/STG/ Star Trek General

>>49823257
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtmbzJNPsaQ

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Of the Different systems here how do they compare?

continuing from the last stupidly named thread;

Is Starfleets discrimination against Augments a form of racism?

If /STA/ is dead than this thread should be /STB/ and you know it OP!

>>49823544
>fuel carrier
>300 passengers

>>49823845
I think this comes under a similar problem of

Sci-fi writers - no sense of scale.

They see a big ship. Big ship = big crew.

No further thought is given to it like "what are their jobs on the ship?"

>>49823882
Well, it is the KM, so I can see the Academy programmers thinking 'we need to make it so testees can't just write off a handful of crew vs their own ship's crew'.

But then why make it a goddamn fuel carrier, rather than, I don't know, a passenger ship?

>>49823792
That's a stupid question.

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>>49823961
I see what you did there

>>49823961
>I see what you did there


>>49823792
Yeah, pretty much. Apparently nobody ever thought to just augmentation to cure diseases or severe health issues. As far as Starfleet is concerned you're eithers a pure human or a Khan in waiting.

>>49824041
Except Bashir specifically says curing diseases is fine. It's when you go and try to make them super-human (like his parents did) that things get bad. If they had just tried to cure his autism, there would have been no issue.

>>49824041
That's a stupid statement.

Diseases and severe health issues are screened for and fixed in utero all the time, or with genetic therapy. They say that themselves in the Genetic Engineering Episodes.

You just aren't allowed to ENHANCE yourself, and 'being slow' like thousands of generations of humans have always been isn't considered an illness or health issue.

Every one of the 'Mutants' in the Bad Outcome Bashir squad were intended to be superhuman, in intelligence, perception, and/or physical capability.

I know that the 'muh transhumanism' crowd likes to throw a fit about every little thing as regards the Federation's policy thereupon, but don't go distorting the facts to try and make them look like they're stupid about it. They aren't.

>>49823257

Is "FLY HER APART THEN!" the most Based line in trek?

>>49824084
In ENT the doctor mentioned that the Denobulans had made wide-spread use of genetic modification in the past with little to no ill effect.

Also the argument that things have sucked for thousands of generations and therefore must always suck because fate/destiny/know your place lacks any real weight. We made do with sharp rocks for most of human existence. Should we have never used metal?

>>49824198
>things should always suck

>standard of living in the Federation
>suck

Christ, you guys look like a bunch of stupid assholes.

>>49824085

I believe that goes to THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS.

Honorable mention to Past-Sulu in Beyond for "You have no idea who we are. But you'll soon find out."

"Do not test me. You will fail," in Into Darkness was also great. Sulu in any timeline or time period is mega-based.

>>49824198

Its not about past sins. Not entirely. Worf brings up a second and much more crucial argument, the Steroids Argument. Once you say its OK to make your kid Superhuman, you're creating an inherent second-class status for everyone NOT Superhuman, which pressures everyone to make their kids Superhuman AND makes everyone who was born before it was allowed suddenly obsolete.

We hear several times about how the curriculum at Starfleet Academy is absolutely brutal both physically and mentally, with a high dropout rate. If you can even get through the Academy, postings on Starships are rarer than duty-free Romulan Ale. Most academy grads are stuck on space stations, shuttle runs or even planet-based facilities, and only the elite AMONG the elite get the chance to work on ships. And THEN only the elite among THOSE elites get postings on frontier ships like the Enterprise, the true explorers, while the rest are relegated to border patrol duties or diplomatic couriers or banal scientific studies on Oberth-class hulks that haven't fired their phasers once in the 80 years they've been operating. What happens to the cadets who don't have super powers when half of their classmates suddenly do?

At least the genetic lottery gives everyone the same odds of being a genius or a physical god. When it becomes mandatory, the world becomes a very scary place. The Federation does not want risk a Gattica scenario, and that's completely reasonable.

>>49824240

>standard of living in the Federation

Has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of low level genetic modifications to eliminate defect.

The Federation has the capability of uplifting it's citizens to demi-god levels of awesome.

If they slowly implemented it over the course of generations it would work. Just keep altering those falling behind to bring them up to the average in a manner that will be inherited by their children. Over the generations the average keeps rising.

There is no master-race mentality developing because with the exceptions of luddites everyone is hovering at about the same level with the same variance as we have today.

The only difference is that in a thousand years people would be in every way be inherently better than their ancestors.

However this would take a consistent long term effort on the part of the federation and a change in it's prejudiced nature.

>>49824330
Thank god for Federation free health care then.

Any parent intentionally crippling their child by not getting the recommended augmentations should be looked down upon for child cruelty.

>>49824339
Feel free to move out to some shitty little non-Federation colony and get your kids shady backalley augmentations, then have them either beat their head, or yours, open on a wall by the time they're ten.

I'm sure that in a few generations, your sociopathic descendants will try and go conquer somebody with their amazing demigod abilities, only to be slapped down, hard, by the sheep-manned ships of Starfleet.

>>49824339

Have you considered you're being prejudiced here? What is "average?" Who decides which kids need the juice and which kids don't? What do you do when the parents object to your government's decision that their kids need it? What do you do when some parents demand that their kids need it when your government decides that they don't? What do you do when you tell a family they need the Brain Juice but they want their kid to have the Muscle Juice? What do you do when you tell a family their kid needs the muscle juice and they take it a personal insult because their grandfather won the Parises Squares Galatic Championship and spends the next 80 years tying the state up in court and rallying a grassroots political movement against your government that leads to genetics clinics being bombed? What do you do when some Corrupt Starfleet Admiral who's PTSD over the Jem'Hadar makes him believe that the Federation needs Super Soldiers, so he steals three tankers full of Brain and Muscle Juice to make 10,000 Khans, and either one of them decides HE should be the Admiral and starts a coup? Or the army is made so they have to obey orders to ensure that never happens, but the Tal Shiar seizes control of them and turns them against Earth?

When you start trying to Make A Better Species piecemeal, you run into a million giant problems that could throw society into total chaos. You have to do it all at once, or nor at all. And all at once will never work for a million OTHER reasons, so it better be Not At All.

>>49824247
Pretty much every second thing said by Picard in "The Drumhead" is worth putting on that list too.

>>49824351

Do you not realize that you just made my point for me by saying that anyone not artificially enhanced would be considered crippled? That is the fucking nightmare that the Anti-Khan laws are looking to avoid!

"Oh hell, looks like that colony ship that set out with 50,000 of our best and brightest settlers which was then lost in a Time Anomoly for 100 years is back! I guess we have to put those cripples into some facility for the rest of their lives since they'll never be able to compete with us Augments in anything. Sorry about your dream to be in Starfleet little Timmy, sorry about your wish to open a restaurant Mr. Watkins, sorry about your hopes of being an amazing novelist Ms. O'neil, you're just obsolete! Better to just kill yourself honestly."

I'm sure there's some reasonable middle ground to Genetic engineering. In all likelihood there are severe hereditary issues that have been eliminated via genetic manipulation within the Federation. So you probably have a rule of thumb that goes "does the kid have the gene marker for cystic fibrosis or multiple sclerosis? Then splice those genes out for others. But if this kid's parents want it to be an ubermensch from the get go then they can fuck right off."

And even then, certain things can be fixed with technology. So La Forge (who I believe was born blind) had his condition treated with a Visor, rather than a convenient genetic treatment.

>>49824454
An argument that falls apart when you consider that Bashir was augmented after he was born and that mute chick was repaired in adulthood.

Also

>>49824398

And don't forget how vaccination causes autism.

>>49824404
This is why you have shit like Section 31 who are dedicated to maintaining stability and isn't influenced by public opinion.

It's also why you make the augmentation clinics government property and the whole process highly regulated.

Also the Tal Shiar can take control of regular humans with brain rape tech so it's not like it changes anything if they get hold of a bunch of augments if the rest of the population is augmented. Well I suppose there would be one difference, a bunch of pissed off augments coming to tear the Tal Shiar a structurally superfluous new ass hole and the Tal Shiar being woefully obsolete.

>>49824610
>Augments tried to take over the world, killed millions, ushering in a dark age of World Wars on Earth
>Group of Augments in modern day try to betray the Federation and give total victory to the Dominion in less than a week of giving them trust
>YOU'RE LIKE ANTI-VAXXERS MUH DEMIGODS

Thankfully, you'll never be in a position of responsibility that'll have any impact on human society.

>>49824610

>so it's not like it changes anything if they get hold of a bunch of augments if the rest of the population is augmented.

You were specifically talking about a slow progression from unaugmented to augmented for the whole species over the course of generations. The example of "rogue person uses the resources involved in this plan to make a crop of superhumans before the rest of the species is up to code and bad shit happens," is just one of a million potential disaster scenarios of your plan.

Also, there should be a Rule of Acquisition about the consequences of using "shit like Section 31," as any part of an argument regarding why something might be good. CEASAR CAN DO NO WRONG indeed Dr. Bashir.

>>49824666
>Germans try to take over the world, killed millions and caused great suffering for years after in a dark age of World Wars on Earth
>Group of Germans in modern day betray the EU and try to give total victory to corporate oligarchs and old money aristocrats.

>>49824721
Germans are a naturally occuring mutation, best dealt with by not augmenting them even further (particularly when most augmentation packages seem to increase aggression).

Thanks for proving my point for me.

>>49824753
ENT era Dr. Soong figured out how to alter augments to remove the extra aggression.

You have no point.

>>49824821
>they immediately go and conquer the Klingons

Yeah, keep digging that hole.

>>49824885
Those were the old model. He was operating on the embryos in storage.

Also

>Giving a shit that Space Somalia got hurt feelings.

It was practically a public service.

>>49824041
>>49824062
>>49824084
>>49824330


Khan is a product of an age of scarce resources where the vast majority of humans didn't have access to medical care. The augments of his day were a small minority by necessity. But if the Federation wanted to, it could easily augment every single Federation citizen.

You know, everybody screams "MUH GENETIC SUPERMEN!"

Fuck you guys. Fuck you long, fuck you hard.

I'm going Full Jensen on this shit. So you're genetically enhanced? That's nice. You can kick a Klingon across a room? That's nice. I have fucking SWORDS IN MY ARMS. A personal shield generator and cloaking device built-in. Wired Reflexes rating "holy fuck where did he go!"

And you know what? I don't care. I don't care about your "level of performance," and you know what?
It's not relevant. I don't care about "being better than you," or putting myself above you.

I just want to be the ideal me. And if that means swords in my arms, or being able to out-think a Vulcan logistician, or sprouting goddamn wings and flying in zero-G, who THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE to tell me I can't?! Who the hell do you think I am?

>>49825186
But you can.

You totally can.

You just can't do it legally in the Federation.

But they won't hunt you down if you go off and do it somewhere else.

Near as I can tell, the laws are against Federation Citizens having their children enhanced (because the Federation considers that child abuse), and no genetically/enhanced in Starfleet.

And that's it.

You'd probably have Starfleet security giving you a bit of a stinkeye if you walk onto one of their stations. You'd almost certainly have higher scrutiny on you than other people would. But you'd probably have that wherever you went, anyway.

NOBODY IS SAYING YOU CAN'T BE AUGMENTED. YOU JUST CAN'T DO IT LEGALLY IN THE FEDERATION OR JOIN STARFLEET IF YOU HAVE BEEN.

Hell, you could probably go on an augment trip, then come back to Earth and be a boring normal Federation citizen. No arrests.

But the authorities won't ever trust you again. That's their right, based on threat analysis, it's not 'discrimination'. You chose to augment, you chose to forfeit certain career paths within Human society.

>>49825236
I wonder if the Vulcan Science Fleet discriminate to that degree. Also it seems that Starfleet captains are allowed to hire outside help into the crews of their ships so you may be able to join a Starfleet deep space exploration crew that way.

Set out from Earth as a no police record, fairly well educated and upstanding citizen of the Federation.

Go on a gene-mod and cybernetic enhancement tour of known space.

Return to Earth as super human flesh wrapped around super human machine. Can run all day and all night without tiring, survive insane amounts of damage, inbuilt shield generators, can digest damn near anything, can punch right through a Klingon ribcage and some way into the wall he was backed up against, require half an hours sleep a week to back up files from grey matter to hard drive and defragment, can see and hear well beyond the human norm in every regard and have brain capable of interpreting and working it all. Estimated lifespan "practically immortal".

Get job on any damn ship you want in vary degrees of officially.

Remember that time when Riker broke into a laboratory and murdered a bunch of dudes in their sleep and nobody said a fucking word?

Or that time Piccard let an entire planet die because the prime directive states that you can't interfere with Destiny?

Or that time when Troi took the piss out of the metal wellbeing of one of the more vulnerable members of the crew for giggles?

Or that time Piccard tried to abduct an entire village of colonists for political expediency and than betrayed his oath to Starfleet some years later so that a village of settlers could hog the fountain of youth all to themselves and to hell with the trillions of lives it could have saved?

Or that time when Wesley nearly destroyed the ship with computer eating nanites?

Or that time Wesley nearly destroyed the ship by stripping parts out of the engine?

Or that time when Wesley nearly killed his mother with his static warp field experiments?

Or that time Wesley nearly got an entire away team killed by angry Injuns?

Or that time when Riker 2.0, AKA the not shit version of Riker, revealed that the Cardies were stockpiling doomsday weapons on the border in violation of treaties and almost certainly in preparation for an attack on federation space and they let him go to a Death Camp because it got them political advantage?

Or that time Sisko bombed a civilian target and made the planet uninhabitable to catch a man whose crime was theft?

Good times.

Character limit on post won't let me list all of the questionable shit Catharine "There's coffee in that nebula" Janeway got up to and never got hanged for.

Do other races within the federation freely practice genetic augmentation?

Was the Star Trek CCG any good? I never got to play it.

>>49825970

>Or that time Sisko bombed a civilian target and made the planet uninhabitable to catch a man whose crime was theft?

Eddington's crime wasn't theft, it was high treason.

He used his position as a military officer and the authority and secret clearances entrusted to him in that role to take materials (which were going to innocent civilians as part of a relief and humanitarian aid effort I might add) and give them to an unrecognized illegitimate secessionist terrorist junta which then used those materials to prosecute an illegal and possibly genocidal war against a sovereign nation.

Also Sisko didn't bomb a civilian target. The colony he bombed had declared itself part of the Maquis and was openly aiding and abetting their war crimes, such as the use of bio weapons and the attacking of civilian evacuation transports which we saw Eddington do in that same episode. That makes it a military target the same way any city which is building tanks and garrisoning soldiers is a target.

Also he only made the planet uninhabitable to Humans. Cardassians (and presumably many other species) could live there no problem.

Fuckin' Maquis sympathizers all up in this thread. Enjoy your Space Caliphate ya bunch of racist revenge-mongers.

>>49826159
Daily reminder of that time the Federation capitulated to the Cardies and gave them a bunch of settled worlds presumably because too many of their officers were getting PTSD from all the dead Cardassians?

And that the one qualification you need to have contact with the federation is technological expertise and if you don't have FTL engines they will happily watch you die from orbit?

