Granitehewers' Ballad

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, I wouldn't change much, exept that I'd make the various factions use their technology in an inteligent way.

[Granitehewer]

Thing is, i love the exploratory ideals of the federation but also have a dark thirst for it to be more militant, for example having the federation be the vulnerable victim to terrible atrocities by its callous rivals and thus hardening it from talc to granite, a pax federation like a pax romana, one federation, one peace....

[Teaos]

I like the Federation peaceful image. It buts the happness of their people first it strives for sceince and exploration. It tries its hardest to be a perfec culture while not lowering them selves to what other have to do. All the while they do a competent job of defending themselves only when they really have to.

Romulans are fine. They generally dont care unless they have something to gain.

I would fractionalise the Klingons more. Give each family more independence so we get more differences.

[Sionnach Glic]

It buts the happness of their people first it strives for sceince and exploration.

Yeah, its just a pity they don't strive for better safety features on their ships!

All the while they do a competent job of defending themselves only when they really have to.

a competent job

competent

You call what they're doing 'competant'?
The only reason they've survived so far in the TNG era, is because their enemies are even more incompetant than them.

As for the Romulans and the Klingons, I agree with you there.

[Granitehewer]

Its tempting to include the Gorn Hegemony, but since the cannon is insubstantial and the non-cannon is rather horrendous in parts, its a bit of a bugbear and for any critics, is like dangling a bloodied corpse to sharks.

[Mikey]

Yes, the Gorn are one of many unexplored gateways left to taunt us....

[Granitehewer]

Anyone got any ideas about reenvisaging the borg?

[Captain Seafort]

Anyone got any ideas about reenvisaging the borg?

Go back to the original "Q Who?" Borg. No turning other species into new Borg, no mumbo-jumbo about frquencies, no vampire tubes, and certainly no Queen. Just a collective conciousness based around each ship, rather than a centrallised collective, with the combined processing power of the individual Borg used in place of a central computer. Their modus operadi - travel in straight lines across the universe, with no "Borg space" being patrolled, instead being a nomadic species. If they see technology they can use, or resources they can consume, they take them. In short, don't make them another political enemy, but a force of nature, that doesn't see the Federation as an enemy any more than a plague of locusts would.

[Granitehewer]

good plan, i was going to have the cubes independently,scour the galaxy, seeming erratically, constantly migrating like a plague of locusts, feeding off and vacuuming up technologies, reducing the collective to each ship, rather than a dedicated territory, and each vessel almost being predatory or parasitic, like viruses swarming in a galactic host

[Mikey]

Good idea. I agree wholeheartedly with Seafort. The Borg should be as they were originally intended - more like a malicious force of nature, unable to be reasoned or bargained with, just an inexorable, fearsome, uncaring tide.

[Granitehewer]

voyager seemed to make the borg, too conventional, in terms of treaties and territories etc

[Granitehewer]

i was hoping to reinvented the cardassians and the cardassian union, although because of my bias- i.e. i loved them,its quite difficult to find faults, pick apart the tapestry and start again

[Captain Seafort]

voyager seemed to make the borg, too conventional, in terms of treaties and territories etc

It also weakened them considerably, by having them only able to gain new knowledge by assimilating biological lifeforms, one of their scouts outgunned by Voyager, and wrecked cubes turing up left right and centre. One does not maintain the "unstoppable force" concept of the Borg by having their ships destroyed on a regular basis.

[Mikey]

i was hoping to reinvented the cardassians and the cardassian union, although because of my bias- i.e. i loved them,its quite difficult to find faults, pick apart the tapestry and start again

The Cardies wouldn't be a major player, at first, but it would certainly be easy to write it as not being a failing of the Cardassians themselves. Remember what kind of shape - economically, politically, industrially, militarily - they'd be in after the war. And if you want to pump them up - it's your story, after all - remember that after WWI, it literally took a wheelbarrow full of deutschmarks to buy a loaf of bread in Germany, and their miltary tech was severely limited by treaty. However, I seem to recall Germany becoming a major player on the world stage not too long after that...

[Sionnach Glic]

And at least give the Borg drones weapons!