Bad aim?

[stitch626]

Somewhere is was stated that the standard "full impulse" was .25c, though max impulse would be whatever the ship could do.

BTW, I never knew that someone had claimed perfect accuracy, which is wrong of course. I just kept seeing several references on this forum to Starfleets "terrable accuracy" which is why I asked the question. Thank you for clering it up. If anyone want's to see expert manual targeting, watvh Dragon's Teeth. Tuvok uses manual targeting to take out several Vaadwar ships.

Also, perhaps the enormous size of the ships makes them look slower. Also, many times, the camera is moving.

[Duskofdead]

The short answer is that visuals trump dialogue under suspension of disbelief, since it's far more likely that a character made a mistake than the visuals are "wrong". In the case of the YE discrepancy the best conclusion is probably that Picard was anticipating future manoeuvers in the battle, and was laying down a limit for those manoeuvers right at the start, rather than waiting till they were too far away and then telling Wesley to turn round and go back.

That seems arbitrary to me, though. You could just as easily say dialogue trumps visual effects in suspension of disbelief, since most of what we see in visual effects aren't possible to begin with (that we know of.) Inconsistencies between dialogue and visual effects, and even inconsistencies WITHIN visual effects (due to improving effects throughout the course of Trek, and inconsistent sizing, etc.-- even the Ent-D firing phasers from its deflector dish out of nowhere!) have been common. I have always treated visual effects as an "approximation" or "cinematic sequence" if you will, of what is "going on", and it's pretty clearly kept only to the standard that a casual viewer would be able to understand what is going on. Continuity to the level of "hey, last time someone targetted their weapons array they were firing at a totally different spot!" or "hey, last time the Defiant was bigger next to the station!" has never been consistently observed, so treating visual effects as the predominant canon requires us to resolve hundreds of unresolveable contradictions.

[Duskofdead]

Somewhere is was stated that the standard "full impulse" was .25c, though max impulse would be whatever the ship could do.

BTW, I never knew that someone had claimed perfect accuracy, which is wrong of course. I just kept seeing several references on this forum to Starfleets "terrable accuracy" which is why I asked the question. Thank you for clering it up. If anyone want's to see expert manual targeting, watvh Dragon's Teeth. Tuvok uses manual targeting to take out several Vaadwar ships.

Also, perhaps the enormous size of the ships makes them look slower. Also, many times, the camera is moving.

The tech manual and TNG Encyclopedia says 0.5c, but I agree the number hasn't been 100% consistent over time.

And yes I know what you mean.... the accuracy, given the speeds involved, is rather remarkable. And when there has been significant missing--- DS9 mass firing its various weapons comes to mind-- it has appeared to be a budget issue (only the budget to show a few ships taking shots and models exploding on screen, and most weapons flying wild and not hitting any visible target) rather than anything else.

Worth pointing out too that the Vadwaar ships were 900 years old, and probably not in top condition.

[Captain Seafort]

Somewhere is was stated that the standard "full impulse" was .25c, though max impulse would be whatever the ship could do.

That's from the non-canon TNG technical manual.

Also, perhaps the enormous size of the ships makes them look slower. Also, many times, the camera is moving.

They look like they're crawling along, but they're usually going at several hundred metres/second minimum - several thousand miles per hour. The fact that they able to cross solar systems in hours (the E-nil in TMP, the E-D and the cube in BoBW) indicates that they're capable of decent acceleration, they just don't use them it battle for some reason.

[Duskofdead]

They look like they're crawling along, but they're usually going at several hundred metres/second minimum - several thousand miles per hour. The fact that they able to cross solar systems in hours (the E-nil in TMP, the E-D and the cube in BoBW) indicates that they're capable of decent acceleration, they just don't use them it battle for some reason.

Perhaps because at speeds that fast weapon firing is almost impractical?

[Captain Seafort]

Perhaps because at speeds that fast weapon firing is almost impractical?

Indeed - the problem is with targeting most likely, and since they consistently demonstrated the ability to fire weapons while at warp, the problem seems to be one of relative speed.

On the wider issue of visuals vs dialogue, there will always be some inconsistencies, but unless there's a contradiction in a specific scene (which I can't recall WRT speed - they've never pinned down what "full impulse" actually means), then we assume everything's correct. If inconsistencies exist, then we try and reconcile both (as with the YE scene), and if they're utterly irreconcileable, that's when I go to pure visuals. After all, if you were watching documentary footage of say, the Battle of Jutland, you wouldn't say there were SFX errors if it disagreed with something someone said. Under suspention of disbelief that's how visuals must be treated.

