UbiqIt's a torpedo housing actually; it's basically a coilgun.
If you watch, the gun actually fires two shots; one is the main gun, a projectile weapon, and the other is an ion pulse, which disrupts the shields so that the torpedo penetrates a bit more before detonating.
Ah, so my ignorance of Star Wars science does factor in somewhat. That's a pretty good explanation, actually. I'd still give Lucas a slap on the wrist for including extraneous material that would fly completely over the head of a layman like myself, though. Without somebody to explain it, I would have gone the rest of my life thinking he was trying to do some lame 16th-century sea battle re-creation.
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As far as the sea-faring aspects that pop up in sci-fi, quite a few starships have vast amounts of empty space. Look at ST:TNG and it's crew quarters, which are ridiculously big.
Federation ships certianly are luxurious, aren't they? And hey, isn't it awful nice of Starfleet to give officer's commissions to 98% of its personnel? (That's what it feels like, anyway. Can anybody ever remember a non-com on the series other than O'Brian?) |
Edited by - GalahadPC on 11/28/2005 8:10:30 PM |
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Ubiq
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
347 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2005 : 9:02:09 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by GalahadPC
Without somebody to explain it, I would have gone the rest of my life thinking he was trying to do some lame 16th-century sea battle re-creation.
Well, in a way it was. The Republic destroyer that siddled up alongside Grievous' ship was planning on boarding her, that's why they opened fire with their side guns while the Seperatists were attempting to fend it off.
Had they been attempting to destroy his ship, they would have used the larger, turret mounted guns that we see firing on other ships when Obi-Wan and Anakin fly through the battlefield. They're easy to miss though as the camera moves by them so quickly; I probably wouldn't have noticed them myself if I didn't have a clip from a TV show where some of the effects guys are being interviewed.
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Federation ships certianly are luxurious, aren't they?
They seem to put a very high value on comfort for their personnel, even to the point of putting families on board the Enterprise D.
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And hey, isn't it awful nice of Starfleet to give officer's commissions to 98% of its personnel?
Maybe they're afraid of hurting their crew's feelings if they don't promote everybody.
That or it's the only way that they can come up to prevent people from fragging their officers. Starfleet seems to have a pretty high turnover rate where the average enlisted man is concerned.
How many times have we seen an officer have an individual crewman just stand around on a hostile, uncharted world by himself? After a while, some of those redshirts are going to just start vaporizing their officers and having the ship beam them back aboard.
BM: I should have mentioned this at the beginning. I solve my problems with violence. |
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KreenWarrior
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
111 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2005 : 12:57:38 AM
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| For another Star Wars factoid, blasters don't fire pure energy, they actually fire energized gas. So there might well be some physical storage device. On the other hand, that's personal blasters, I don't remember how the ship ones work. |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2005 : 10:37:14 AM
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Oh, yeah! Tibanna gas, like "Mined" on Bespin...D'oh! The energised gas turns a laser bolt into a particle charge...just like a Phaser, actualy.
The joystick Riker uses...a hoot! Did they ever think, the only way that could be used, is a helmet that allows the pilot to tap the visual scanners, and look about from the Ships point of view? Talk about a VR helmet!
One of those would make flying games a lot more fun for me to play, as i could do instinctive head movements to see what the other planes in the sky were doing, with out haveing to punch a lot of buttons ( f7,f9 ect.) to change views.
And agine i say....STAR FLEET NEEDS MARINES! Hoorah!
"Cole, stop handing Dr. Doom the Keys to the Baxter building." Brent Sienna/PvP.
"One Weekend a month my ass!" Crow- The Beginning of the End.
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Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
229 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2005 : 10:53:45 AM
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| Anyone who wants to read the all time great "Afloat in a Boat With Those Who Cut Throat" BOOK should read Frank De Felita's Sea Trial, which I already mentioned in the thread on THE ENTITY. |
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