Perhaps dilithium crystals are necessary to keep the quantum singularity stable? Mere speculation, mind....

I've had this sitting around for two years, you guys might find it interesting. It's a description of Romulan ship propulsion, it's completely non-canon although, it is writen by Starnbach. It partialy makes sense in a weird Star Trek way.

Wow, I certainly did find it interesting.

It provides quite a nice history of Romulan/early Vulcan development, whilst not filling it in so much that any changes that future series/films/episodes may have can be ruled out.

Sternbach's work may not be perfect, but its often pretty much the only stuff to go on, so i'd taken it as canon until something proves it wrong.

It should definitely get this discussion going again, anyway.

Quick sumary of the problems of this article:

1) History of Romulan exidus. We're back to the Mintakan paradox discussed in the warbird thread: Although Romulus is only 90LY away (74LY by this account) and can be made in a Vulcan lifetime STL. Mintaka is not. The Mintaka system (assuming Mintakans really inhabit the trinary system in the Orion constellation called 'Minataka') simply does not have the lifetime for colonization from Sargon's people, as they're all supergiant stars. Are they a blip in xeno-biological pre-history? Or does it point to a Romulan/Mintakan exidus at FTL during the Debrune civil war? I favor the latter. I didn't when it first came up in the Warbird thread, but I do now. I do not believe Sternbach has given this part of his article much thought.

2) Inaccurate physics in Romulan fusion evolution. When listing the evolution of Romulan fusion devices, number two was, "Enhanced Fusion. As above, with injection of tritium and other isotopes to increase power output." Tritium does not increase the usable power output of a fusion device. The reason for this is neutrons: 2/3rds of the mass of tritium is in neutrons. Neutrons are hard to capture and use as energy producers due to their electric neutallity. In other words, when tritium fuses up to 90% of the energy released by the fusion is put into particles you cant use for power: it's wasteful and dirty. (I won't get into the "other isotopes" comment, as it would be a whiney complaint of symantics.) I admit it is possible I misunderstand the statement, but I dont see how.

3) Singularity Radius. A quantum singularity of the mass 275 kilotonnes remains a singularity via it's mass alone (eg, no special force-fields acting upon it) has a radius 4.07e-13 meters -- ten orders of magnitude smaller than claimed here. You can find this by calculating the 'Schwarzschild radius' -- look up the equation on Wikipedea. This either means Sternbach was pulling numbers from his back-sides (and, all due respect, I wouldn't put it past him) or he intends to say that the singularity's radius is extended by grav-fields. Yet he does not say this at all -- he only says it's "suspended" by magnetic and gravitic fields. Not expanded or extended or anything else... IE, he says the singularity is simply held in place by the fields, not manipulated by them.

4) Energy extraction. The method of collecting energy from this system is crude, at best. And the description shows his ignorance of the field. What he's describing is an accretion disk around the singularity and active jets from it's poles, no doubt about it. Yes you can definately get energy from it. But the density of the stream is far from 'infinite', as is suggested -- large, for sure, but far from infinite; the energy for the polar jets and the system in general comes from *fusion* of the particles within the disk; and the jets of a stellar black hole -- from which this model is derived -- are pulled from the accretion disk because of the increadible magnetic fields of these objects; magnetic fields of the magnitude you would not dare attempt aboard a ship filled with humanoids... A far better extraction method would be Hawkings radiation. Again, this is dicussed in the Warbirds thread.

5) Materials for energy production. He says, "... the singularity could produce energy from literally any matter dromped into it." And then, "The most common fuel remained cryogenic deuterium, known for its ease of handeling; helium-3 and carbon-60 also produced usable energy for warp speeds." ... Um... Say what? Cryogenic *anything* is a pain to handle; any kind of hydrogen (be it H1, H2 or H3 -- H2 is deuterium) has a very low density and is therefor far from ideal for storage on a space-ship, where volume is limited. Helium-3 is even worse because it never really becomes a liquid. (I'll get to 'carbon-60'in a moment.) Lithium deuturide would a be a far better fuel source and it's poisonous! Since it's all being fused anyway, it doesn't really matter what fuel you drop into it... Again, the gentleman has simply not given enough though to it.

6) "Carbon-60". C-60 is a molecule, not an isotope. He's
saying that if you drop 60-atom carbon-buckyballs into the singularity you are more likely to get usable energy. This makes no sense. The molecule will get ripped apart long before the carbon makes any energy for the system... Unless, of course, carbon-60 refers to an as yet unknown isotope of carbon with 6 protons (the definition of carbon) and 54 neutrons. Sorry. I don't buy it.

I know the above comments are inflamitory. And I know they sound stuck-up. Still, Mr. Sternbach simply has not spent enough energy and effort into researching the subject. I had the advantage of the members of this forum to help me understand the problems better, so I suppose my critisisms are not fair. Still, it irks me to know the future of trek is in this man's hads...

... And this was supposed to be a short post. :(

As I said, I don't do physics and maths, but I did do checmistry. (Didn't do that well, but I passed. )

You obviously know your stuff though, Zdarby, as I have said before.

Trek has always been based on the realms of the "just about possible with the right technology" or "quasi-real science".

As such, there will always be problems with it. When it gets down to explaining technologies that we only know hints and suppositions about, we will inevitably end up arguing til our faces turn blue.

From what little I do know about stuff though, I agree with what you say - it isn't properly thought through.

The Mintakan problem always seems to come back and haunt the Vulcan/Romulan/whatever "timeline". have often wondered it it is possible that they are some sort of quirk of nature, and that they are not acrtually related at all. It's either this, or as you say, they are proto-Romulan, not proto-Vulcan, and lost all their technology in the journey to their new homesystem.

