...On Transporters....

[MikeKozlowski]

...Here's the thing: I am kind of among the school that considers the transporter something of a deus ex machina. I absolutely understand and accept the reasons the original writers came up with it, and as it's canon it's going to be there.

However.

In the Mikeyverse:

*NOBODY likes the damned things.
*They are used more for urgent convenience/emergency and speed than routine transport.

Please discuss.

Mike

[Nathan45]

Always figured it killed you at point a and made a copy with your memories a point b.

[Johnnie Lyle]

...Here's the thing: I am kind of among the school that considers the transporter something of a deus ex machina. I absolutely understand and accept the reasons the original writers came up with it, and as it's canon it's going to be there.

However.

In the Mikeyverse:

*NOBODY likes the damned things.
*They are used more for urgent convenience/emergency and speed than routine transport.

Please discuss.

Mike

Not liking the things is % reasonable. It’s like the difference between being in the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat, or driving and flying - but you’re vastly more dependent upon everything working right to get to your destination safely, and there are probably enough transporter accidents (poor Commander Xon) to keep people unsettled well into 2401, and then you really have people freaking out. PICARD didn’t address that, but having the transporters sabotaged to rewrite your DNA to be assimilated by the Borg is going to have massive repercussions.

Then there’s the shields issue. Transporters generally don’t work when the shields are up, but shuttles still do. That alone gives shuttles a lot more flexibility.

The transporter is also almost certainly line-of-sight, which makes using it for routine transport between planetside places difficult without relays, and is similarly limited by where a ship is in its orbit. Relays are going to be enormously expensive, add more to the risk, and only going to be present on highly developed worlds.

Shuttles may also be stealthier and less risky in a tactical situation. That moment of materialization is extremely vulnerable.

Finally the damn things require a lot of power and computer use. That alone makes shuttle use a lot more frequent, since it saves power.

[Rafferty]

I did find the planetside transporters interesting in Picard, one of it's few good ideas. That would make travel around the planet quick and easy. If there ever is follow-on from Picard (let's hope not), there should be some fallout from the transporters/Borg issue. If anything, that should make transporters relegated to cargo only for a long time.

[Johnnie Lyle]

I did find the planetside transporters interesting in Picard, one of it's few good ideas. That would make travel around the planet quick and easy. If there ever is follow-on from Picard (let's hope not), there should be some fallout from the transporters/Borg issue. If anything, that should make transporters relegated to cargo only for a long time.

What annoyed me most about Picard is that it has laid out some great premises and not followed through.

I very much want something like Legacy to follow up on them. Both the fallout from the very WWI-esque Dominion War to the subversion of the fleet and all that comes with it. There are going to be something like tens of thousands of psychological casualties, huge gaps in the ranks of division and department head officers, to say nothing of captains and flag officers, and massive amounts of distrust and resentment - stuff that would make Shaw’s Quint speech look like a love poem. And that’s just the events of Season 3. The 2380s and 2390s should have even more fallout after a galaxy-wide war that killed millions of people.

But Star Trek, TNG and VOY in particular, do a terrible job of following up on the negative aspects. It would make for some phenomenal storytelling if they didn’t keep screwing the pooch and being all hunky-dory for syndication.

[Poohbah]

Psychological screening for transporter operators must be pretty intense.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Psychological screening for transporter operators must be pretty intense.

Should, but may not be. Lots of Star Fleet people still crack.

[Craiglxviii]

...Here's the thing: I am kind of among the school that considers the transporter something of a deus ex machina. I absolutely understand and accept the reasons the original writers came up with it, and as it's canon it's going to be there.

However.

In the Mikeyverse:

*NOBODY likes the damned things.
*They are used more for urgent convenience/emergency and speed than routine transport.

Please discuss.

Mike

To add…

Transporter bombs.
Transporter artillery for marine ground operations.



I’m pretty close with you on this; I liked ST: ENT’s use of shuttles for the practicality argument, but if we’re talking tactical usage, let’s go straight to SFB for a second.

One transporter operation can move one crew unit per turn using one unit of power. A Constitution has 3 transporters thus can move 3 crew units in one turn using 3 units of power.

In real terms, that’s 3 Marine landing parties of 6 rifles, beaming aboard and using 8% of total ship’s power to do so. Clearly there are valid tactical reasons for wanting to do this.

