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Old December 13th, 2006, 08:13 AM   #20
spcglider
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Damocles
Gordon;
I don't mean to say that the Colonials have superior technology to the Borg (though they do, ). I mean that the Colonial technology demonstrates interesting physical phenomena and qualities that I would immediately investigate.
Just like I would choose Voltron over Gundam as my personal giant robot any day... because Voltron has magical weapons and can repair itself from scene to scene whilst Gundam is CONSTANTLY in the repair shop getting a new arm bolted on. Colonial technology is MAGICAL. So in that sense, I'm sure the Borg would be curious. But like I said, it would be far more interesting to the Borg to investigate the Ship Of Lights... which can outrun a colonial ship in a hot micron. Or even better... team up with Count Iblis (I mean, wouldn't the Borg just be his PERFECT cup o' tea?... subservient, blindly loyal, ugly as sin...)

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As do the Feds and virtually everybody the Borg bump into. What you and I recognize as a problem that makes the Alcubierre drive look like child's play seems to be to them and every other science fiction entity is as simple as solving a quadratic equation.
Maguffin. McGuffin. Miguoughffin. That's what it's called.


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Not with rockets they don't. Just work through this problem. Try accelerating a 100,000,000 ton mass rocket to 10 kilometers per second in less than ten minutes using just six six rocket motors from speed zero using stick iron as a propellant mass. Postulating tylium as the energizer gives you work efficiencies and energy densitiies impossible for even matter/anti-matter reactions as the basis for a rocket motor, given the lack of visible reaction mass tanks on the Alligator . We know of nothing more efficient in this universe for the conversion of mass to energy. So unless those Colonials have zero point energy focal taps, or tylium is virtual matter, they aren't ever going to move as easily as they do on film using rockets. And from the visual evidence we see the Colonials use rockets.
Your assesment of speed isn't in question. WHY would the Borg want rockets? Even fast ones? Its not a conveniently contained technology like Warp Drive. In order to adopt it, they'd have to re-write everything they do. They'd have to create a whole new infrastructure to support it. Its the exact same reason why we don't already have hydrogen powered cars. There's no need to as long as we don't have an impetus to change over to a different system. And without an infrastructure to support that system, the Borg would suddenly find themselves competing with the Cylon Empire for tylium... and according to your estimation, the Cylons are superior, so it would be a losing battle to begin with.

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As for FTL, the assumption I've always made was that they wormholed their way across space, which is about as similar to the Berman Drek(TM) transwarp hub technology as to be a distinction without a difference. Only their ship's are smaller and they don't need a vast physical tramline generator to do it!
Once again, magic. We are simply supposed to believe that you can get anywhere in the universe in 5 minutes if you drive there fast enough. We never see evidence of wormholing or even spacewarp for that matter. They just simply arrive at a new destination and proclaim "wow! That was a long trip!"


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Tritanium is a Dreknobabble word for Composition 4 Duraluminum( a weak aviation aluminum alloy) or what I like to think of as Federation hull metal. From the collision of the Ent-E into the Scimitar, you get a n impact energy of about 10e5 joules per square meter or about two orders of magnitude less than the work you need to do to get through a square centimeter surface of BURLINGTON IV on an Abrams tank. Or to take another comparison, when the USS San Francisco hit that mountain a year and a half ago it did about four times as much work to itself per square meter of 75 mm thick HY 80 STEEL and had less wrinkles and far fewer holes than the Ent-E with its Fed hull metal. Cutting a Fed up with a blow torch, much less a cutting laser would not be that big of a deal, given the material properties illustrated by "Fed hull metal".
Okay... you win. You are obviously a better B.S.er than I am. To be able to come up with that off the cuff qualifies you as a first rate artist. To compare real-world ship hull damage to special effects fantasy damage to a miniature model and quantify the comparison without batting an eyelash... I bow, most humbly, to the superior teller of tales.

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Solonite is listed in the Battlestar canon as a nonnuclrar explosive. Tylium is a fuel which powers Colonial rockets. That by itself is why I regard solonite as the tylium precursor as both exhibit the properties of virtual matter.
Except that Tylium is refined into Solium... which is the fuel that powers the fleet. Not the other way around. That's canon.


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33.0e19 joules equals the yield of one ton of matter and one ton of antimatter mixed together. 10e16 tons of matter and antimatter need to be combined to shatter the Earth. Or to put it another way, I would have to hurl an iron ball about the size of New Hampshire at the Earth at 0.75 c to achieve the same effect.
Is that a ball of iron (spherical) with a constant external dimension equal to that of the widest point of New Hampshire? Or is that a ball of iron the diameter of the overall compacted surface area 1mm thick of New Hampshire?


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Dumb as the Cylons are I put them a step or two above the Feds or the Borg in the intelligence department, if for no other rerason that they have an original technology of their own(the Feds got theirs from Vulcan; the Borg stole theirs) which is superior to the Colonials which they can call their own. Some kind of reactionless thruster or gravitational propulsion must account for the double decker sanddollar.
Yet it still runs on refined tylium. At least that's what we are led to believe in the show.


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Also for all the clumsiness of their Raiders, those rockets are faster and more agile than the Fed equivalents. As a native derived technology this puts the Cylons ahead of the Borg and the Feds.
Towards the end of the run of ST TNG we were "treated" to an episode where Wesley Crusher (shudder) is involved in a training exercise and a aerial display flying a one-man fighter-style craft. They discussed maneuvers that would have been impossible even for the Blue Angels. I'm sorry, but there is no way, from existing footage and if you suspend dis-belief to allow a Thunderbird to function in space like a Viper does (wings, jet intakes, braking flaps, etc.), that you'll convince me that Cylon Raiders can outmaneuver a Thunderbird. And Wesley's group was doing just that in their little Federation craft. If the Federation doesn't have highly maneuverable craft for combat (or otherwise), then why are the training vessels so superior to everything else we've seen? The existence of such training vessels would indicate that highly advanced and maneuverable fighter-style craft also exist. Either that or the Federation is wasting A LOT of valuable training time and money.
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Story driven it may be but the computer corrected lead for a jinking object in space so that you can walk fire in against a fast object at up to fifty Viper lengths range iis something no Fed shuttlecraft or starship wsa able to do, Borg neither.
Except that they couldn't hit a Ship Of Lights satellite ship. I think your estimation of Federation targetting is a little loose to suit your argument. Federation targeting is based on beam technology. Missed? Shift it while it's still firing to score a hit. Colonial energy weapons fire blobs of something that require them to be more accurate cuz they don't have the "fluff" factor of a beam. And frankly, I'd have to see a tally of hit/miss ratio culled and compared proportionally from both shows to accurately assess the efficiency of either targeting system.

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Do you mean Fed runabouts and shuttles? Please explain how those vehicles are more agile than Vipers, or more effective? The closest thing the Feds have to a fiughter are those robot drone craft that Borg cube splashed as it rocketed past Mars. Pathetic.
Nope, I dont mean runabouts or shuttles.
See above.


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Apples=Colonials
Oranges=Cylons
Rotten tomatoes=Berman Drek(TM)
On that, we are Agreed.


-G
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