Dominion War Redux

[JudgeKing]

Here's the exact quote.

"Transphasic Torpedoes?" Beverly asked. "Those are one of the advanced technologies brought bak by Voyager, aren't they?"

"Correct," Seven said. "They proved instrumental in our destruction of the Borg Transwarp Hub."

"Along with an ablative hull armour, if I recall," Worf said.

"Yes. But the Borg adapted to the armor during the battle in the transwarp network, nullifying its value as a defense."

[Sonic Glitch]

Here's the exact quote.

"Transphasic Torpedoes?" Beverly asked. "Those are one of the advanced technologies brought bak by Voyager, aren't they?"

"Correct," Seven said. "They proved instrumental in our destruction of the Borg Transwarp Hub."

"Along with an ablative hull armour, if I recall," Worf said.

"Yes. But the Borg adapted to the armor during the battle in the transwarp network, nullifying its value as a defense."

Which one is GTTS and, novels aren't canon no matter how much they're quote or how well they make their point. More's the pity, some of them are quite good.

[Sionnach Glic]

Here's the non-canon quote.

Fixed.

[Tyyr]

How do you adapt to a slab of metal?

[Tsukiyumi]

And just how the f**k do you adapt to a lump of metal?

How do you adapt to a slab of metal?

Good question. If they decided to just blast through with sheer power, that would mean that all Starfleet ships without the armor would be vastly underprotected.

Maybe it's a matter of disrupting the links holding the armor in place?

[Tyyr]

Well it is the obvious question. Also, if they just needed to shoot it harder why didn't they adapt to it at the Unimatrix? First shot doesn't get through, amp it up.

I can get why they felt they had to do it, they needed to prevent the Federation from becoming ridiculously overpowered but that's a pretty fucking lame excuse for it. Just blame it on the Temporal Cops.

[Coalition]

All they need to do is mention that the armor imposes a mass penalty on exterior ship operations. Similar to how Cardassian ships have their warp nacelles inside the armor for better protection, but it interferes with performance? Thick metal covering sensors will interfere with their capability, you need holes anyway for engines and heat dissipation, etc. Also, since the armor is actually plates slapped on the outside and attached to the 'projectors', you could be able to peel the ship by damaging the projectors, compared to actual armor that is integrated into the structure. Damage the projectors surrounding one piece of armor? That piece just comes off, instead of needing to pound through true armor.

Just give it a bunch of fairly realistic limits, and you can give a good reason for it not to be deployed 24/7. A sneak attack that damages the emitters would prevent it being deployed to a section also. The Borg simply use their advanced sensors to try and hit the smaller target sections (engines, sensors, etc) and their ships are large enough to handle normal weaponry (not transphasic). The other fun is where the Borg deploy some of that armor as well, and move the armor around to cover damaged areas in real-time. So your weak spot on one side that everyone is going to attack suddenly got a slab of armor over it.

For short-duration, heavy armor does work. The mass for the armor is stored internally (which will impose limits for smaller ships, since they have less volume per surface area), and deployed when ordered. Of course, the fact that the mass is used for the armor means the replicator stockpiles get nearly used up in the process. So if you take lots of damage, you could wind up with armor that is missing sections, because the raw materials are not present.

Of course, you could have a long-duration time, where at the beginning you have people in 10-Forward (or similar), then when the red alert sounds, you see the armor flashing into view. As time goes by, you start to see people there suffering symptoms of claustrophobia. (It also makes special effects cheap, as you only have to make a gray background for the window, instead of green screen and a starry background. The tough part will be making the actors act.)

[Mikey]

...have their warp nacelles inside the armor for better protection, but it interferes with performance?

That's an assumption - is there a source to verify it?

[Teaos]

Well no one else does it, and the Cardassians arent shown to be especially fast.

And sure you can use the "They're idiots" theory, but the fact is out of all the species, spread across all the Galaxy, only 1 species does it. And we dont even know if they use the same form of warp.

So no out right canon statement, but a lot of circumstatial proof.

[Sionnach Glic]

It could also help explain the Defiant's slow speed.

[Tyyr]

I like that. It meshes well I think as it explains why the Federation loves to mount their nacelles way out away from everything.

[Mikey]

Not trying to be difficult, but when have we seen that the top end of Cardie ships is significantly less than than of UFP ships on the average? In fact, looking at a Cardie ship, I don't see where a nacelle would be embedded at all. I hadn't really thought about it before, but it would appear that they don't use a nacelle but rather some other sort of structure to project a warp field.

Sorry to be argumentative, but this is an example of one of those times in which we (myself often included) make assumptions in order to fit our view of things. "Let's see," says our subconscious, "Cardie ships should be inferior to UFP ships, and we want to create a negative effect of the un-exposed nacelles... so let's just assume that they're slow."

[stitch626]

How do you adapt to a slab of metal?

Maybe it isn't metal at all. Maybe its an energy field of some sort. It did appear after all.

[Tyyr]

"Ablative armor generators" given that ablation is the process by which material is removed from a surface to dissipate energy I'm pretty confident it was a slab of something solid. Be it ceramic, metal, or other.

[McAvoy]

It is a slab of whatever material that is designed to be destroyed to protect the main structure. It really can be anything. WW2 vessels had something similar where a shell or bomb would pass through a light or very thin piece of steel deck or outer skin of the ship to decap a armor piercing shell or cause the bomb to denote prematurely. Similar concept.

I like to think the Batmobile armor is self replicated/modulated ablative armor.