However. The same ship carries 4 size-1 shuttles, each capable of landing the same-sized boarding party AND deploying a point-defence phaser AND distracting enemy fire, and not requiring active own-ship scanners and sensors and a valid target lock in order to do so. Significantly greater tactical flexibility especially as they can hide in nearby terrain/ in planetary shadow of the target.

[Johnnie Lyle]

...Here's the thing: I am kind of among the school that considers the transporter something of a deus ex machina. I absolutely understand and accept the reasons the original writers came up with it, and as it's canon it's going to be there.

However.

In the Mikeyverse:

*NOBODY likes the damned things.
*They are used more for urgent convenience/emergency and speed than routine transport.

Please discuss.

Mike

To add…

Transporter bombs.
Transporter artillery for marine ground operations.



I’m pretty close with you on this; I liked ST: ENT’s use of shuttles for the practicality argument, but if we’re talking tactical usage, let’s go straight to SFB for a second.

One transporter operation can move one crew unit per turn using one unit of power. A Constitution has 3 transporters thus can move 3 crew units in one turn using 3 units of power.

In real terms, that’s 3 Marine landing parties of 6 rifles, beaming aboard and using 8% of total ship’s power to do so. Clearly there are valid tactical reasons for wanting to do this.

However. The same ship carries 4 size-1 shuttles, each capable of landing the same-sized boarding party AND deploying a point-defence phaser AND distracting enemy fire, and not requiring active own-ship scanners and sensors and a valid target lock in order to do so. Significantly greater tactical flexibility especially as they can hide in nearby terrain/ in planetary shadow of the target.

Add to that the range and LOS limitations. A starship may not be able to maintain an orbit within transporter range and LOS of a landing party. Especially if it’s a situation where they must contend with enemy starship(s), which renders the transporters unusable until you have space supremacy.

[Craiglxviii]

...Here's the thing: I am kind of among the school that considers the transporter something of a deus ex machina. I absolutely understand and accept the reasons the original writers came up with it, and as it's canon it's going to be there.

However.

In the Mikeyverse:

*NOBODY likes the damned things.
*They are used more for urgent convenience/emergency and speed than routine transport.

Please discuss.

Mike

To add…

Transporter bombs.
Transporter artillery for marine ground operations.



I’m pretty close with you on this; I liked ST: ENT’s use of shuttles for the practicality argument, but if we’re talking tactical usage, let’s go straight to SFB for a second.

One transporter operation can move one crew unit per turn using one unit of power. A Constitution has 3 transporters thus can move 3 crew units in one turn using 3 units of power.

In real terms, that’s 3 Marine landing parties of 6 rifles, beaming aboard and using 8% of total ship’s power to do so. Clearly there are valid tactical reasons for wanting to do this.

However. The same ship carries 4 size-1 shuttles, each capable of landing the same-sized boarding party AND deploying a point-defence phaser AND distracting enemy fire, and not requiring active own-ship scanners and sensors and a valid target lock in order to do so. Significantly greater tactical flexibility especially as they can hide in nearby terrain/ in planetary shadow of the target.

Add to that the range and LOS limitations. A starship may not be able to maintain an orbit within transporter range and LOS of a landing party. Especially if it’s a situation where they must contend with enemy starship(s), which renders the transporters unusable until you have space supremacy.

Right. Just that. I seem to recall (in-game as The Mikeyverse is partly based on SFB) that transporters had a 100,000km range. They also needed fully operable scanners (fire control) and a target lock. Scanners could be damaged through enemy fire (or indeed boarding hit-and-run raids, Klingon ships had extra transporters for this very reason). Said target lock could be defeated by valid ECM; in-game that could be supplied by an enemy ship, shuttle, drone or astro-navigation hazard (pulsar, gravitational waves) or terrain masking (as you say, LOS).

[James1978]

TNG/DS9 => Picard wrinkle re. transporters. Regular/standard transporters have pretty clear range limitations, but from DS9 we've seen that at least some Dominion transporters are significantly more capable range wise, and presumably Section 31 ones as well.

[Craiglxviii]

TNG/DS9 => Picard wrinkle re. transporters. Regular/standard transporters have pretty clear range limitations, but from DS9 we've seen that at least some Dominion transporters are significantly more capable range wise, and presumably Section 31 ones as well.

The Abramsverse Scotty reads this and laughs