And that time when the slave taking, colony murdering, ship pirating Empire they had previously been at war with got in to trouble over it's own incompetence and the Federation bailed them out only to end up at war again?

And that they will deny technical information from a lesser race that need it because they aren't ready for that sort of knowledge yet whilst digging up graves of other peoples to go through their stuff?

And that Janeway gave WMD to the Borg.

>>49826159
Any Cardassian occupation of a human planet is unacceptable and should be dealt with by Starfleet, not allowed and enforced. You should be mad at the Federation for failing at the most basic function of a government, defending its borders and the rights of its citizens.

Who cares if its illegal' when you are defending your home against aliens who plan to steal it from you. The instant the Federation signed that treaty they lost any legitimacy in this matter.

>>49826263

Daily reminder that those Maquis idiots elected to stay on those planets after they were given away when nobody in the freaking universe made them, and then got mad butthurt that the Cardies that they expected not to honor the treaty didn't honor the treaty and the Federation who told them they couldn't help if they stayed didn't help. The Maquis' problems were all entirely of their own making out of stubbornness, stupidity, arrogance and bloodlust. The fact that they tried to solve those problems with the wholesale slaughter of civilians while they had the balls to petulantly claim Starfleet had left them no choice is staggering.

The Cardassians may have been corrupt nazi bastards who were actively subverting the treaty, but the Maquis were just as bad as them in every way. Even fucking KIRA could barely tolerate Maquis aggrandizing about their "plight." A Bajoran who hated the Cardassians even a FRACTION less than her would have probably ripped those entitled fucks a new asshole for DARING to compare Bajor's literal holocaust plus earth scorching to the "suffering," of not even having Cardassians live on their planets before deciding it was time for The South To Rise Again.

>>49826462
>Any Cardassian occupation of a human planet is unacceptable and should be dealt with by Starfleet
Human != Federation.

>You should be mad at the Federation for failing at the most basic function of a government, defending its borders and the rights of its citizens.
>The instant the Federation signed that treaty they lost any legitimacy in this matter.

In this, I agree. The Federation was far too willing to throw its own people under the bus - bare minimum, uproot them from their homes or leave them to their own devices - to secure a peace treaty with the Cardassian Union that was WAAAAY too fucking generous.

They should have fucking stomped the Cardies into the ground and told them "This is what happens when you provoke a peaceful man. Now these are the borders, and you WILL respect them, and oh by the way we've forcibly liberated EVERY planet you jackasses conquered, whether Federation or not, and we're officially guaranteeing their sovereignty now. You gonna play nice now, or do we have to quarantine you to your home system and blow anything with a Warp Drive you assholes launch right out of the sky?"

>>49826494
Right, so if your government just gave your home away and told you that if you stayed instead of uprooting everything you own and leaving, you were on your own, you wouldn't feel just a LITTLE betrayed?

And then you're forced to resort to desperate tactics because you're trying to defend your home and way of life against a militaristic power which has cheerfully engaged in ACTUAL HOLOCAUSTS in the past, and your old government now declares that you're terrorists and starts attacking you, leaving you caught between Nazis and the people who betrayed you?

You wouldn't be just a LITTLE pissed off by that?
Not that it matters; then the fuckin' Jem'Hadar showed up and just wholesale slaughtered the Maquis, making that inconvenient problem "go away" for the Federation.

>>49826462

The Federation was not fucking entitled to those planets. The Cardassians said the region was theirs and attacked. And guess what, Starfleet DID deal with it. They fought an entire brutal fucking war trying to deal with it.

The fact that the Federation decided that there was plenty of empty planets in the infinite void of space that they DIDN'T have to fight a horrific war to colonize doesn't make them a failure, it makes them 1) smart and 2) living up the idea that humanity had evolved past petty shit like a need to live on a particular planet because it "belongs," to them. They didn't even give up all the god damn planets in the region, just some of them! What the hell was stopping the Maquis fucktards from moving to another planet in the same god damn region NOT ceded to a recognized legitimate government as part of peace negotiations? Oh, I know, dumbass frontiersman possessiveness of their OH SO PRECIOUS LAND. Get over here and die for me Young Teenager Who Joined Starfleet To Study Comets, I just can't be bothered to live on any other planet in the universe than this one and I'm willing to see a million of you die for that principal.

>>49826590
>The Federation was not fucking entitled to those planets. The Cardassians said the region was theirs and attacked. And guess what, Starfleet DID deal with it. They fought an entire brutal fucking war trying to deal with it.

Wow, it's like you fail entirely to comprehend the nature of territorial claims. There are two requisites to hold territory.

1: Actually BEING THERE. The Federation was there, the Cardassian Union WAS NOT. To be clear, it's not like the Federation claim-jumped systems that the Cardies already had outposts/beacons/colonies in. They settled in systems that the Cardassians felt were TOO CLOSE to ones they had - but were not actually the systems they had.
2: Being able to DEFEND THEM. And frankly, the Cardassian Union at its peak was NOTHING compared the United Federation of Planets.

The Federation settled those places, then they limp-dick, half-heartedly defended them in a gutless war in which they did no more than beat the Cardies back. They SHOULD HAVE ramped up the moment the Cardassians started shooting at them, rofflestomped their second-class war fleet, smashed their shipyards, and told them they WILL respect the Federation's borders, or this is what WILL happen.

Frankly, after the Federation's piss-poor showing in that war, the Romulans and the Klinks SHOULD HAVE started pressing border claims, because the Federation had proved they didn't have the stomach to actually pull out the warbirds and defend their territory with full force. So all they had to do was press the Feddies hard for a few years and the Feddies would voluntarily GIVE UP TERRITORY to make the fighting stop.

>>49826575

>Right, so if your government just gave your home away and told you that if you stayed instead of uprooting everything you own and leaving, you were on your own, you wouldn't feel just a LITTLE betrayed?

This would be an excellent point if not for the fact that the colonists that would later become the Maquis were not the ones who came up with the idea of staying under Cardassian authority. I'm supposed to have sympathy for these idiots when they were the ones who made their fucking beds and then got so mad about what happened while they were lying in them that they started committing war crimes?

We can argue the morality and necessity of the Maquis tactics given that Central Command was actively arming colonists to fight them and justification brought on by reasonable fear of the reputation the Cardies had earned through Bajor, but at the end of the day the Colonists are the ones who decided to stay.

We're not talking about the modern world where people having to leave a colony like that would be losing their livelihoods or marching on a Trail of Tears to refugee camps. This is the god damn 24th Century where there are magic machines that make food out of nothing and there's no such thing as money. The ONLY thing the Colonists were being asked to sacrifice was pride, and they determined pride was worth more than lives. BULL. SHIT.

>>49826678
Go. Fuck. YOUR. SELF.

Where the hell were they supposed to go, huh? You know why people settle new territory? Two reasons people settle new territory.

One: To obtain access to vital materials. If that were the case, the settlers would have been largely specialists and probably even Starfleet personnel who could simply have been ORDERED to evacuate.
Two: Population pressure!


You're telling a bunch of people who left wherever they lived before, who moved out to the frontier and built homes, LIVES there, over years and DECADES, who started families, and who left wherever they were last so that they could find a place that was less crowded to live, to pack up and move away. To WHERE?!
Where, exactly, are you planning to move these people? Earth? Mars? Vulcan, Trill, Betazed?

Or are you just going to uproot them from one frontier, from the homes they've made, because a BELLICOSE FUCKING SECOND-RATE POWER who's all neurotic and insecure and attacks them because they feel border pressured, and move them to the ass-end of nowhere to deposit them - where, exactly?
Are you gonna ask an elderly fucking guy who moved out to make a new home when he was a young man, who raised a family there, to pack up and move out to the ass end of nowhere to do it all again? Going to make him move back to the now-even-more-crowded homeworld he came from? Gonna drop him in a pressure dome on fucking Titan?

Pride?
Pride is a big enough sacrifice. Frankly, the Federation shouldn't have the right to call itself a United Federation of Planets if it's willing to throw its own people under the bus to appease ANYONE.
But pride wasn't the only thing on the line; not just the colonist's pride, not just their homes, not just the Federation's territorial sovereignty. The ENTIRE FUCKING PURPOSE of the UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS was on the line, and you know what? The UFP fucking BLEW IT! They sought peace SO HARD that they paid FAR MORE THAN IT WAS WORTH.

So I guess this is what 24th century /pol/ would be like, huh?

>>49826850
Fuck me running, it is.
Now I wanna see 24th-century /d/.

>>49826654

There is such a thing as natural expansion. Just because the Cardassians weren't living there at the moment doesn't mean it was right for the Federation to move in to places that common sense would tell you they'd want in the future. There's a reason that the Romulans and Klingons set up Neutral Zones with the Federation where neither side can build anything. If anything the Federation fucked up by deciding it was a good idea to park colonies in systems that any moron could see would be of value to a civilization of belligerent, resource-starved militarists who's own colonies were at distances measured in hours! What the fuck were they thinking, the Neutral Zones with the other two big empires take DAYS to traverse, and they thought it was a good idea to colonize the planets next door to the space nazis?!

Your characterization of the Federation will to fight is also biased. The Federation fights to the last drop of blood for every spec of its territory and the lives of its people consistently, and has in every iteration of Star Trek. The only reason they would be wishy-washy about the Cardassian war is obvious: because they considered themselves to be in the wrong for how they went about this particular string of colonization and that fighting a god damn war over land rights and resources like its 19th Century Africa is not the business Starfleet or the Federation should be involved with. They are supposedly above that kind of pettyness and they don't need the land or the raw materials except in the esoteric sense of ADVENTURE AND DISCOVERY. Those who are clinging to it are doing it based on principal, and principal shouldn't trump lives. Fuck, when's the last time anybody actually got punished for violating the prime directive to save a species? Half-past never? The Federation is not in the business of letting people die over pride. The Maquis is. So fuck them.

>>49826807

Population Pressure? Vital Materials? Are you listening to yourself? This is fucking Star Trek! There's enough room on fucking EARTH for the Picards to have a god damn rustic 18th century vineyard! There is no population pressure? RESOURCES? Even ignoring the fact that we are told ENDLESSLY that resources are never and will never be a problem for the Federation because TECH, even if we assume there ARE resources that they need which are scarce, THE FEDERATION HAS MORE TERRITORY UNDER THEIR FLAG THAN THE OTHER ALPHA QUADRANT POWERS COMBINED. MOVE LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE. Is rattling your fucking saber at Space Hitler so he knows you really for realz mean business really worth THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS when you have thousands of god damn planetary systems NOT next to space Hitler that are uninhabited and can support colonies?

Oh, and boo FUCKING hoo about MY PERSONAL INVESTMENT IN MY HOME. For fucks sake, this is the Federation! You can have literally anything you want if you just fucking ask for it! Oh no, the old man who spent his entire life building a homestead on Dustball IV is losing his home, now he has to go back to Earth and live in luxury and comfort instead of on his rustic ranch! The FUCKING Horror.

I'm not unsympathetic to wanting to keep what you built with your own hands, I'm really not. If some Alien came looking for my homestead, I'd be fucking pissed. But if my options were 1) keep my homestead and condemn millions to die in bloody war and 2) give it up and go live in my perfect paradise civilization where I'm free from all want and obligation, ITS NOT A FUCKING HARD DECISION.

I certainly don't hear anybody weeping over the Federation's decision to "appease," the Sheliak by relocating those colonist after Data blew up their fucking irrigation system. Starfleet sure threw those fuckers under the bus just to appease a bellicose second-rate power, right? Better start up my Anti-Blob-Man Maquis Splinter Cell.

>>49826850
>>49826874

...ha, I guess you've got me there.

I would have loved to be watching Romulan C-SPAN the day Shinzon melted the Senate. Bet those callers had some choice words to say about Remans.

Also I bet 24th Century /m/ is a lonely place. Mechs must be like their version of Jetpacks.

>>49824576
yeah but geordi's visor is also useful because it lets him see things his unimpaired vision would not have been able to.

>>49825970
cardies were stockpiling regular weapons. They are too backward to develop anything remotely resembling a doomsday weapon. Picard straight up says to not gul dukat "we know what you're doing and if you try anythin you will get your ass handed to you like you did the first time."

>>49827388

Cardies did build that Super Missile from Voyager. The Klingons on the B'moth also noted that they made very effective use of Electronic Warfare like sensor manipulation or holographic projections, plus convoluted and highly advanced combat tactics, traps within ploys within ambushes and such.

Their tech may be lacking in terms of weapons and shields, the most traditional measures of Starship Power, but they make up for it in other ways. Despite the parallels to the Gulf War, they're no Republican Guard to be easily brushed aside by SUPERIOR TECH.

>>49825970
>Or that time when Riker 2.0, AKA the not shit version of Riker, revealed that the Cardies were stockpiling doomsday weapons on the border in violation of treaties and almost certainly in preparation for an attack on federation space and they let him go to a Death Camp because it got them political advantage?
They were stockpiling a mini-navy that was for use against the Dominion.

>>49827388
Different episode, the one with Riker 2.0 was in DS9, and full blown starships practically are Doomsday weapons, just look what they did to the former Founder world with forty ships. ( The Cardie half of them built at the shipyard Riker B exposed)

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So how about those luddites calling exclusive dibs on the Fountain Youth + Regeneration?

>>49827791
Admiral Dougherty did nothing wrong.

>>49827723
oh damn i forgot about that but I remember the keldon class being inferior to the defiant.

>>49827055
>1) keep my homestead and condemn millions to die in bloody war

Millions of them.

Carrdi ships are a joke unless with 3 to 1 advantage.

I don't think those who open hostilities are really allowed to object when they get rekt.

>>49827791

The Bakuu ARE pretty awful for clinging to their philosophy and immortality once they're told that without the Secret Magic Machine making the planet a death world the So'na were condemned to extinction. I would hope most enlightened people would not choose to live forever at the expense of an entire race dying rather than just live a normal lifespan so that other race can also live.

On the other hand the whole dilemma in Insurrection is poorly constructed and poorly explored, so its hard to debate it.

>>49827887
Fuck it all.

Justin set up a 1,000 mile exclusion zone around shitstain village and feel free to do what you want with rest of planet. Not like they will ever find out.

>>49827887
>>49827924

I don't imagine the Bak'u mind overmuch the idea of other people settling on their world. It's the whole "rendering the planet uninhabitable" thing they object to, and which they have a right to object to.

Plus, of course, the Federation did the most stupid thing they could have done. They told the crew of the USS Enterprise NOT to pull some science shit out of their asses and save the day amicably, because that's what they do on the USS Enterprise - they pull some shit out of their asses.

>>49827887
yeah except they let the sona come back to the planet anyway.

>>49825970
>Or that time when Troi took the piss out of the metal wellbeing of one of the more vulnerable members of the crew for giggles?
Barclay?

>Or that time Sisko bombed a civilian target and made the planet uninhabitable to catch a man whose crime was theft?
Uninhabitable to humans maybe, but Cardassians could live there just fine.

