Ramming speed

[Teaos]

This came to me while we were debating whether the Klingons of Feds would be more likely to ram a ship in combat.

It came up that when is ramming an acceptable tactic. When you have no weapons left? When you are about to lose the ship? When Ramming may be the only way to bring down a enemy.

But I was thinking that ramming under any situation is pretty much pointless.

On a purely destructive point of view I don't think it would do much damage. Firstly we have to look at what ramming speed is. Presumably this is the fastest possible speed the ship is capable of under thrusters.

You can't ram at impulse since impulse works by reducing the mass of your ship thus ramming at full impulse would have exactly the same result as ramming at normal speed.

Warp wouldn't work either since warp doesn't actually make the ship move faster than light so much as it moves space around it at a rate so that it travels across a distance faster than light can. (I know both impulse engine design and Warp design are not official canon but we may as well treat it as such here)

So thus the ship has to moving under traditional propulsion, and obviously the faster you are going the more damage you will inflict.

Now I'm not sure how fast a starship can travel under this power but it doesn't seem to be to fast.

You also have to keep in mind a ship about to ram probably wont be able to reach top speed or be in the best of shape generally.

There is also the point that you can really only ram pretty big slow moving things and something that size is probably not going to that damaged by a ramming.

The only up side that I see is that it proves in your final act that you have really big balls.

So is there any point in ramming?

I think not.

[Tsukiyumi]

On the impulse engines, couldn't you just get up to speed, then cut the impulse drive right before you hit? Your mass would return to normal, and you'd be going pretty fast. See: The Odyssey.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

On the impulse engines, couldn't you just get up to speed, then cut the impulse drive right before you hit? Your mass would return to normal, and you'd be going pretty fast. See: The Odyssey.

You'd immediately decrease in speed, though, due to conservation of linear momentum. You can't make energy out of nothing.

I wonder what the effect of ramming at warp would be? The effect of a warp field colliding with a shield bubble would be interesting. The warp bubble should be quite energetic, and the worst that could happen is the warp field destabilizing and dropping the ramming ship out of warp right on top of the other ship.

[Teaos]

The second impulse engines were cut you'd drop to normal speed.

The whole point of them is that your ship keep the same kinetic energy and the mass dropping/rising is what changes the speed.

I don't think you can ram at warp. I remember reading in one of the mags that gravitiation forces have huge impact on warp fields. Thats one of the reason you cant warp in a solar system since they are so crowded. Not canon but it makes snese.

[Tsukiyumi]

So, the Jem'hadar bug was using thrusters only when they rammed the Odyssey? Must have some damn powerful thrusters.

[Teaos]

The Odyssey already had battle damage and the Bug was in perfect shape.

A point I forot to make was when a sip is Damaged its SIF may be severly weakened and as we know the SIF counts for a large percent of the hull strenght. Thus the Bug with full SIF would be a lot more potent than the Defiant on its last legs.

[Tsukiyumi]

Question: is it possible to use the impulse engines without using the "mass reducing" effect?

[Teaos]

The mass reduction is the impulse engines. Its powered by a fusion reactors (I think) but it provides speed by changing the mass. It doesnt produce any thrust.

[Tsukiyumi]

Another question: If that's true, why did Picard order "full impulse on my cmd" in Nemesis? The ship should've harmlessly bounced off of the Scimitar if what you're saying is true, as it would have the mass of a bag of rocks.

[Teaos]

I don't know he's quote so don't know for sure.

He might have been refering to full impulse power, by that meaning the fusion reactors that power them.

[Tsukiyumi]

What would that have to do with movement? He was instructing Troi to go to maximum speed. Why didn't he say "full thrusters"?

So, we have the Bug ramming the Odyssey, E-E ramming the Scimitar, Chakotay ramming the Kazon Predator in "Caretaker", Voyager ramming the Krenim timeship, the Bugs ramming the Klingon ships in "Sacrifice of Angels", and Worf ordering "ramming speed" against the Cube in First Contact, and all of these ships were apparently using thrusters only to provide them with incredible speed.

After all, if they were using impulse, they'd have little or no mass, and would've shattered to bits with little or no effect on the other ship, right? Then I guess Blackstar's theory about using thrusters as primary propulsion in STIV is totally credible, even though everyone argued that it wasn't. It can't be both ways.

[Teaos]

What would that have to do with movement? He was instructing Troi to go to maximum speed. Why didn't he say "full thrusters"?

Do we know how the thrusters work? Maybe they need extra power to work well. The E-E was really knocked up so maybe Picard wanted all power put to the thrusters. Thus the impulse engines were used to "compensate"...

So, we have the Bug ramming the Odyssey, E-E ramming the Scimitar, Chakotay ramming the Kazon Predator in "Caretaker", Voyager ramming the Krenim timeship, the Bugs ramming the Klingon ships in "Sacrifice of Angels", and Worf ordering "ramming speed" against the Cube in First Contact, and all of these ships were apparently using thrusters only to provide them with incredible speed.

None of those ships were moving all that fast when they hit. They could of been using impulse engines during all this time but its not until the last moment when they need to increase their kinetic energy that they power the thrusters up.

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm sure the thrusters work the same way all thusters work: shoot stuff out - ship moves correspondingly. I don't see how more power would help. I think it's more likely that we've uncovered yet another bit of blatant stupidity in 'Trek. Seems like the deeper you dig, the more of it you find... All of those ships were hauling ass when they hit (the Bugs and Chakotay's ship in particular), and as was suggested, if they cut impulse, they'd apparently come to a dead stop.

[Teaos]

Bothe the E-E, Defiant and the Bugs were all moving almost painfully slow in comparison to the speeds the ships are capable of. It seems clear that t this point they were using thruster power only.

Thrusters now work by burning something and shooting it out a whole producing thrust. But maybe in the future the name Thruster is just a generic term used. Maybe there thrusters are like the theorecial nuclear propulsion drives that are being designed now. Very little particle emmisions but great kinetic thrust.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The mass reduction is the impulse engines. Its powered by a fusion reactors (I think) but it provides speed by changing the mass. It doesnt produce any thrust.

I'm not sure this is true. The impulse engines are said to be ion engines assisted by mass reduction (after all, you still need to make the ship go after you've made it light). Canonically, didn't the episode with Ro going maquis mention holes in the shields behind Enterprise's impulse engine exhaust through which she piloted the raider?