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Think of it this way it might of been designed a speedy recon vessel and they went with wheels to avoid energy detection? if you assume that it'd make sense for it top be tied to a shuttle craft, it's lands a ways away, and a small recon team use the land vehicle to get in closer without giving off huge or adverse energy readings

Is there a predicate for this or should I move it?

To be honest, I'm pretty confused. I'd say in the TNG section

Primefalcon wrote:Think of it this way it might of been designed a speedy recon vessel and they went with wheels to avoid energy detection? if you assume that it'd make sense for it top be tied to a shuttle craft, it's lands a ways away, and a small recon team use the land vehicle to get in closer without giving off huge or adverse energy readings

*shrug* Couple problems with that;

We had/have kit now that could detect the ignition devices on Soviet era trucks from the air, used extensively in Vietnam. ST has repeatedly shown the ability the ability to detect things rather more obscure then that. The Argo is presumably powered by some sort of large arse battery, which would give off some sort of signature.

Personally, I think it's something the crew built in their off time as a "fun" truck.

Edit: Failing the energy stuff. It's a large, moving hunk of metal, presumably fairly dense (bits of it anyways). Shouldn't be to hard to detect given the tech level.

Never understood it myself.

It probably simply is Picard's pet project that he develloped for fun just to have some thrills on missions, instead of always piloting the super stable shuttles by pressing on touch screens...
I guess it's man's primal love of cars and other assorted vehicules coming back in ST...

Picard became a Baja fan as he got older, along with being geriatric action dude?

Cpl Kendall wrote:Picard became a Baja fan as he got older, along with being geriatric action dude?

Midlife crisis, then?

I can buy it as a pleasure vehicle for Picard to joyride around in... except for the fact that it's got a phaser cannon mounted on it.

The Picard in TNG would never use official time and resources for a pleasure vehicle for himself; hell he wouldn't even use the Captain's Yacht. But the movie Picard seemed to loosen up a lot on that front. But take a pleasure vehicle and arm it? No.

My guess was stealth. Agrav vehicles may be fine and dandy, but for all we know they show up on tricorders from a thousand miles away.

And hell, wheeled vehicles are inherently better anyway. Just try pushing one of those nice agrav things when the agrav goes out.

Not to mention we have no idea how easy or hard it is to neutrilize an anit-grav unit. Or what the power requirements are.

Well agrav power requirements can't be that high when they're using the damn things instead of ladders, even in TMP.

Granted, but I'm thinking for long term sustained use. On a ship you can swap out batteries every couple hours...on a planet or battlefield, it may not be as easy.

Hm, that's interesting.

Odd that the (usually) more hi-tech happy TNG era UFP didn't use anti-grav in such pointless ways.

Which would kind of hint that UFP/SF has found a way of making the power requirements acceptably low.

Might it be an exponential energy curve. As the weight it is supporting increases, the power needed gets exponentially larger. Or something like that?