>>49827876

3 to 1 advantage over the top of the fucking line Galaxy and Nebula classes. How many of those do you think there are? Most of Starfleet in that era was overworked, underpowered 23rd Century throwbacks. We see it time after time, Mirandas and Excelsiors and by implication Ambassadors and Constellations as far as the eye could see. You really think the Cardassians need 3 to 1 odds to take those? If it only takes three Galors to beat the Enterprise I'm guessing one Galor can kick the shit out of 75% of Starfleet Ships they're likely to run into in a war one-on-one.

Now, post-Dominion First contact when Starfleet went whole-hog into modernizing the fleet and we started seeing Akiras, Steamrunners, Intrepids, and Sovereigns, that's another story, but in the time frame the Cardassian War took place, that's a whole different story.

>>49827992
That's unfair, you're comparing three Dominion-War era Galors against a Nebula which probably hasn't been rigorously upgraded, to whatever the Cardassians would have had 30 years ago.

Also, the Federation has an absolutely enormous industrial, technological and economic advantage. They could have fucking curbstomped the Cardassians, they just didn't have the stomach to do so. It's what the Klingons keep saying about them, and they're usually wrong, but in the Cardassian-Federation war, that accusation is ENTIRELY justified.

They threw their own people under the bus rather than be the Federation they should have been. How many people, how many planets, does it take for the other guy's ambition to exceed, before the Federation stops being willing to shit on a small minority of its own and stand up for them?

>>49827966
>>49827984

You're forgetting that Admiral Dougherty and Picard specifically discussed the idea of the Sona setting up a colony on the planet and being healed through the natural radiation. Dougherty said that wasn't an option because most of them wouldn't live long enough for it to heal them, they NEEDED the super form their machine would make.

Which makes the ending of that movie kind of horrifying, doesn't it? The Sona realize the error of their ways and... elect to die horribly, praying that they can hold on long enough to be healed by the magic planet but mostly not making it.

>>49828043

Or more likely, they just got stasis chambers and went to sleep until targeted medical treatments meant to bridge their lifespans to the point that the magic planet radiation could fix them could be developed.

Seriously, man. Stasis chambers are a thing in Trek. Why do people keep forgetting that shit? Hell, if nothing else, thanks to good ol' Montgomery Scott, you can always beam yourself into the future.

>>49828042

The Federation is not a civilization that enguages in total war. It took the Dominion, a threat who's technological AND industrial capacity EXCEEDED theirs, to drive them to that kind of war.

Belittling Starfleet for not being willing to crush an inferior opponent, especially an opponent that is not so inferior that there will not be significant blood shed in the process, and double especially that bringing the force needed to crush them to bear might have weakened other borders (although the Maquis saying that the Romulan Neutral Zone can go fuck itself so long as they get their homes saves seems exactly their speed) seems amazingly Un-Star Trek. Starfleet isn't even formally recognized as a military by the government and you want them putting down dictators like George Dubya for planets that have zero value beyond the sentimental investment of those living on them?

>>49826575
>Not that it matters; then the fuckin' Jem'Hadar showed up and just wholesale slaughtered the Maquis, making that inconvenient problem "go away" for the Federation.

Jem'Hadar: The real good guys of Star Trek
Get rid of filthy Cardies and filthier Maquis or your money back!

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So from all of this we can see that Starfleet and by extension the Federation is unwilling to invest in protecting its own citizens.

Ships, soldiers, officers are all irrelevant to the Feds because as soon as you defend yourself the other side has won.

>>49828791

Avoiding Wars instead of fighting them to the bitter end when you have literally nothing to gain other than the vindication of people's attachment to their land and possessions, something that human beings having grown beyond as a driving force in their psyches is core to the entire premise of the fiction, is NOT an investment in protecting your citizens.

Yep.

>>49828791
If all you wanted was an admission, then you should have just said so. Yes, Starfleet is uninvested in protecting Federation citizens.

I'm glad you feel vindicated now. Have fun defending "your" planet. We'll be here fighting the Borg if you need us.

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>>49828882
Yes. Fighting the Borg with a huge percentage of the entire fleet adding up to 40 whole ships half of them relics from a hundred years ago. Wow, that Federation sure has invested in its defence.

>>49828857
When did the Canadiens take over the Federation

>>49829130
>one surprise battle represents the strength of the anti-Borg fleet

wew lad

>>49829173
The admiral that was willing to hand Data over to be dissected against his will mentioned to Picard that the fleet was spread pretty thin since the Borg attack.

So yes. Over the 150+ member worlds of the Federation 40 ships, many of them 23c antiques, was implied to be significant ass kicking.

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>>49829242
Yes, and that attack spurred the creation of more and more powerful ships to combat the threat.

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>>49829364
Only because Earth was threatened.

Whole colonies had vanished but approaching 0 shits were given prior to that.

Romulans have ended the Age of Silence. Who cares? Romulan space is far from Earth.

Kilingons getting their ridges back on. Who cares? Klingon border is a long way from Earth.

Cardies won't stop committing mass suicide at us unless we give them territory? Give them those worlds over there, a long way from Earth.

Earth is where the people making the decisions are from and like all isolated politicians, especially an unelected board of admirals accountable to no one, they don't give a shit so long as it's not happening where they can see it.

The Federation, big lumbering, slow to act and carrying a lot of weight. Cardasian Union, small aggressive and starting fights out of arrogance and master race mentality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlU7gyFYh_w

And then Federation decided to give them a few worlds out of pity. But oh wait, people live there. Oh who gives a shit it's a long way from Earth.

>>49829614
>But oh wait, people live there

Stupid people, apparently.

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>>49829666
Stupid they may be but they were Federation citizens and they had a rightful claim of settlement. And whilst that right can basically be summed up as "Anyone live here? No? I call dibs!"

More rightful than the one the Cardies had in any case which was "I see something you have an I want. Hand it over and fuck off or I'll kill you".

But then the Federation remembered it had been castrated when Kirk died and gave in because they were winning too easily and felt sorry.

>>49829733
So the Federation should go to war in order to defend some easily relocated colonists. They should risk engaging in another decades long conflict because some pricks (from Earth, I might add) have decided that they come before the rest of the Federation.

The Federation fight numerous bush-fire wars against 3rd rate powers. The Tzenkethi, the Talarians, the Sheliac. By comparison the Cardassians are well organised, well equipped and patient. Don't forget that the war lasted about a decade, followed by constant skirmishes for another decade.

That's 10 years of ambushes. 10 years of shit like Setlik 3. 10 years of unnecessary losses reported to the general citizenry of the Federation. And after so long, with no sign of progress or an end to the bloodshed, the people of the Federation are tired of conflict. One of the things you absolutely can't do in a democracy is wage a war without the support of the people.

100 billion people across dozens of planets trump 3 or 4 settlements with a populace in the thousands. So the Federation made the only choice they could and sued for peace.

>>49830330
>They should risk engaging in another decades long conflict because some pricks (from Earth, I might add)
Oh, so Federation should go to war to save some of your precious Tellarite colonists then?
Good to see that in the far future human lives don't matter.

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>>49830330
Then the message is sent that you can give the Federation a bit of trouble and then they give you what you want.

At which point between Kirk and Piccard did Starfleet lose it's spine, balls, heart and passion?

>One of the things you absolutely can't do in a democracy is wage a war without the support of the people.

Is the Federation itself a democracy?

´The real answer to all of this is that the script writers just made shit up as they went along with only a minimum of thought given to previous nor upcoming material.

>>49830367
That's not even remotely the point. They're from Earth. A paradise, to hear Sisko talk about it. It's not like they don't know they could bail and be welcomed back to the capital world of the Federation with open arms.

So they're holding out for no other reason than they were raised in paradise and bear all the entitlement that comes with that.

>>49830414
Yes, it's a Federal-style government. Everybody gets to vote for their local government, their planetary representative and the president of the Federation. It's all supposed to be space-America after all.

>>49830478
That's not even remotely the point. The point is that the Federation is more interested in not defending it's borders to avoid hurting the fee fees of a bunch of spoonhead aggressors who would feel sad if they lost the war they started.

>>49830509
So they get a couple of really shit corporate sponsored figureheads to vote between that don't represent the people and the person with the most votes looses?

>>49830575
>>49830549
>we must fight functionally pointless wars
>corporations own candidates

I'm just gonna take a swing here and guess you might be projecting some of your feelings about an upcoming event onto a show about an idealised version of Humanity.

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>>49830658
A show made made by an American with a very American view of the future. Given that you just described it as a Federal-style government and Space-America I can't be the one to take the blame for comparing Federation to America in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!!

As for the hilarity going down in the USA I have no horse in this race. It's not on my ever so British race track track. We have our own fun to be had.

But I don't envy you. You got a crook or a nutter to choose from.

>>49830782
It's interesting how such a supposedly American future has such a centre-left attitude. Free healthcare, a benchmark education system and a strict policy of non domination.

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Why is it villains in Star Trek tend to be the most relatable.

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>>49831042
They are allowed to have personalities.

>>49823257
Meh

>>49831042
You mean Dukat, basically. Dukat was relatable because, despite being a dick, he had a clear sense of right and wrong. Just right and wrong through the lens of people that embrace loyalty to the state as a simple fact of life.

Plus cult leaders tend towards being charismatic anyway.

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I think what we're all forgetting is that the Cardassians did nothing wrong, from their perspective. They view conflict as a legitimate response to border tensions.

>>49831565
So presumably we can say that from their perspective the Federation did nothing wrong when Cardassia got bombed, burned and salted earth.

Cardassia; chief exporter of starting shit they can't finish and then bitching about it.

>>49831650
Objectively yes. In their minds, that's the price of defeat. At least that's the point of view espoused by the Cardassian military of the time. No doubt things changed markedly after that.

It occurs to me that if Starfleet had geared up to PROPERLY take the fight to the Cardassian Union, instead of waving their limp dicks at them and sailing in with Ambassador-classes every time the Cardies came over the border but refusing to sail in and hurt them in their own territory, their "big fleet" wouldn't have been curbstomped so fucking bad at the Battle of Wolf 359.

That's the problem with the UFP - they like to continually disarm themselves every time they've won a huge war, so they don't look aggressive, but they need to get it into their cultural zeitgeist that when some petty tyrant, second-rate galactic power, or general shitheel like the Cardies starts some shit, you have to answer with extreme prejudice.

Frankly, they're damn lucky that the Romulans and Klingons didn't just up and carve off half of their respective Neutral Zones when the Feddies limp-dicked the Cardassian War. Well, I say lucky, not really: The Rommies and Klinks both know FULL WELL what happens when Starfleet gets some warhawk admirals in power and shifts the industrial war machine into high gear.

The Cardassians got spared that lesson because they were SO pathetic the Federation decided to just let them shit all over a bunch of their citizens rather than ACTUALLY DOING THEIR JOB as a sovereign government. A least, until Gul Dukat made the epically stupid move of going down on that Founder bitch and selling Cardassia to the Dominion.

>>49831916
Given the technology starfleet has if they were to fully take the kiddie gloves off and go FULL WAR they would burn half the galaxy down.

They have the ability to make self replicating mine fields that are invisible.

They can build ships that can phase through solid matter.

They can build sub-space transporters that can go over whole light years of distance.

They can build extra-dimensional transporters that can go through any shield

They know how to make A.I. that doesn't give a shit.

They know how to make mutagenic plagues that adapt to every species of everything on a plant and leave it a lifless rock in a few months before the virus itself breaks down safely soon after.

They could create augment soldiers centuries ago that could dismember a Klingon with their bare hands, by 24c they could make that with with psychic powers.

They can make personal forcefield generators, power armour and sniper rifles that fire through a transporter and transport the bullet still going at the same speed to just in front of your head.

And that's without mentioning the confiscated or salvaged doomsday machine they have in their museums just waiting to be switched back on.

If the Federation had used all it knows for the Dominion war it would have gone something like
>Hahahaha we bombed Earth holy fuck that was fun. Why are the Vulcans digging fallout shelters? HA! we have broken their logic, they fear us! ALL FEAR THE DOMINION!
Nah brah, we're waiting out the retaliation. I'd suggest you surrender now and they might use lube but nothing is going to unrape you from where you are going.
>HAHAHAHAHA Oh fuck you pointy eared bastards are funny.
>HAHAHAhaha hah ha. ha.
>Why's that colony gone dark?
>What just killed the 9 Legion?
>Where are the 6th and 7th fleets?
>OH OH FUCKING SHIT HOLY FUCK OH SWEET FOUNDERS WHAT TE FUCHL RE COMIN OUT THR WAOLLS HEWLPP[ POERFAEOPL:JM SWEE FOUNDERS SHOW ME MERCY SOMEBODY HELP {static}
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lva8L-J8x04

>>49832259
Don't forget that the shackled Section 31 of Starfleet (IE: they don't get to go full KILL EVERYTHING) had basically killed the Founders with no real effort, based off of Mora Pol's research notes and the hope that Odo would join the Great Link.

>>49832259
When your baseline doomsday weapon is a genesis torpedo, you sort of need to chill out or accidentally commit genocide on the regular.

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>>49833103
>tfw the novels made the Genesis effect so much worse
>tfw the Genesis Wave novels actually got published and people liked them

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>>49833103
Starfleet doesn't need doomsday weapons. Its big Explorer-class starships are enough.

The Federation could easily have turned the Fed-Cardie war into a curbstomp battle by gearing up hard, and smashing the Cardassian Union's ability to wage war. I'm sure an awful lot of people the Cardassians just up and fucking conquered would have been really grateful if they'd done that, too.

Then they could have Post-WWII Germany'd the entire Cardassian Union, built them back up and taught them how NOT to need to go around conquerin' to get the resources they needed, and by the time the Jem'Hadar showed up, we'd have Pic Related wearing pajama uniforms.

Instead they completely limp-dicked it, and what we got was another twenty years of Bajoran Occupation and a militarized junta government that couldn't wait to jump into bed with the Founders until they realized that meant a slimy shapeshifting tentacle implanting itself so far up their asses as to nickname them all "Mitt".

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All this talk about the dumb shit the Federation does or more accurately doesn't do makes me want to see what they would do when faced with a pro-transhuman, anti-prime directive separatist movement

Essentially a vocal minority inside the Federation has grown tired of its anti intervention policy and laws against furthering the evolution of the species so they decide secede

Basically Cerberus without the xenophobia

>>49833303
>they literally think they're superior and they alter less-developed species to suit their needs
>not xenophobic
People like you are why I don't hang out with other science fiction nerds

>>49827388
>hey are too backward to develop anything remotely resembling a doomsday weapon.
They don't need something like >>49832259 to deal with most people. Any starship is in itself a doomsday weapon to any undefended (or slowly-defended) planet - the amount of antimatter on even a civilian warp ship would be enough to destroy all major cities on any planet. The various plasmas and poisonous and radioactive crap that's part of everyday life on a ship would seriously screw with at least a major city, let alone a colony.
And that's not getting into actual warships. A typical Starfleet photon torpedo has a potential yield of ~45Mt, and these can easily be upgraded. For reference, Tzar Bomba was 50Mt. An actual warlike race like the Cardassians most likely has higher normal yields. They have phasers, disruptors, whatever, which can do incredible devastation on their own, and a ship doesn't run out of those. That small Tal Shiar/OO fleet was expecting to blow off the mantle of the Founder planet in the few hours it would take for the Dominion fleet to arrive. Not even a Mars-sized planet knocking into Earth could do that. Even in the couple minutes the fleet actually had to rek the planet, they destroyed a significant portion of the crust.
And even all that's just the actual weapons. Any semi-motivated science or engineering officer could whip up some more creative doomsdays. Even the klinks were able to blast all the DNA off an entire planet, to the point where that genetic code was completely useless, with a single blast before the Enterprise could do anything about it.