[Duskofdead]

Perhaps because at speeds that fast weapon firing is almost impractical?

Indeed - the problem is with targeting most likely, and since they consistently demonstrated the ability to fire weapons while at warp, the problem seems to be one of relative speed.

On the wider issue of visuals vs dialogue, there will always be some inconsistencies, but unless there's a contradiction in a specific scene (which I can't recall WRT speed - they've never pinned down what "full impulse" actually means), then we assume everything's correct. If inconsistencies exist, then we try and reconcile both (as with the YE scene), and if they're utterly irreconcileable, that's when I go to pure visuals. After all, if you were watching documentary footage of say, the Battle of Jutland, you wouldn't say there were SFX errors if it disagreed with something someone said. Under suspention of disbelief that's how visuals must be treated.

Seems generally reasonable; I just think to call visuals the paramount canon overall has to be tempered with room for interpreting inconsistencies. The Enterprise-D firing all of its phasers out of the deflector dish, for instance, in the episode with the Tamarians.

[Captain Seafort]

Seems generally reasonable; I just think to call visuals the paramount canon overall has to be tempered with room for interpreting inconsistencies. The Enterprise-D firing all of its phasers out of the deflector dish, for instance, in the episode with the Tamarians.

It wasn't the deflector dish - it was the forward torpedo launcher. I think Graham's rationalisation involves a phaser-armed probe firing from within the tube, since the probe/torpedo launcher in the Defiant's nose has been depicted as firing phasers and a tractor beam. Alternatively the GCS may have a (rearely used) phaser array surrounding the torpedo launcher, just as some of DS9's launchers do.

[Duskofdead]

Seems generally reasonable; I just think to call visuals the paramount canon overall has to be tempered with room for interpreting inconsistencies. The Enterprise-D firing all of its phasers out of the deflector dish, for instance, in the episode with the Tamarians.

It wasn't the deflector dish - it was the forward torpedo launcher. I think Graham's rationalisation involves a phaser-armed probe firing from within the tube, since the probe/torpedo launcher in the Defiant's nose has been depicted as firing phasers and a tractor beam. Alternatively the GCS may have a (rearely used) phaser array surrounding the torpedo launcher, just as some of DS9's launchers do.

And that all seems very extreme and bending over backwards to explain in-universe what was clearly an effects inconsistency. I guess I don't have a major problem smoothing over flukes like that and keeping suspension of disbelief; I guess I just "pretend" they came from the phaser arrays.

[Mikey]

Seems generally reasonable; I just think to call visuals the paramount canon overall has to be tempered with room for interpreting inconsistencies. The Enterprise-D firing all of its phasers out of the deflector dish, for instance, in the episode with the Tamarians.

It wasn't the deflector dish - it was the forward torpedo launcher. I think Graham's rationalisation involves a phaser-armed probe firing from within the tube, since the probe/torpedo launcher in the Defiant's nose has been depicted as firing phasers and a tractor beam. Alternatively the GCS may have a (rearely used) phaser array surrounding the torpedo launcher, just as some of DS9's launchers do.

And that all seems very extreme and bending over backwards to explain in-universe what was clearly an effects inconsistency. I guess I don't have a major problem smoothing over flukes like that and keeping suspension of disbelief; I guess I just "pretend" they came from the phaser arrays.

Of course you're right when you mention a writer's gaffe or SFX error; it's just that you can't use those explanations when discussing a phenomenon from an in-universe standpoint.

[Teaos]

I would assume that the faster you go the harder time you have aiming. And if they are both going fast, in relation to each other they may appear to be going rather slow.

[Mikey]

I would assume that the faster you go the harder time you have aiming. And if they are both going fast, in relation to each other they may appear to be going rather slow.

Only if they're both going fast in the same direction. At directions with any degree of approach, relative speed will increase.

[Teaos]

True but a lot of battles are chase battles. So although they appear to be not moving much they may be moving very fast.

[Mikey]

In that case, it should lead to both less misses and more dogfight-style evasive actions.

[Sionnach Glic]

True but a lot of battles are chase battles. So although they appear to be not moving much they may be moving very fast.

Logicaly, that should make it easier to hit.
For example, say you're in a car going at 60 MPH. Another car passes to your left going at 62 MPH. If you were to take out a gun, it would be trivialy easy to hit that car.
The same with Trek. Even if one ship is going at .9C, if the other one is going at the same speed, or similar, then it should be trivialy easy to shoot it down.