As for technology and the energy extraction stuff though, i'll leave that to you. (And anyone else who has ideas on it)

I simply don't understand the complexities of power generation. (Coz I already have it!)

i only read the first two pages of this thread, this is what came to my mind.

1. the game 'klingon academy' might help you with defining the ships values

2. the shields shouldn't be that much stronger than the hulls. in the series and all films, the shields (of the enterprise) are down to 0% in almost no time. then the hull is penetrated, which takes forever, making the guys on the bridge shake and fall *g* (this might only be to increase suspense)

3. in 'klingon academy' sensors are quite useful. if you have them running, you can target the enemys weapons/warpdrive/sensors or whatever u like. this 'hitting-where-it-hurts' should be reserved for ships with good sensors.
why not make the defiant weak and add a big bonus for it, if commanded by a command-ship with great sensors?

4. the romulans have plasm-torpedos or whatever they r called. they can penetrate shields and should be in the game in 'klingon academy', two well placed torpedos of this kind on the sensors of the enemy can render him blind

@zell: hast du wavenet?

You can do hit-and-run attacks on enemies in Starfleet Command 2 as well, but their shields obviously have to be down first.

Whilst it would be a cool addition, I don't really think that it would work well in BOTF - You fight, someone dies or runs away. The end.

Clean-cut battles like these make life a lot easier, and whilst there are people that crave such complexities and tactics in BOTF, the newbies certainly won't.

This game is designed to attract new players as much as the old ones, afterall.

Besides, if it hasn't already been implemented yet, I think it would be too big a change to have at such a late stage in the game.

am i the only one who think this?

nope

what about diplomacie,you could leave a ship into a minor race system and help the minor race understand your race that could help your relation with them ppl,or some random event could happen to minor race allowing you to send ship and assist them,you would receive the news in the summary that this race could have been infested with a plague and you would send a ship to assist them or to make things worse for them,depending on the race you have,

you would just leave your ship there and click on a special button like terraforming and scanning,after a while it would come up with a few idea and you could pick one from them
here is an example

you play as the dominion and you leave a ship in the system of a minor race who keep refusing every treaty you try to make with them and order the ship to research that race,after a while you would receive a message about diplomatic idea that ship came up with wich could something like

We have received diplomatic Idea from one of our ship...

"The "race" have proven to be more resilient to our diplomatic attemp maded by our diplomat,they have shown very little respect to the founder,the vorta in charge of the negociation suggested this action.

1-Send in the Jem Hadar to put them in line (50% of the population eradicated,add 100% fear from the dominion in that system)
2-we have come up with a special Virus that would infect they'r entire race,marking them forever for they'r defiance (-30% production from that system,100% fear from the dominion in that system)
3-Put an ambargo on they'r system to cut them out from the rest of the space (5 ship would be forced to stay in that system 30% fear from the dominion in that system and the neigboring system)
4-leave them alone for the moment (fear from the dominion would drop by 10% with all minor race)"

another example from the federation view

we have received Diplomatic idea

"after sometime negociating with the "race name" we have come to these conclusion

1-some sickness have been killing they'r ppl for sometime now we could leave a medical ship to help them find a cure for that sickness (forced to leave a medical ship in that system for 20 turn,add 50% acceptence from these ppl)

2-they request help to colonize the rest of they'r system we could leave a colony ship to them to assist them (lose a colony ship,add 20% acceptance to these ppl)

3-we could leave them sometime and see what the federation is about (do nothing)

here is a few example i think it would be great,it would add alot of job to but would give a cool feeling to the game and would make give a whole new perspective to diplomatic relation

I had similar hopes for something like this Cange, except i just plagarised it from the total war series, basically you get missions from either races central command, federation council etc and are tasked to complete them.

Obviously varying missions apply, such as minor race escort or some kind of diplomacy etc.

Regards Wolfe

good to see im not the only one to hope for it

well if they plan on doin something like this i would be more then willing to provide alot of plot to help,scenario are my speciality

Well, I think this is the sort of thing we had in mind with External Affairs, so the idea isn't too far fetched .

cant wait to see how its gonna look

Should the larger Romulan warbirds have a maximum range? They are supposedly powered by blackhole's so they shouldn't run out of fuel. They may run out of food eventually, but I think their ranges should be much larger.

Is it possible to decrease the power of a beam type weapon over range? I can't remember the name of the episode but in TOS when Mark Leonard played the Romulan Praetor in their new Destroyer the Plasma pulse was capable of destroying outposts at close range but lost its energy and was much less effective at longer ranges.

This could possibly help cloaked ships be much more deadly in the opening barrage of any surprise attack

a black hole isn't a perpetuum mobile..

it was just a thought.

what about letting ships refuel in nebulas or other anomalies? or when raiding a system

Ships can refuel from Gas giants i beleive.

Regards Wolfe

Yes, they can refuel from Gas Giants. I'm not sure about nebulas though. If they don't already, it would be a good idea it add it in.

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Hmm? Like a few of your posts, I don't understand if this is you condensing the current system, or making a suggestion. Because they seem to go both ways.

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Wouldn't it be easier (for everybody) if you got to know how the game works and then make your comments, breaking them down to suggestions, changes, bugs, etc? I just find this method of throwing it all here and see what sticks a bit weird, that's all. Nothing against it though. Good to see more feedback here. I'm sure it'd be much more efficient if you'd actually posted based on actual knowledge about the game, so as to not create a bit of confusion in threads. Else, how can you know about balance in the game? Guesswork?