>>49833303
That could be fun.

Benevolent uplifters.

They find primitive sapients, infiltrate disguised as them and start accelerating technological and social development whilst try to keep their cultural flavours intact.

5,000 years of progress squashed into a little over 500 just so they can meet them as brothers and sisters.

Federation hate them because M-muh Prime Drective no interfering with Destiny.

The breakaways see the Federation as a possessing moral cowardice.

>>49833235
It's right there as the Federation's Holy Writ to not do that. The Prime Directive is so inconsistently applied after Kirk that its primary meaning is worthless.

>>49833414
A lot of that was that the writers can't into maths.

>>49826919
>There is such a thing as natural expansion. Just because the Cardassians weren't living there at the moment doesn't mean it was right for the Federation to move in to places that common sense would tell you they'd want in the future.
Are you kidding me? "They might want it in the future, so even though we want it now, and are capable at this very moment (which they aren't, otherwise they'd be here too), we should just leave it alone, because."

Also, you do realize that the Federation has "natural expansion" too, right? And the places in contention are probably a lot closer to the Federation core than most other colonies? DS9 is pretty close to Earth, and really close to Cardassia, and it would only be natural to assume that the contested colonies are closer to Earth generally than the Cardassian core is?
>There's a reason that the Romulans and Klingons set up Neutral Zones with the Federation where neither side can build anything.
Yah, because it's a buffer zone between two space empires that would otherwise be at war. It has nothing to do with colonies. It's literally an area where there can be no question about the political status of some system or another, and prevents one power or the other from claiming a questionable system as their own.
> the Neutral Zones with the other two big empires take DAYS to traverse
No they don't. The Romulan NZ is only a light-year across. Even the NX-01 could make it from Earth to Qo'nos in five days, and that ship was slow as hell. A Romulan ship could cross from their side of the NZ and get to a planet clearly on the Fed side in a matter of hours.

>>49833467
Yeah they basically hate the Federations idea of letting "destiny" decide the fate of an entire species

>Oh a horrible disease threatening to wipe out a planet should we send medical aid
NO Prime Directive
>Early 20th century level planet but hasn't developed warp
Ignore them Prime Directive
>Non Federation species engaged in Sentient Rights violations
Ignore them until they mess with us Prime Fucking Directive

>>49827055
The problem with conceding planets to Space Nazi's/Hitler is that once you do, they will want more.
https://youtu.be/t2TDf9XU09k?t=153

I think the prime directive could have made more sense if there was a very specific incident that led to their policy of total non interference. Like the rise of an empire that goes on a massive genocidal rampage, all thanks to some do-gooder humans stopping a comet from wiping them out.

It would at least give more of a reason than "not interfering with destiny"

>>49833915
I believe up until Enterprise happened it was supposed to be a direct result of disastrous first contact with the Klingons leading to decades of being in a state of war with them? Though honestly I can't remember if that comes from secondary sources and not the shows/movies any more.

But the point was supposed to be they created the prime directive to stop adventurous commanders doing things that they couldn't predict the results of reliably, and at points it was decidedly not just no fucking with pre-warp civilisations, but don't fuck with warp capable civilisation's internal affairs either.

My problem with it is how it was never really laid out clearly, stuck to, and eventually fetishised by a series of writers fucking up what started out as a smart idea by putting it in circumstances where it should/shouldn't apply and failing to put solid arguments behind any of it.

>the NX-01 could make it from Earth to Qo'nos in five days
I really, really wish we could retcon that to something that made sense alongside every other fucking depiction of how far away the Klingons are.

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>>49829130
Jesus christ, did he actually say that?

>>49828857
Class M planets in areas contiguous to federation space are still valuable as they're a finite resource.

I sure fucking hope the message of Star Trek is not "you must give up attachment to land and possessions" because that's something I'll never subscribe to, and I never got that from the show...

>>49834140
But terraforming is totally a thing. So it really shouldn't matter how many Class M planets are around.

>>49832259
>They can build extra-dimensional transporters that can go through any shield
Wasn't that the big threat of the Dominion when they were first introduced? That Eris was able to beam through DS9's shields?

>by 24c they could make that with with psychic powers.
Whoa, what episode was this in?

Most of these technologies are just damn bad writing where the authors didn't consider what effects adding this technology in would have on the rest of the universe...

>>49833303
I completely agree. It's about time the show features an actual debate.

Basically, the Culture ideology vs. the Federation ideology.

>>49834257
Jesus christ, you can actually terraform any planet to be class M? More shitty writing.

>>49834403
>Jesus christ, you can actually terraform any planet to be class M? More shitty writing.

That was literally the goal of the Genesis Project. But outside of that, terraforming is totally a thing in Trek:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Terraforming

>>49834459
The Genesis Report (from the Genesis Wave books) actually calls that out as wrong.

In fact, some Federation Councilmember even calls this out as an example of human bias and a reason to reject Genesis on biased grounds. It notes that the councilor retracted his objection after a technical briefing from Dr. Carol Marcus WRT how the Genesis Device could be used to terraform a planet of any kind of class, but for their demonstration purposes, they had gone with Type M for the first.

That having been SAID, just because you CAN do a thing doesn't mean you SHOULD. If you terraform Mercury into a Class-M planet, it's going to VERY RAPIDLY turn into a post-garden charcoal world because holy fuck, it's way the fuck too close to the goddamn sun!

>>49834403
>Jesus christ, you can actually terraform any planet to be class M? More shitty writing.

So long as it's a rocky world, roughly the size of Earth (so that I can support the proper atmosphere density), orbiting in the Goldilocks zone of a star you can make it class M. Though even outside of the Goldilocks orbital zone you can make a semi habitable world, eithers arctic (class P) or arid (class H). There are a bunch of planet classes that are reasonably habitable, if not ideal.

>>49832259
On the topic of superweapons, doesn't driving through something at warp speed cause immense destruction?

>>49834459
Yeah, I glanced at that, but didn't get an idea as to the extent it was possible.

>>49834539
>Goldilocks zone
Ack, thanks, that was the word I was trying to remember. How would you go about making an arctic planet (P) habitable? Change the atmosphere to allow more solar energy in?

>>49834511
Mercury is a good example of a bad example world for terraforming. Mars on the other hand...

Point being that there are limited Class M planets, there are even more not Class M planets that are suitable for terraforming. Sure outside of Genesis it may not be simple or quick, but it is possible and something to consider.

>>49834564
>How would you go about making an arctic planet (P) habitable? Change the atmosphere to allow more solar energy in?

Greenhouse Effect. Alter the atmosphere to retain more of the light/heat from the star it orbits to cause a mini global warming.

>>49834564
>How would you go about making an arctic planet (P) habitable? Change the atmosphere to allow more solar energy in?

Well, a number of Federation species can live in much colder environs. Andorians are the obvious example. But you could make it slightly more habitable for Humans by tapping into geothermal power or taking advantage of the greenhouse effect.

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>>49823257
>>49824085
>>49824247

Sulu is the best captain.

also: Takei best actor, for being LGBT and yet being brassy enough to play a STRAIGHT character.

fuck yeah. true diversity there!

>>49834889
And they even gave him the best looking ship. Excelsior class is best class

>>49834403
>by 24c they could make that with with psychic powers.
>Whoa, what episode was this in?

Unnatural Selection, TNG S02E07

The Federation had a science station where they were genetically engineering super human children that looked like adults and had a full array of psychic powers. Their engineered active immune systems were killing everyone that wasn't them.

Presumably the whole project was quietly sanitized afterwards and the subjects either put down or forever forced to live in a luxury prison, never to have outside contact. Most likely the former.

>>49834118
>I really, really wish we could retcon that to something that made sense alongside every other fucking depiction of how far away the Klingons are.
Warp lanes. Easy. The Klingons didn't know about the one from Earth to Qo'nos. Though they learned soon enough.

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>>49835994
>warp lanes

>>49835538
>Excelsior
That's not how you spell Constellation

>>49828079
except he was stated to be a transporter genius and the other dude who was with him suffered pattern degredation and they couldnt bring him back

>>49836325
It's the only reason why you'd want to have star charts or whatever. I mean, you can just point your telescope out the window and see where the stars are. But if there is something between the stars that makes you go fast (or slow), and you can't just look for them sitting on your butt at the observatory, that gives some credence to the whole "exploran" thing.

>>49836520
Right, and Scotty was working with 80-year-before-ST:Insurrection transporter tech, transporter tech which was DAMAGED by a hard crash landing to boot.

Given that, it's entirely possible to do it by the time of Insurrection.

>>49836547
>It's the only reason why you'd want to have star charts or whatever
How about knowing where stars are for navigation because they're typically looking at all the bloody things that are around stars? Or all the anomalies and weird shit in interstellar space?

You know, that things they spend a fuckton of time doing. With nary a mention of 'warp lanes'.

>>49836520
So you're saying that 50% of the time, it works every time? I'll take those odds.

>>49823882
>>49823845
>>49823926

Modern cargo vessels (and presumably including tankers, though I'm not up to speed on the finer points of maritime law and international treaty obligations) can carry a maximum of 12 passengers (in addition to a crew which can be any size - as long as they're legitimate crew with legitimate jobs to do). But that's an arbitrary limit which has as much to do with protecting the few remaining long-haul passenger fleets (other than the pleasure cruisers, which are obviously hitting a different market segment) as it has to do with preventing accidents and ensuring that the average cargo captain has sufficiently few distractions. It wouldn't really make a huge difference in fuel terms to move 100 or even more passengers, even with a fair bit of baggage and freight - it was at one time commonplace - and you can easily see this kind of legislative barrier being dropped when the distances aren't thousands of kilometers but hundreds of trillions of kilometers, especially if parts of the interior can be modularly refitted from cargo bays or fuel tanks to quarters via replicator or transporter technology and essential systems suitably isolated from interference by passengers. You can, it's true, argue that these rules would be just as important from a safety viewpoint to a starship as they are to a cargo vessel on earth, but since the longer-distance trips might only haul fuel or cargo one way to the stars and the remoteness of their destinations might mean they're the only ship in the sector for a year, carrying a few hundred is probably still going to be overlooked.

>>49833899
Why can't Klingons have depth like this anymore? Damn.

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>>49835538
>>49836399
>all this smallness

You will never understand what makes the best ship, best.

>>49834140
He was talking about using bombing campaigns against ISIS that involve a lot of civilian casualties, which plays into ISIS' whole claim of a West vs Islam clash of cultures, which they use for recruitment purposes. That's literally their whole plan, getting the West to alienate all the non-radicalized muslims so that they can only see ISIS as their savior.

Naturally, the right have used it without any context whatsoever in an attempt to make him look stupid.

>>49829733
The Federation totally offered to resettle the Colonists in some nice non-Cardassian-haunted colony.

But no, 'muh home' 'muh crops' 'muh dirt', which is really all the Maquis' claims amounted to, given that their homes could pretty much be re-created perfectly somewhere else, they could grow those crops somewhere else, and it all amounted to 'I don't wanna be told what to do' and 'dumb spoonheads' and revenge motivations. None of that is a solid reason for the Federation to go to war with the Cardassians again.

>>49837212
Is that a D'Deridex-class warbird in Starfleet livery?

Because... I am surprisingly okay with this.
I still think Excelsior is prettier.

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>when you call the African descended human "pinkskin" anyway

>>49837503
If it were Starfleet colors, the nacelles would be blue.

>>49838090
>If it were Starfleet colors, the nacelles would be blue.
>>49837212

> Looks at very blue nacelles
> Looks at Andorian chump like he needs to get his eyes examined.

>>49838139

Compare the blue of the nacelles here >>49829364 to the blue of the dex's. It looks nearly white by comparison.

>>49838264
I'd also imagine that it began life as a standard D'Deridex, was captured at some point, and converted for Federation service. No reason they'd conduct MASSIVE changes to the warp nacelles.

>>49837423
Oh, well that makes more sense.

>>49837497
Jesus christ, I never use this word, but you are being a real fucking cuck in this argument. By this reasoning, Starfleet should just give up Earth and recreate it somewhere else whenever anyone threatens it, right?

I don't understand your point of view here at all. What is the difference between protecting Earth, which humanity clearly still has emotional attachments to in the canon, and the Maquis wanting to protect and defend their home?

>>49838477
The difference is that Earth is the home of Humanity, the HQ of Starfleet and the Federation, and the home to billions of sentient lifeforms.

The Maquis were a few thousand colonists who chose to settle on the Cardassian border in the first place, then were willing to plunge the Federation into a war that would cost magnitudes more lives than the entirety of the Maquis represented as a whole, simply because they decided their homes OF LESS THAN TWO DECADES were worth a war they couldn't win, for principles that were as thin as paper.

It isn't as if they were fighting out of the desperation of losing what they had and becoming refugees, or with nowhere to retreat to. The Federation was absolutely willing to resettle all of them on a safer colony world, to rebuild their homes, to protect them there.

But no, their entirely replacable buildings and their patches of dirt were worth the potential deaths of millions.

It was selfish and stupid of them, and "emotional attachment" only goes so far when it's the ONLY reason you're willing to risk millions of other peoples' lives for.

>>49838477
No one's threatening to start a war over Earth. Also the emotional attachment of an entire species is more important than the attachment of what probably aren't even a billion people all combined.

>>49838638
So why did the Federation let them settle there to begin with, if the planet was so close to the Cardassian border? Or does the Federation have a policy like homesteading where you can go and settle wherever you want?

Also I wonder what the moral opinion on forcibly resettling them would be. Doesn't sound like something the Federation would do, but it's an idea.

I do appreciate that DS9 has given us a lot of these thorny ethical quandaries to debate, moreso than I remember TNG doing (since most moral quandaries there were developed over the course of a single episode, so they had to be kept pretty basic, I guess?)

>>49838761
>Doesn't sound like something the Federation would do

Watch the TNG episode with the Indians.

>>49838761
They settled there before the Cardassian war even happened. Before the Federation knew that area was claimed by Cardassia. Before they knew there were Cardassian colonies just a stone's throw away from those planets.

Then they gave those planets to Cardassia during the peace treaty negotiations, just like Cardassia gave up territory to the Federation elsewhere.

It isn't like the Federation didn't tell them 'Hey, the war's ending on the premise that those colonies are now Cardassian territory. That's how it is. Peace treaties mean we give something up, just like they do. You need to leave. I know you don't like it, but that's the price we're paying for peace.'.

Then they whined and cried and became terrorists over homes they'd lived in for less than two decades, rather than go live somewhere else, getting the fresh new colony experience they presumably enjoy so much. I mean, it's not like there are any pressures or real incentives that push people to become colonists in the Federation. They do so because they have a hardon for a harder way of life, making a new home that'll become a shining star in the Federation's future. Something that became IMPOSSIBLE the moment that peace treaty was signed.

So they're fighting for NOTHING.

I can't respect that.

>>49838814
The moment Wesley did something interesting he left.

>>49838888
I want adult time-traveling Wesley to appear in Discovery.

>>49825975

Benzites practice a standard Genetic 'correcting', and even that was considered a point that held up their Federation membership for a good while.

>>49838820

This. It wasn't simply a concession of territory. The Cardassians surrendered worlds to the Federation at the same time, too. It was, supposedly, straightening out a kink in the borders so that neither side had a massive salient into the other.

The Cardie colonists in now-Federation space responded differently - a mixture of most-part 'Union says we leave, so we leave' and a minor 'Fuck the Union, I'm in the Federation now, were are my replicator coupons'. All the Cardassian colonies that caused trouble for the marquis were ones ALSO in Cardassian space that rightly considered the Marquis colonists in breach of the peace.

>>49839498
>Fuck the Union, I'm in the Federation now, were are my replicator coupons

Best be hoping you don't get reconquered, motherfucker.

>>49839546
Or ceded back to the Union :^)

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>>49838959
>Wanting Wesley in anything

Shut up Will!

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i wish they had put garak or dukat into the regular cast rather than them be reoccuring

theyre both so good

>>49840198
Garak's personality would have gotten tiresome. He would have become like Quark.

>>49840198
Andrew Robinson hated the makeup for Garak. And Dukat was best served as a recurring character, so that they could make him grow each time he appeared. Or do you want a Dukat who had Kira's massive amounts of "learn a lesson, forget lesson" problems?

>>49840361
but quark was based, from first to last

>>49840469
Not that anon, but Quark was annoying as fuck

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>>49840484
Quark was fucking awesome. Especially the time he got got married at d'k tahg point, saved a Klingon Great House from being absorbed through trickery by balls-out bravery, earned a divorce, and then made it with his smoking-hot ex-wife.

He should have remarried Grillka, because she was smoking hot, brilliant, and just bloodthirsty and crazy enough.

>>49839498
I'm sorry, but no. No. Absolutely not.

It is not acceptable for a sovereign nation to sell its own citizenry to settle a border.
The treaty that ended the first Federation-Cardassian war was a fucking travesty, the Maquis didn't leave the Federation, the Federation left them. Every politician who supported that fucking bilateral-as-a-mutual-handjob resolution to a war the Cardassian Union started and then couldn't finish should have been fucking thrown out on their ears.

Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither, but those who would trade OTHERS' liberty for their own security deserve death.

>>49840601
poor bashir

at that point it seemed like everyone but him was getting laid

>>49840688
Hey, he's the one who had the poor taste to get with the zero-g faerie girl who got all crisis-of-faithy about having to kill a prick who hijacked her at disruptor point and fucked off back her homeworld to do some tube-launched, optically-tracked wire-guided navel gazing.

Pity, really, because she was great. She should've become a regular.

>>49840688
Dude, Lyta was having sex with Bashir for, what, two years solid?

She's not the only one, I seem to have the feeling that Bashir saw a fairly constant stream of short-lived but successful relationships. I don't think he was pitiful enough to actually lie to O'Brien about his being successful with numerous women, even if he was being shallow and insensitive while doing said bragging.

The fact that he was carrying such a torch for Dax for so long doesn't mean he didn't have success anywhere else.

>>49840601

For fucks sake, the Federation did not sell its fucking citizens, it sold territory. Ever heard of immanent domain? Its a fundamental concept of sovereignty that the STATE owns all the land over which it claims domain. Even if your family bought that land and homesteaded upon it for a thousand generations, if the state says they need it, they have every right to take it.

Starfleet fought, bled and died for those planets and whiny ass colonists living on them for TEN FUCKING YEARS in the Cardassian war, don't you dare tell me that the Federation had no right to cede the territory negotiating the peace.

The treaty was a shitty treaty, fine. Everyone can agree it was a shitty treaty. Cardassia's ruling class are shitty people so of course the treaty was going to suck. But at the end of the day the dirt those fucking space hicks were tilling WAS NOT THEIR DIRT no matter what their delusions about frontiersy living led them to believe.

The Colonists sold THEMSELVES. Once Starfleet told them to go, as citizens of the Federation they were OBLIGATED to go. Once Immanent Domain is done, if you are still living on that land your are a fucking criminal trespasser. The Colonists were so fucking stupid that they decided they were willing to pay ANY price to keep living on their precious land. The fact that they ended up choking on their decision is not the UFP's fault, it is THEIR fault.

DS9 had a whole god damn episode about this exact topic on Bajor. Kira felt sorry for the old man who the government was forcing to leave too. She listened to all the same dumbass arguments you're making now about how his ties to the land mattered more than the greater good and it was wrong for a distant leader to screw him over that. You know what Kira did? She burned his fucking house down herself and dragged his ass away.

The Maquis and anyone who defends their idiocy and racially motivated terrorism on the grounds of FREEDUMB AIN'T FREE can drown in their ideals and die.

>>49840718
It also doesn't help the Mega-Bitch Jadzia decided to tell her that her and Bashir was like The Little Mermaid. Not the Disney version either.

>>49829614
Who is this fucking idiot holding a blue ringed octopus?

>>49840783

* eminent domain

Fucking autocorrect.

>>49840783
Colonists that also fought in those wars and many of which had the misfortune of being taken alive.

Exactly what was the Federations reason for handing over those worlds?

"We feel sorry for killing so many of you that attacked us. Here have some planets our people fought and bled and died to keep hold of".

Yes the Spoonheads gave up some worlds. Boo Hoo. They can should consider it a deterrent to starting wars they can't finish and fuck their sense of national pride.

>>49840718

Ug, she wasn't great, that episode was awful. She was such a forced Cool Girl fantasy. "Whoa, look how take charge and tough she is dealing with her condition, and she knows all this obscure trivia crap that I find casually interesting like when Klingon food is crappy or not, but secretly she's all bubbly and cute inside and she can fllllyyyyyy."

Gag me. Her character was so forced-perfect it ruined the episode almost immediately.

>>49840859

Your entire argument is predicated on this notion that the Federation 1) could have and 2) should have brutally crushed the Cardassians and forced punitive conditions for peace on them. Number 1 is based on flimsy reasoning about the Federation's theoretical industrial capacity, what their will to wage war "should," be, and an estimation of the Cardassian ability to fight Starfleet that is measured only on the technological edge of theoretical one-on-one ship duels. All of those are flimsy at best.

The second one goes against everything the Federation stands for. They don't mercilessly crush their enemies unless its absolutely necessary (see The Dominion). They believe in taking the high road because they don't believe in revenge. The fuckers who blew their planet up in the Enterprise days sit on the Federation Council. The Klingons fought a cold war with them for 200 years, during which we KNOW they attacked Federation planets, killed colonists and ceased territory, and because the Federation didn't do exactly what you suggest they do and instead kept on the high road the Klingons eventually became close allies.

The Federation is not in the business of issuing Treaties of Versailles or Occupying the middle east. The Maquis going out to take blood for blood because they couldn't accept that Starfleet doesn't fight that way makes them failures as human beings, not something to be romanticized. The whole point of Star Trek is that in the future we are above, better than, the kind of thinking that rationalizes the Maquis. If the Maquis are right than everything Star Trek is goes in the trash, and FUCK. THAT.

>>49840859
This whole 'the Cardassian's only threat to the Federation was how much blood they'd get on their nice clean uniforms' meme that we've seen evolve in the past dozen or so threads is getting tedious as hell.

Yes, it takes about three Galor class battlecruiers to match one Federation starship. When that starship is THE FUCKING FLAGSHIP, the Galaxy class Enterprise. MAYBE when it's the Nebula class 2nd-best combat-heavy cruiser.

But the VAST, VAST majority of Starfleet's fleet at the time of the Cardassian war were NOT Galaxy class or close. At best, the most dangerous ships the Federation had were maybe 1:1.5 to the Galor, of which the Cardassians had a GREAT many more than the best ships the Federation had available.

Now, the Federation had plenty of other, older, ships to make up the balance, and in the end, they would've emerged victorious from total all-out war with Cardassia, were they backed into a corner and fought as savagely and struck as deeply as they were capable, rather than limiting themselves to a border skirmish.

But the death toll would've been in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. It would've been horrendous. The worst war Starfleet has ever had, bar none. And yes, at the end of things, Starfleet wold've stood victorious above the smoking ruins of Cardassia Prime, just as it turned out at the end of the Dominion War.

But the death toll, ON THE FEDERATION SIDE, would've been unimaginable.

All these armchair chickenhawk FUCKING SCI-FI SHOW critics have missed the fucking point. The Federation doesn't think like you, you goddamn primitive right-wing apes. They actually care more about the value of life than you do. These are real people to them, not some backdrop for a fantasy hardon-generator over how many spoonheads you can kill in your calculations.

Fucking hell. When the fuck did this /pol/...IN...SPACE...! contingent show up in these threads? I remember them being a relative rarity until recently.

>>49840940
And all that moral pontification is just so much flatulence in the breeze when none of the neighbouring nations share such notions and indeed consider them to either be a form of social retardation or weakness of character.

The message that the Federation sent to the Klingons was "It's okay to attack us because we won't retaliate in any serious manner". And they did for 200 years causing more loss of life than a proper and decent slap down would have done. Klingons respect strength. The Federation intentionally weakend itself to avoid hurting Klingon feelings #RidgedLivesMatter.

And the sad thing is that if worlds had been taken by Starfleet in the war with the spoonheads and the original spoonhead inhabitants decided to stay they would have enjoyed a significant improvement in their quality of life once the Federation did a few renovations. And they would have done those renovations to show off to the Cardi Union.

>>49841024
Defending your borders in times of war is considered /pol/ now?

Federation was incredibly stupid for decades.

We don't need to make ships for defensive purposes, we aren't at war and we are far to peace loving for any of these neighbouring empires to try and attack us.

>>49841040

The irony of this post considering Eddington joined the Maquis because the Federation's wish for everyone to coexist peacefully and willingly was liken unto Borg Assimilation is mind boggling.

In one post you managed to advocate for gunboat diplomacy as the primary means of interaction with foreign powers, Tarkin Doctrine-style fear of force military dictatorship, and the White Man's Burden as a justification for Imperialism. And then suggest the Federation not operating under all of those makes them weak and stupid. Amazing.

Also, I literally cannot fathom where you keep getting this "the only reason Starfleet doesn't bulldoze the quadrant is because they want to preserve the egos of the other races." You've mentioned it about the Cardassians AND Klingons now and it makes no fucking sense.

Oh, and BTW, the fact that Starfleet holds to its principals, even if it costs them their very lives, in a hostile universe where nobody else plays by the rules they force themselves to play by, IS WHY THEY ARE THE HEROES! Do you even like Star Trek? Did you mistake this for the Space: Above And Beyond general thread? Maybe the Battlestar Galactica general thread? Brutal retaliatory space racism as motive for total war were big in those shows as I recall.

>>49840783
>For fucks sake, the Federation did not sell its fucking citizens, it sold territory. Ever heard of immanent domain?
You mean one of those 21st-century abuses of power which the United Federation of Planets is supposed to have done away with?

>Even if your family bought that land and homesteaded upon it for a thousand generations, if the state says they need it, they have every right to take it.
No. They don't. See also: the fact that Chateau Picard still exists, and hasn't been forcibly seized from the Picard family to make way for a new arcology housing complex. After all, you can get perfectly good wine from a replicator, and can maximize the social good the land produces by parking a gigantic, Starbase-sized housing complex that can house millions of people there, instead of the what, 50 at most that can live on a large, sprawling vinyard?

>Starfleet fought, bled and died for those planets and whiny ass colonists living on them for TEN FUCKING YEARS in the Cardassian war, don't you dare tell me that the Federation had no right to cede the territory negotiating the peace.
A war the spoonheads started! A war the goddamn Cardies began! You know what's NEVER acceptable? Ceding so much as ONE GODDAMNED CENTIMETER to the aggressors in a war you're defending!

>DS9 had a whole god damn episode about this exact topic on Bajor.
And I bet she wouldn't have been so fucking ready to burn the old man's house if it was a Cardassian laying claim to the land, now, would she?
So, which province of Bajor is she willing to cede to the Cardies for peace - Eastern, maybe, perhaps Dahkur? Hedrikspool, fuck those Hedrikspoolians, right?
And which province of Earth would they UFP be willing to cede to the spoonheads for peace, for that matter? South America, perhaps; maybe Austrailia, fuck those Aussies, amirite?

>>49841040

>The message that the Federation sent to the Klingons was "It's okay to attack us because we won't retaliate in any serious manner". And they did for 200 years causing more loss of life than a proper and decent slap down would have done. Klingons respect strength. The Federation intentionally weakend itself to avoid hurting Klingon feelings #RidgedLivesMatter.

Did you just, I don't know, miss Star Trek VI and every episode discussing Kurzon Dax and the Khitomir Accords? The Klingons realized they were completely wrong about Federation compassion and selflessness being flaws in the end! When their civilization was ruined overnight by Praxus exploding, the War Hawks thought they would attack to take new territory to preserve their empire, but because the UFP immediately offered aid and peace and disarmament so they could cut back their military budget, the Klingons sued for peace instead. The Federation showed the Klingons trust as if the last two centuries of fighting had never happened, AND IT MADE THEM REALIZE THEY WERE WRONG.

And then came the Enterprise C willingly fighting unwinnable odds against the Romulans to save Klingon civilians. Again, as if their history of conflict had never happened, a ship full of Starfleet Officers willingly took on a fight that they KNEW would leave them all dead just because it was right. And just like that, overnight, a cease fire became an alliance.

The Federation kept to its ideals and in the long run, they won the argument in every possible measure against their most implacable enemy, a race that nobody ever imagined could understand those ideals let alone respect them. Despite every indication that it was impossible, The Federation won the ideological argument and an enemy became a friend. That's what Star Trek is all about!

And you're sitting there talking about how they should have just conquered Cardassia instead of making peace? Seriously?

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>>49840783
>The Maquis and anyone who defends their idiocy and racially motivated terrorism
No, sorry, you don't get to call "racially motivated terrorism." Racially motivated terrorism is when you decide every Cardassian who ever lived is a waste of oxygen and they can all go die in a fire. The Maquis were fighting for their fucking homes.

The TNG/DS9 writers royally fucked the pooch trying to portray that treaty as anything but cowardice in the face of aggression, and they must have been glad when they could just have the Dominion slaughter the Maquis wholesale and make it a moot point. Then the only fallout was at the end of Voyager when Voyager brought home the last surviving Maquis to be upset about the Federation abandoning its people to the Cardies and ultimately the dominion, and by that point they were just a little sad.

>>49840805
Yeaaah, she could be a bitch at times.

>>49840859
>Yes the Spoonheads gave up some worlds. Boo Hoo. They can should consider it a deterrent to starting wars they can't finish and fuck their sense of national pride.
Exactly. They started a war of aggression, they should have had their shit kicked in, not gotten to take the guys they started shit with for a mutual handie.

>>49840866
Fuck you, I liked the zero-g space pixie.

>>49840940
You think that the Federation didn't have to kick Klingon heads in to get peace with them? That the Romulan War wasn't ended with a treaty enforced by the threat of violence?
No power without the ability and WILLINGNESS to prosecute war to the hilt will remain sovereign for long. They come over here and attack your worlds, you push them back and tell them to stop that. They do it again, you warp across their front lines, smash their fucking fleets, destroy their shipyards, surgically phaser their strategic war industries off the faces of their planets, and tell them that there WILL be peace, and they're going to love and tolerate the SHIT OUT OF YOU!

>>49841337
He's one of the few.

The proud.

The stupid.

The right-wing yahoos who don't get a single bit of the message behind Star Trek, but still consider themselves fans even as they decry the 'stupidity' of the Federation for not being Hard Men making Hard Decisions...in Spaaaace.

>>49841337
And if you peacedoves had your way, the Enterprise-C would have just beamed all those Klingons into stasis and let the fucking Romulans have the world because territory isn't worth lives.

The Klingons sure as shit don't respect you if you can't wait to throw your swords away. See also: the Klink-Federation War that immediately preceded the Dominion War. Sure, there was a changeling infiltrator, but you don't go to war with someone you like if the populace isn't generally approving of the idea.


The Federation didn't win peace with the Klingon Empire by turning the other cheek. They won peace with the Klingon Empire by hammering them flat into the dirt every time the Klingons started shit, and then extending a hand to pick them back up every time they DID get knocked down - including the time the Klinks did it to themselves.

Nobody's saying they should have conquered Cardassia. Flown in, blown the fuck out of their shipyards, forcibly liberated the Bajorans, and neutered the Cardies' ability to make war? Yes.

>>49841397
But I guess it's okay for Starfleet to die to protect Klingon lives to ensure the Klingon Empire doesn't go to war with the Federation again, but it's too much to ask them to die to protect Federation lives who aren't going to go to war with the UFP again.

>>49841312

Abuses of power? What? Eminent Domain isn't an abuse of power, its a universally accepted part of the social contract between government and governed when they agree to live as a sovereign nation. Are you like a full blown Anarchist or something? Holy shit.

Also its kind of hilarious that you're mocking Starfleet for operating on anti-war pacifist principal while ranting and raving about the important of standing on principal when it comes to fighting wars.

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>>49841419
>Abuses of power? What? Eminent Domain isn't an abuse of power, its a universally accepted part of the social contract between government and governed when they agree to live as a sovereign nation.

Then why hasn't Chateau Picard been seized to make room for more Super-Ethical High-Density UFP-Quality-Of-Life-Assured Housing?

Oh, right, because it's easy to be a saint in paradise. It just sucks for anyone for whom there isn't room there. Sorry, first-come, first-serve!

>Are you like a full blown Anarchist or something?
Pic Related answer your question?

>Also its kind of hilarious that you're mocking Starfleet for operating on anti-war pacifist principal while ranting and raving about the important of standing on principal when it comes to fighting wars.

Pacifism is an absurd and unworkable principle. You know who's a pacifist?
Dead men and/or slaves.

NON-AGGRESSION is the principle you want. Don't be the one to START conflict. But when someone else steps to you and starts shit, tries to take what's yours, violate your autonomy, you goddamn well better be ready to deal with him in a manner that would be Klingon Approved.

Or you'll find yourself a slave. Or dead.

>>49841024
>This whole 'the Cardassian's only threat to the Federation was how much blood they'd get on their nice clean uniforms' meme
On this part I have to agree. Getting sick of the "hurr durr Federation could wipe the floor with these chumps if they ever did TEH SCIENCE" posts.

BUT
>But the VAST, VAST majority of Starfleet's fleet at the time of the Cardassian war were NOT Galaxy class or close.
This is absolutely the Federation's fault. I'm sorry, but with 3+ major powers in the galaxy, and you haven't elected representatives that would maintain your military defense capability? You fucked up. Something is wrong here. Something bad should happen here.

>>49841040
Mainly this - it's the message (I hate to say "the principle of the matter") that is sent by retreating from a world you previously claimed. You're waving a white flag that says 'come fuck me in the ass' to the other major powers, and if the Dominion War and In the Pale Moonlight didn't happen, maybe the Federation would have been fucked.

>>49841419
>Eminent Domain isn't an abuse of power, its a universally accepted part of the social contract between government and governed when they agree to live as a sovereign nation
Uh, what? It only exists in 13 countries, several of which have Imperial histories. I don't think it's indisputably moral or ethical at all.

>>49841212
Can you rephrase this post with fewer buzzwords? I've read it like 3 times and I'm still having trouble following your rage rant. (Not the anon you're replying to, either, btw.)

>>49840783
I am a little shocked you are still attempting to claim the moral high ground when talking about DS9 where the war was won by bioweapons. I acknowledge and I know it doesn't disprove your Maquis-specific arguments, but it's a bit dizzying.

>>49841470

>Then why hasn't Chateau Picard been seized to make room for more Super-Ethical High-Density UFP-Quality-Of-Life-Assured Housing?

Because the Federation has a heap of space? Seriously, I don't recall a single federation planet mentioned that's overpopulated.

>>49841387

Its really amazing as I read these posts I can literally see episodes where bad guys make the exact arguments they are making, only for the heroes to prove those arguments wrong and also that their way of doing things can fix the problem, and then they fix the problem. And yet, somehow, here we are anyway.

Whats really disturbing is how they make up facts to further their arguments based on nothing, like this idea that Starfleet could easily win a war with everyone else if only they had the will. Its like I'm in a thread full of Evil Admirals.

Hey, remember how in the end of the Dominion War they were prepared to fight to literally the last man and make the Federation and all their allies pay so much blood to end the war that their victory would be for nothing? And the reason that the Lady Changling was giving that order was because she was sure the Alpha Quadrant would come screaming through the wormhole looking for revenge, and also nihilism about the extinction of her race caused by Section 31 attempting genocide and Starfleet not giving them the cure because the war had made them lose their way?

Remember how all that is resolved because Odo teacher her to trust based solely on his interactions with Federation people? Good times.

>>49841506
>On this part I have to agree. Getting sick of the "hurr durr Federation could wipe the floor with these chumps if they ever did TEH SCIENCE" posts.
>This is absolutely the Federation's fault. I'm sorry, but with 3+ major powers in the galaxy, and you haven't elected representatives that would maintain your military defense capability? You fucked up. Something is wrong here. Something bad should happen here.

The Cardies were a second-rate power. The Cardassian Union was in full military mobilization and Starfleet, ON THE BACK FOOT, with too-few vessels, which at the time of the war WOULD NOT have included Galaxies or Nebulas, still were more than a match for the Union at that time. At that time, the Mirandas would have been a 1:1 match for whatever pre-Galor-class-warships the Cardies were fielding, an Excelsior would have been about a 2:1 match, and an Ambassador would have been a better than 3:1 match.

The UFP didn't have the stomach to gear up for war, or they would have been pulling the warship classes from SFC II out of mothballs and arming them for battle. And if they had done that THEN, then MAYBE the Battle of Wolf 359 wouldn't have been a fucking kick in the balls.

>Mainly this - it's the message (I hate to say "the principle of the matter") that is sent by retreating from a world you previously claimed. You're waving a white flag that says 'come fuck me in the ass' to the other major powers, and if the Dominion War and In the Pale Moonlight didn't happen, maybe the Federation would have been fucked.

Frankly, it's amazing that the Klinks DIDN'T decide to carve off some Neutral Zone after the Feddies 69'd the Cardassians in that war, to say nothing of the Rommies.

I'm the guy that ran a Last Unicorn game over the weekend. I'll write up what happened and wait for... whatever this is to blow over. Should have it ready for next bread.

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>>49841506
continued a bit:

>>49840783
>The Colonists sold THEMSELVES. Once Starfleet told them to go, as citizens of the Federation they were OBLIGATED to go. Once Immanent Domain is done, if you are still living on that land your are a fucking criminal trespasser.
This is what I was kinda alluding to before - why did the Federation not evict them forcibly? Because they were bound to make sure they and their citizens abided by this treaty they signed. I honestly don't know how I feel about the morality of this, but...

>She burned his fucking house down herself and dragged his ass away.
Haha, wow. I guess Kira knew how she felt about the morals of that situation.

>>49841470
I have to agree with this guy.

Take it to a level they cannot beat you and prove you are superior. Only then will their animal impulses allow them to settle down, lick their wounds, and rebuild.

I know this because I literally think this way.

>>49841581
OK, sorry we're all sperging out right now. It should die down soon. But at least in the meantime it bumps the thread, eh?

>>49841522
Really? Then why are people moving out to the frontier?
It sure as shit isn't because the UFP is offering them a ton of money to up stakes and go live in the suckhole for generations to turn it into a modern world, because they don't into money. It also isn't because those worlds have vital material resources, or the UFP wouldn't have given them away. So it must be the other reason people move away: overcrowding.

>>49841551
>Its really amazing as I read these posts I can literally see episodes where bad guys make the exact arguments they are making, only for the heroes to prove those arguments wrong and also that their way of doing things can fix the problem, and then they fix the problem.

You mean like how Sisko resorted to the EXACT SAME BIOWARFARE TACTICS that he was furious at Eddington for using? The same tactics that made MOTHER-FUCKING LT. COMMANDER "I'M A FUCKING KLINGON" WORF get VISIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE and made it look like fucking NOG, KIRA and DAX were about to call him out on it?

When the Klingon, the Ferengi, the cynical-as-shit Trill and the fucking Bajoran Freedom Terrorist are visibly uncomfortable with what you're doing, YOU HAVE CROSSED THE LINE AT WARP NINE!

>>49841591

>Really? Then why are people moving out to the frontier?

Most colonists for the federation seem to be doing it for exploration/adventure/scientific research more than out of any pressing need.

I mean, can you mention a single federation planet we saw that looked even slightly overcrowded? Earth has been seen several times and looks pretty reasonable population-wise.

>>49841506

The idea that surrender and retreat is simply a sign of weakness and an invitation for further aggression and future bloodshed is the exact rational that a dozen villains in Trek have used to justify horrific atrocities and the continued bloodshed which is demonstrably unnecessary.

You are LITERALLY arguing that the Federation rejecting this mode of thinking makes them weak and foolish when its an essential part of the fiction that rejecting this mode of thinking is why they are the heroes of the story.

I mean, wow.

>>49841622
>I mean, can you mention a single federation planet we saw that looked even slightly overcrowded? Earth has been seen several times and looks pretty reasonable population-wise.
Sure, and how do they keep it that way? Giant arcologies where the majority of the population lives? Regular colonization waves to reduce the homecount? Social controls on reproduction?

This is the Federation. There's no scarcity of resources whatsoever preventing people from having Irish Catholic-huge families; there's no fiscal or temporal pressures of holding down a job, either. If you want to have babby, go make babby!
So what, then, is stopping humans, and Andorians, Vulcans, Bolians, Caitans, Orions, Deltans, and all the rest from expanding to fill every possible square meter of Earth, Andoria, Vulcan, Bolia, etc, etc?

Sure, you CAN have a post-scarcity megalopolis where everybody has an acceptable quality of life, but to do it, you're going to need to make absolutely, mind-blowingly huge megastructural housing environments for them; Dom Atlantis from Schlock Mercenary, for example.

Either they're controlling population growth somehow, or they're regularly exporting people from Earth to the brave new frontier to go and make new Earths.

>>49841624
You're being deliberately thick.

Surrender and retreat ARE signs of weakness, and they DO invite further aggression and future bloodshed.
This does NOT mean you should be aggressive and attack first to sieze what others have/impose your rule/your way of life on others.

But when someone attacks you and tries to take what you have, you give them precisely zero fucks, and zero centimeters of territory, or else you ARE inviting everyone else who wants what you has, who is capable of a simple cost-benefit analysis, to determine exactly how much of your blood they need shed to force you to cede them some moderate gains.

>>49841586

>This is what I was kinda alluding to before - why did the Federation not evict them forcibly? Because they were bound to make sure they and their citizens abided by this treaty they signed. I honestly don't know how I feel about the morality of this, but...

Starfleet WAS going to evict them forcefully. Even though they were a planet full of Indians getting moved by a European Captain and his American first officer. There was a whole thing about how shitty it all, and yet the necessity was well-established. Even that complete bitch Admiral Nitcheyev was like "Damn Picard, I've given you a really shitty job to do. Now go do it."

Remember how it gets resolved? The Indian colonists VOLUNTEER TO STAY UNDER CARDASSIAN RULE. And Picard tells them to their faces "For the sake of everyone else living along this border who need this peace, Federation AND Cardassian, if this decision comes back to bite you WE CANNOT HELP YOU." And they tell him they understand and will live with the consequences of their choices.

Which I guess was a lie since the Maquis saying that everything they do is actually Starfleets fault without taking any responsibility for their part in things is consistent in every Maquis episode.

>>49841694
>Either they're controlling population growth somehow, or they're regularly exporting people from Earth to the brave new frontier to go and make new Earths.

Do you have...anything...canon to back up this? Or are you just trying to justify things with headcanon?

>>49841591
>When the Klingon, the Ferengi, the cynical-as-shit Trill and the fucking Bajoran Freedom Terrorist are visibly uncomfortable with what you're doing
Glad to see with all their "enlightened" morality, the Federation still hasn't solved the Milgram experiment problem.

>>49841624
>The idea that surrender and retreat is simply a sign of weakness and an invitation for further aggression and future bloodshed
>You are LITERALLY arguing that the Federation rejecting this mode of thinking makes them weak and foolish
I am, yes. Because Trek was based on Human psychology, and, because the alien races and empires are written by humans, they follow the same pattern of "fight, flight, posture, or submit" that humans do. Fighting or posturing (bluffing) is a more aggressive stance that puts enemies on notice that you intend to defend this territory. Running away or submitting is a submissive stance that weakens you in the eyes of foreign powers that have not embraced your "enlightened ideology." And it only invites further encroachment and abuses by those powers.

Sorry to take your quotes out of context there, but I do not condone continuing hostilities to where you obliterate the enemy unless they have proven they are absolutely unreasonable, e.g., the Borg.

>>49841694

>Surrender and retreat ARE signs of weakness, and they DO invite further aggression and future bloodshed.

>This does NOT mean you should be aggressive and attack first to sieze what others have/impose your rule/your way of life on others.

>But when someone attacks you and tries to take what you have, you give them precisely zero fucks, and zero centimeters of territory, or else you ARE inviting everyone else who wants what you has, who is capable of a simple cost-benefit analysis, to determine exactly how much of your blood they need shed to force you to cede them some moderate gains.

You are LITERALLY an Evil Admiral right now. When is your coup and/or war crime for the good of the Federation scheduled for? I can call Section 31 and we can do lunch when you're finished.

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>>49841708
<<<<

>>49841709
>Glad to see with all their "enlightened" morality, the Federation still hasn't solved the Milgram experiment problem.
Frankly, if it had been any other Starfleet officer ordering them to do it, I'm pretty much 90% that Dax would have attempted to relieve him of command for having LOST HIS FUCKING MARBLES.

The Sisko commands such loyalty that his friends will ride for ruin at his side, even to the point of betraying the very uniform that he himself was ranting about betraying literally minutes previously. Which would be fucking heartwarming if it was a Samurai story.

>>49841734
Section 31 can go fuck themselves, and if they're smart they'll do it with a phaser before I get my hands on them.
31 are a bunch of fucking HARD MEN making HARD DECISIONS and wanking over how clever they are with bioweapons and black ops bullshit, and I do not need them. You know what I need?
Starships, phasers, photon torpedoes, and the crew to man them.

I'm not the Evil Admiral. I'm the "The Line must be drawn here! Here, and NO FURTHER!" Admiral. I'm not going to forcibly relocate people to claim their natural resources, even if it would be a net benefit for the Federation. I'm not going to forcibly conquer and integrate someone else's territory. I'm not going to go looking to start a war. Leave me to my own devices, and I'm perfectly happy to fly around charting nebulae and doing $SCIENCE to $SPACE_PHENOMENA.

But you fly all up in my shit, phaser my dudes and say it was my fault for being too close to you? I am going to fight you to the very last. In the heavens above with phaser and photon torpedo, in the corridors with bat'leth and pulse rifle, in the communications channel with constant reminders that YOU started this and you can finish it by coming to the peace table without any expectation of taking what was ours, and we won't take any of what was yours. If need be, in orbit of your home worlds, with your shipyards burning out of orbit.

>>49841694

>Moderate Gains

The Cardassians "gains," in that treaty were zero. They gave up a planet to Federation rule for every planet they gained, and as far as we know every planet they gained was inhabited by humans rather than empty like they wanted.

It was more like an exchange of hostages than surrender, at least on paper. And the original intent was for a complete stalemate where both sides leave the other with empty planets. Again, they "gained," nothing. The Federation forced a stalemate, and it was probably a stalemate by design because if the Cardies felt they lost the war OR won the war either would be an excuse for the next war to them. A stalemate denies them that imperative.

>>49841784

> I'm the "The Line must be drawn here! Here, and NO FURTHER!" Admiral.

You know when Picard said that he was crazy, stupid, wrong, and out for revenge because of a personal blood hatred, right?

I mean, its a cool line, I'm just reminding you.

>>49841784
><<<<

...that's not a Star Trek source. So yes, it is headcanon as Star Trek has shown nothing and mentioned nothing implying it's heavily overpopulated. If anything, with all the national parks and private farms seen it seems the other way around.

>>49833614
all the maps I have ever seen put earth as pretty far away from DS9

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>>49841812
>Picard was wrong in declaring total war against the Borg
Now I know you're fucking trolling.

Are you literally an alien infiltrator or what, mate?

>>49841784
>I'm not the Evil Admiral. I'm the "The Line must be drawn here! Here, and NO FURTHER!" Admiral. I'm not going to forcibly relocate people to claim their natural resources, even if it would be a net benefit for the Federation. I'm not going to forcibly conquer and integrate someone else's territory. I'm not going to go looking to start a war. Leave me to my own devices, and I'm perfectly happy to fly around charting nebulae and doing $SCIENCE to $SPACE_PHENOMENA.

>But you fly all up in my shit, phaser my dudes and say it was my fault for being too close to you? I am going to fight you to the very last. In the heavens above with phaser and photon torpedo, in the corridors with bat'leth and pulse rifle, in the communications channel with constant reminders that YOU started this and you can finish it by coming to the peace table without any expectation of taking what was ours, and we won't take any of what was yours. If need be, in orbit of your home worlds, with your shipyards burning out of orbit.
You've got the makings of a fantastic speech here, but I recommend you shorten and punctuate the second to last speech for effect. Perhaps it would come through better if spoken rather than read and this is invalid, though.

>>49841812
The difference is that Picard was being stubborn about a ship. He had the opportunity to destroy the Borg and save the future by blowing up the ship, and he should have - and ultimately, did - (attempt to) do just that.

You can build a new ship, even a new NCC-1701. There's a lot of lettersl eft in the alphabet, and arguably, the whole point of a Starship named Enterprise IS to give its existence in the defense of the Federation. Remember when they sent the Big E-C back in time to die gloriously, in order to avert a huge war with the Klingon Empire?

Oh yeah, remember how, for all of that "peacefulness after Praxis" bullshit, the Klinks were still only one missing grand gesture of valor in defense of the Klinks away from FULL SCALE WAR WITH THE FEDERATION?


Ultimately, ships are expendable. Not DISPOSABLE, but starships are currency, and they should, MUST, be spent in the defense of the Federation's borders, of the lives and homes of the CIVILIAN population of the Federation.

>>49841818
Right, you just lost all credibility.

>>49841836
>You've got the makings of a fantastic speech here, but I recommend you shorten and punctuate the second to last speech for effect. Perhaps it would come through better if spoken rather than read and this is invalid, though.

I kind of cribbed from Winston Churchill's notes, but I can try and make it a propa speech.

>>49841836

Picard was wrong because the smart move was to admit he couldn't win the fight he wanted to fight, abandon the ship, blow up the ship and thus save Earth and the future as quickly and certainly as possible. His "declaration of total war," meant fighting to save a hunk of space metal that was meaningless and worthless compared to the IMPORTANT thing, Earth and their entire timeline, using weapons that were useless and throwing away his men's lives on suicide missions, all because in his hate-addled brain the ship was an allegory for his own body and the Federation as a collective whole.

Are YOU trolling? You have actually seen First Contact right?

>>49841854

The war with the Klingons was started because the Enterprise C was seen at the battle and then vanished before the fighting was over. The was wasn't started by the lack of a grand gesture of friendship, it was started by the perception of an act of cowardice and dishonor that directly spat in the Klingon's faces after a long period of peace.

Please actually watch these episodes before you warp their events and message to promote your "opposite of what Star Trek is supposed to stand for," ideals please.

>>49841818
I get what you're saying here, but I'm seeing a bit of a worrying trend toward "events in ST canon comprise the total extent of human and alien psychology and things can always be projected based on that".

I think the stories we've seen on ST reflect the writers' biases at the time, and need to be taken into consideration. I kinda thought most of us were drawn to Trek because we preferred a bit more realism in our science fantasy. Maybe not?

>>49841854
>Right, you just lost all credibility.
Why?

I mean, I get that the population J curve and exponents are a thing, and I assume everyone here does, but what if the population was severely impacted a few times to prevent that from growing? What if there were fertility issues or a virus? I'm just saying, please make a stance rather than slinging ad hominem around.

>>49841900
Err... I saw it a long time ago. Should I rewatch it?

>>49841854

>Right, you just lost all credibility.

How? By asking you to use a source about a fictional setting to justify your statements about said fictional setting?

>>49838761
Considering star trek was originally conceived as space frontier it would make perfect sense if the Federation allowed for homesteading once all your papers are in order.

>>49841937
NOW who's headcanoning? Nobody ever said jack shit about dishonor in Yesterday's Enterprise.

>>49841948
>Why?
>I mean, I get that the population J curve and exponents are a thing, and I assume everyone here does, but what if the population was severely impacted a few times to prevent that from growing? What if there were fertility issues or a virus? I'm just saying, please make a stance rather than slinging ad hominem around.

So you're saying that the Federation's population control consists of hoping for regular major disasters causing monumental losses of life and alien-inflicted holocausts to keep the headcount down on Earth?

>>49841961
>So you're saying that the Federation's population control consists of hoping for regular major disasters causing monumental losses of life and alien-inflicted holocausts to keep the headcount down on Earth?

Or perhaps the federation just has a really low birth rate due to decisions made by the population. Can you provide a single canon source to actually say the federation is overpopulated?

>>49840465
fuck, man I was so into Kira after watching the first season and Duet. Too bad they just didnt know how to write her as anything else but racist ex-terrorist.

The cardassians, like the umiak, did nothing wrong.

>>49841854
>>49841900

>Picard was wrong for placing the importance of a ship above the importance of Earth because ships and lives must be expended to protect the Federation's lands and peoples from outside threats

>Picard was wrong for placing the importance of a ship above the importance of Earth because he was fighting a pointless battle over personal demons when he should have stopped fighting and taken the route with the least risk to everyone's lives for the greater good.

It's neat how two people can watch the same thing and come to two totally reasonings for the same conclusion. Art is neat.

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>>49841961
Please don't make me embarrassed to have supported your side earlier in this debate.

>>49841986
>>49841989
Good morning, newfriends.

>>49841734
I'm sorry but if it's a choice between standing in a circle around a camp fire, gently swaying singing Kumbaya whilst dipshit Klingons captains raid Fed worlds with impunity and TEH EEVUL admiral wanting to build enough patrol boats and war ships to get the Space Somalians to cut that shit out I'm going with the Admiral Warpath.

You know why? Because he obviously cares about the well being of the people he is responsible for.

>>49841948

>should I rewatch it?

Its pretty good. Not the deepest plot and some inconsistencies with the TV show, but a lot more effort than any other TNG movie. Plus lots of awesome action scenes fighting Borg. Can't go wrong with that.

>>49841989
They were just trying to secure rescources for the Greater Glory of Cardassia. Heroes, one and all.

>>49841986
I was into Kira right up until the Odo romance. Nothing against it, but the whole thing felt forced. Like pretty much all of her relationships, oddly. Too bad no Ro/Kira one ever happened.

>>49842021
The novelization adding some depth to Zefram Cochrane makes it one of the better movies in the series.

>>49841982
>Can you provide a single canon source to actually say the federation is overpopulated?

ST:WoK.

Spock, Bones and Kirk all standing round the TV watching the Genesis presentation. The reason for its development was that it would solve the Federations future problems of food and over crowding.

>>49842001
>Please don't make me embarrassed to have supported your side earlier in this debate.

Look, guys, it's fundamental human - fuck, fundamental SAPIENT NATURE. Expand. Multiply. Reproduce.
Sure, to some degree ENLIGHTENMENT will help to put the brakes on that, as will medical access to birth control preventing the vast majority of UNPLANNED pregnancies, but the flip side to this is that the UFP has completely eliminated all but ONE of the problems with intentionally getting pregnant.
You don't need a job to support a big family, because you have free energy, free healthcare, and a replicator. You aren't constrained in any way by the availability of material resources in raising a large family. The ONLY curb on your reproduction is your willingness to raise more kids.

And a lot of people are gonna do just that. For every two or three families that only has one or two kids, there's gonna be those guys who have eight, because they just loooove them some childrearin'. Those kids are going to grow up, move out of the house, and... What, exactly? Not all of them are going to become Starfleet Officers or move offworld. They're going to need houses of their own, space to raise their own kids. Crank this over for a few generations, and you have exponential population pressure meaning HOLY FUCK, WHERE DO WE PUT ALL THESE PEOPLE!?

>>49842013
Admiral Defensepath, please. I don't want to fight a war, which is why I want a Starfleet that has enough Akula-class destroyers, Miranda-class Light Cruisers, Excelsior-class Heavy Cruisers, and Nebula- and Galaxy-class Explorers to make every motherfucker decide he isn't a hard enough man to take me and go looking for something else to do rather than attempt to conquer me.

>>49842047
I actually kind of liked the Kirado pairing, I just thought the stupid glowy light lovemaking thing was cheesy AF.

>>49842001
Morning.

>>49842038
Without a doubt, as are the umiak that have resisted xenocide at the hands of the l—those fucking elves ever since they fired the first shots at Ukko.

>>49842047
This clip is the only one that made me buy into it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i4Uy8OT6DA
but they really jumped the shark after that, and I didn't buy it either.

>>49841694
Good quality of life and high education lead to lower birth rates.

>>49841784
this curve does not take into accunt world war three (started explicitly because of over population and jingoism and racism) as well as the fact that increased standards of living and access to contraception reduce population growth. Not to mention its been stated that humanities hat in star trek is exploration and settling the frontier. With access to cheap and easy FTL, settling a new planet is as easy as settling a new continent would be for modern day humans. Combined with the fact that nowhere in the show do we see overpopulation being a problem I can safely say that you are incorrect.

>>49842001
did someone shit in your coffee Mr Lee Jones?

>>49841999
its almost like people are different or something

>>49842229
>Combined with the fact that nowhere in the show do we see overpopulation being a problem I can safely say that you are incorrect.

Maybe because huge swathes of population have moved off world to the colonies.

>>49842047
did Ro ever show up on DS9? Her actress was great and it always seemed like she would have fit in well with the themes DS9 was pushing.

>>49842260
Sorry bro but in the multi-cultural homogeny that's not allowed.

>>49842063
Considering that we never saw those problems manifest, its safe to say they solved them through other means.

>>49842263
Yup, I mentioned that people in Star Trek are kinda keen on that.

>>49842282
Possibly by sending excess population out to colonize and terraforming dead world by more conventional means to colonize later.

We do see professional terraformers in both TNG and DS9

For reference, Star Trek Star Charts, a book detailing the worlds of Star Trek, states that Earth has a population of 4.2 Billion Humans (and 8.1 million Cetaceans). So it's safe to say that Earth is not suffering over population.

>>49842111
That was really the best bit of it, I think.

>>49842146
Good QoL and higher education leads to lower birth rates because it gives people the tools - birth control and the knowledge to make use of it - and the rational understanding of the material costs of becoming pregnant.
Ask pretty much any girl or woman, and she'll tell you she wants to have kids - just NOT NOW, because she can't really support them/doesn't want to interrupt her education/her career.

Those pressures DISSIPATE ENTIRELY in the UFP, where nobody HAS to work, and having kids is not a hardship.
In the past, having children was an investment in your own future - sure, they'd be a huge drain on your resources NOW, but you're young and healthy, and can take the risk - and LATER, when you're old and infirm, they'll be taking care of you.

In the PRESENT, kids are not an investment in your future (because they're not going to want to support you in your old age the way your grandparents worked hard to support their parents,) but are a drain on your immediate resources.

But in the future of Star Trek, you don't have to worry about resources. Nobody is screaming about "welfare queens" in the 23rd or 24th centuries. Which is not a problem that's as it should be, but it does raise the question of WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE GOING TO LIVE? You HAVE to have some way of providing living space, or else some form of population control, otherwise things break down and turn ugly. No amount of replicators is going to change the fact that people are sleeping on the streets for want of anywhere else to sleep, and that will get ugly fast. QED, they HAVE to be doing SOMETHING - whether it's colonizing new worlds and convincing people to move to them, or installing some kind of forcible brakes on population growth, or building enormotitanic arcologies.

>>49842229
Right, but that was my whole point: the people on the Cardassian border that got sold upriver went there because their old homes were too fucking crowded, so where the hell were they supposed to go? You already made them up their stakes and leave their homeworlds once, and now you're telling them to do it again? Bullshit!

>>49842271
Ro was awesome.

>>49842282
Yeah, they keep colonizing new worlds and somehow convincing people to move there. HOW they keep doing that is anyone's guess.

One thing I want to point out to everyone arguing about Starfleet fighting a war is that after the events of Star Trek VI, Starfleet very clearly loses what little of the military trappings it had left. The reason? At the Khitomer conference, the entire Federation gets to see that the highest echelons of Starfleet Command are willing to work with their nominal enemies in the Klingon Empire to keep a war going, to the point where they discredited one its greatest heroes and attempted to assassinate SFC's Commander-in-Chief. That's a pretty big issue. I could see the Federation Council sacking the entire Admiralty right there and then, and restaffing the Fleet along the lines they preferred.

Hell, less than a year later, look at the launch of the Enterprise-B! Launched from drydock incomplete, even for a press junket, when no self respecting Captain would have let it launch. Even worse, Fleet was in such a sorry state that Sector 001 didn't have any ships in range with the ability to rescue the El-Aurian transport, let alone for the Nexus Wave to be cataloged and set up to warn people off of. Though amusingly, this means that Starfleet scrapped the Enterprise-A without even having the Ent-B ready for launch, and expected Kirk to send the ship off without even a few years of retirement.

Christ, I've got too much headcanon material running around. I've even got stuff on what the uniform changes signify (beyond no real budget)

>>49842271
No, her actress didn't want to be tied to television. The DS9 Relaunch novels have her take over Odo's position as chief of security, and later she rejoins Starfleet as Captain of DS9.

>>49842331
All right Mr Headcanon, how do you straighten out the whole shitfest with the penultimate TNG S1 episode "Conspiracy" with the whole "Starfleet command taken over by mind control parasites" plot?

Anyone remember that time Piccard refused to deploy a zombie killing weapon because it's wrong to stop the space-zombie infestation that had claimed trillions of lives and showed no signs of slowing down?

Remember that time when Piccard got all salty because someone killed a space monster that had claimed at least millions of lives because the life of a non-sapient killing machine is worth more than humans?

>>49842382
They really need better security at SFC...

>>49842412
Yes. Yes I do, though I think the point about getting pissed was that the Crystalline Entity was, in fact, sapient... Just kind of an asshole.

But yeah, those were the years of going too the fuck far into Gene Roddenberry's pacifistic bullshit. The Crystalline Entity should have gotten precisely one chance at being peacefully contacted after it destroyed a world, then its next contact with the Federation should have been three Mirandas swooping in blasting out photon torpedoes.

>>49842382
Straighten out how? Remove the mind control parasites? Make it so that the parasites are ultimately piggybacking off of a very real conspiracy to turn the Federation into a military junta? There are several different ways to make it work.

>>49842412
>Anyone remember that time Piccard refused to deploy a zombie killing weapon because it's wrong to stop the space-zombie infestation that had claimed trillions of lives and showed no signs of slowing down?
For which he was very rightly chewed out for by Command. He shot down the very real possibility (from their view, we have no idea whether the Borg would have been killed by it based off of later developments, but lets assume it would have worked) of ending the Borg as a threat forever, and likely seriously damaged his career over it.

>Remember that time when Piccard got all salty because someone killed a space monster that had claimed at least millions of lives because the life of a non-sapient killing machine is worth more than humans?
The Crystalline Entity was in the process of being contacted, and looked to be sentient. Starfleet's primary objective in that case was to try and communicate that the Entity was killing living beings, while the scientist that was assigned to assist the Enterprise clearly had a conflict of interest, and ended up killing the creature. Honestly, killing it was probably for the best, but no one in that episode really comes off well.

>>49842468
>sentient
Okay, so it has the ability to have feels. We will kill it quickly then.

Kirk encountered a Space creature that absorbed all energy in it's location. It killed a federation colony so Spock dumped a load of anti-matter at it.

Kirk encounters a vampire cloud. Dumps anti-matter on it before it can breed.

Piccard encounters a civilization killing abomination. Tries to talk to it. Fuck that.

>>49842468
Also, ultimately we have to recognize that The Next Generation was written in an era when shows weren't expected to have a series wide arc. Characters could certainly grow, but episodes like the Inner Light, Best of Both Worlds, The Most Toys, and "Troi is raped by the alien of the week #5" are left as stand alone (or nearly so in the case of the former two) episodes with no real follow up.

>>49842500
Except by Lore's own admission he coerced the Entity into attacking the Omicron Theta colony, where presumably it got a taste for humanity. Starfleet wanted to contact it first to see if there was any chance they could get it to stop eating people.

>>49842500
Trying to talk to it is fine. It might not have REALIZED what it was doing was wrong. Attempting to establish communications is fine.

If the communications appear to be working, you ascertain whether or not it's hostile. Then you go from there.

If you can't establish communications and it continues to behave in a destructive manner, then you deal with it as appropriate: phasers and photon torpedoes. At that point, the distinction between a misguided sapient, a brutal warmongering sapient, and a mindless animal is academic, but people's lives are hanging in the balance.

>>49842528
Exactly. Star Fleet would shoot borg, klingon, romulan, Ferengi -- remember in early TNG when they were bad buys, pretty overacted and underdeveloped badguys but not yet comic relief ? -- breen, jem-hadar etc who threatened Federation citizens and wouldn't or couldn't communicate.

>>49833467
Shit, I want to do that in Stellaris now.

>>49842644
Yeah. The way I see it, it's pretty simple, really:
If you're leaving us alone and aren't like, committing huge abuses of sapient rights against others, we got no beef with you. You do you.
If you want to talk to us, fine, we'll talk all day long. You wanna be nice, we're happy to welcome you in with open arms, milk and cookies. If you want to get all surly and say "LEAVE US ALONE," that's cool, we'll leave you the hell alone. It's your right to want to be left the hell alone.

If you want to attack us, then boy, we got more beef with you than India has sacred cattle. If you try that, we will smack you back hard and tell you to stop that shit. You try it again, and we're going to fucking WRECK YOUR SHIT. Your fleets will be scattered, your shipyards will be smashed, your war industries will be phasered off the face your planets with precision. And then we'll say it again: Cut that shit out. And now we're going to talk the terms of peace: specifically, they're going to include you not making war on us again, or on anyone else for that matter. If you need help rebuilding, we'll rebuild you. If you were being stupid because you need resources, we'll help you get them. If you were being stupid because you need space, we'll help you colonize and terraform. If you were being stupid because your whole cultural hat is "hork bjork gotta conquer & enslave some furners," we're going to take a very dim view of you and your zeitgeist is going to have a very unfun time with us prohibiting any slaving and conquerin'.

>>49842528

If you think the Federation would kill a "mindless animal" for the crime of perpetuating its natural life cycle, ie fucking eating so it can live, ESPECIALLY if it's apparently the only living specimen of its species, you don't understand Star Trek even slightly. Humans do not kill things for their god damn CONVENIENCE in Star Trek. Any Federation citizen who isn't a massive twat would rather abandon their colony and live somewhere else than allow an innocent animal to be butchered to preserve it.

Unless it was a maquis colony of course. They'd probably turn murdering the poor beast into a national holiday. And then blame Starfleet for forcing them to celebrate killing it. Three cheers for bringing about an extinction so we don't have to leave our precious dirt.

>>49823257
Is that... Sulu on Voyager?

I don't remember that episode

>>49842765
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Neural_parasite_(23rd_century)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Neural_parasite_(24th_century)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tarchannen_III_species
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ceti_eel

History says that the Federation has no problem terminating dangerous nonsapient (or even sapient) life forms whose life cycle involves the destruction/mass destruction or infestation of Federation citizens.
Thank god, because your idea of a Federation that fellates the sanctity of unknown life to the point of allowing it to freely predate upon Federation citizens is a goddamn nightmare scenario, and you're a monster.

>>49842785
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Flashback_(episode)
The best episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

>>49842785
Spock gets psychic virus that causes him to relives a traumatic memory that the virus uses as cover.

In most psychic species, the Doctor theorized, the makes the individual think about it as little as possible or actively repress it and so the virus remains not bothering anyone. Then it uses it's host's telepathic abilities to infect another psychic.

In the case of Vulcans the emotional backlash that it causes gives them brain damage.

Tuvok got the virus. Kept reliving a moment when he was serving in Sulu's crew and watched a friend die.

He and Janeway mind-meld to try and figure out what the fuck is going on in there. Janeway ends up in his flashback cycle.

>>49842468

Picard spared the Borg because Genocide the wrong. Film at 11. The Borg are not zombies, they are a sentient species. And the entire point of I, Borg is to show that there is a chance, however small, that they can change from the monsters they are to something more, something peace can be made with. Picard chose to bet on that tiny chance, even though he has more reason than ANYONE to let his hate flow, because he is a God damn hero who stands for everything the UFP and humanity is supposed to be. And because the alternative, GENOCIDE, is wrong.

Nicheyev bitched him out about it because she is a flawed character who does not live up to those ideals. She was blinded by fear and bitterness and her perception of her duty necessitating an unforgivable crime when it didn't. She was acting exactly like those admiral s who said there could never be peace with the Klingons 100 years earlier.

>>49842818
>>49842856
I need to watch this episode like, yesterday

>>49842818

Explain to me how "Federation people would rather move than make a species extinct," is allowing them to freely predate on humans? Go ahead, I'll wait.

>>49842889
Actually, Necheyev was entirely right. If Picard HAD ended the Borg when he had the chance, the events of Star Trek: First Contact wouldn't have happened, the Borg wouldn't have pissed off Species 8472, who never would have reached into the Alpha Quadrant, and never would have manipulated the Federation and the Klinks into a war in the events of Star Trek Online.

The Borg may be a sapient race, but they are a hivemind race of unimaginable destructive power and stated goal of forcibly assimilating everything else into the collective. Genociding them is a Guilt-Free Extermination War, because they've thrown down the gauntlet and declared the stakes to be "Us or you" with no chance for compromise or peaceful resolution of conflict.

>>49842919
Right, so, what's your solution to the Crystalline Entity? It's as dangerous as a small warship - a big Federation Explorer, probably even the Explorers of yesteryear, like Ambassadors and Excelsiors, can hold up, and maybe even small warships like Mirandas, but it can overwhelm the shields of civilian vessels, and it freely eats the population of defenseless colony worlds. And it moves at Warp speeds, so you can't just move away.

That thing needed to be blown the fuck up. Dr. Marr was wrong in doing so before making absolutely sure it was inherently hostile in the face of its complete inability to damage the Galaxy-class USS Enterprise, but let's face it - it was unquestionably inherently hostile, and needed to be destroyed.

>>49842856
>Spock
*Tuvok

Brain fart moment.

>>49842893
It was probably my favourite VOY episode.

>>49842889
Hugh could have been a statistical outlier, and while I agree that genocide of an alien species is unacceptable, the Borg are quite capable of utterly destroying the Federation. Nechayev and the rest of the Command were correct that a silver bullet now would prevent pain later. That Picard was later capable of stopping the Borg without the virus is immaterial.

>>49843043
The Borg are not a sapient species because the Borg are not a species.

The Borg are a sapient technological disease that infects and destroys civilizations and converts them into more mindless carriers.

The poor bastards already infected die? Regrettable but at that point its a mercy killing at worse.

I take a lot of solace in the fact that the people ITT posting exactly why and how they would fail the tests of morality Our Heroes in Trek pass every week prove what a bunch of heroes the protagonists truly are.

Star Trek isn't a setting for parties of D&D Murderhobos you geeks, your warped Fuck You Got Mine philosophies have no place there.

>>49843073

Your argument is that genocide of the Borg is OK because it's not killing one species, but instead it's killing thousands of species for the crime of having smallpox, becuase they might give us the small pox and everyone knows that is a disease that can't ever ever be cured?

Jesus.

>>49843086
>Capitulating to foreign aggressors is a heroic act
>Not trying to solves the Borg problem is heroic
>Intentionally letting your people get eaten by interstellar space monsters is heroic
>Not defending people against space Somalian Pirates so you don't hurt their feelings is heroic #RidgedLivesMatter #NotAllNorsicans

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>>49843073
This. You get it, anon.

>The poor bastards already infected die? Regrettable but at that point its a mercy killing at worse.
Remember Ensign Hawke? Yeah, me too.

Where was THAT Jean-Luc Picard during the events of I, Borg?

>>49843043
>That Picard was later capable of stopping the Borg without the virus is immaterial.
I think you mean THIS hero, anon.

>>49843086
Star Trek isn't a setting for idiotic absolute pacifists who turn the other cheek and get it smote in turn, too. That's how you wind up a vassal of the Klingon Empire or Romulan Star Empire, slave to the Dominion, or assimilated by the Borg.

Do you want to be assimilated by the Borg? Do you want to be genetically modified into something more suitable to the Dominion's purposes and brainwashed from the cloning vat to think of psychotic, paranoid goomonsters as literal gods?

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>>49841024
>Yes, it takes about three Galor class battlecruiers to match one Federation starship.
They didn't match it, they fled the area with their tails between their legs because they knew they'd get stomped.
Let's all remember that the treaty in question happened a few years after TNG started (only a few months before DS9 started) - meaning that Galaxys and Nebulas were around when they signed the treaty. This isn't some old battle that's still being fought, it's a recent development.
Also, the Maquis thing started when Federation colonists reported Cardassian military buildup on their planets: planets that belonged to the Cardassians politically, but were in the DMZ, and thus no military allowed. However, Starfleet did jack and shit when they learned of a clear treaty violation, which set the Maquis off. Remember, a lot of the Maquis weren't colonists "defending their homes," but Starfleet officers that defected in disgust at the Federation's lack of proper action (and then moved to those planets to be with the Maquis).

>>49841834
According to the Star Charts (which is what most base their maps on), Cardassia is closer to Earth than any point of the Klingon Empire, and only half again as far from Earth as Romulus (though in the opposite direction), which was the first space war Earth fought (ie, Romulus is pretty damned close to Earth, relatively speaking). Pic related.

>>49843073
I don't actually disagree with any of your points, I'm merely stating that until the emergence of Hugh, the Federation had only seen drones and Locutus as the entire representation of the Borg. Since the Feds have made turning enemies into allies their hat, there's no reason that trick wouldn't work twice in their mind. And if we take STO as canon, they did indeed make a portion of the Collective split off and ally with the Federation.

>>49843086
The Federation is entirely too trusting 9 times out of 10. There are situations that they try diplomacy with that I wouldn't dare go into without full shields and phaser banks warmed. It's not them being better, it's the recognition that peace has united hundreds of species to their perspective, when Humanity is still squabbling over resources.

>>49843175
>I think you mean THIS hero, anon.
Hardly, she just pissed the Borg off and delayed their invasion. Then she got assimilated and blown the fuck up.

>>49843152
No. They are dead. Their bodies just haven't stopped moving yet. So long as they are still connected to the Collective no trace of their old personality is present.

And unlike small pox the Drones intentionally go out to great lengths to infect as many people as possible and kill all those who can't be infected.

If there is no cure that can be administered then yes nuking the zombie horde before it destroys the world is a sad necessity.

And the Hive is Sapient. It can potentially be reasoned with. It is also hostile and will never stop coming for you.

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>>49823257
Which Star Trek RPG is best?

>>49843210
>So long as they are still connected to the Collective no trace of their old personality is present.
That's absolutely false. It's present, in the entirety of the collective. Supressed by the weight of trillions of minds, sure, and put under control, but they aren't dead by any means. Some of them even have their minds set free briefly, even if they don't have control of their bodies.

>>49843240
>Some of them even have their minds set free briefly, even if they don't have control of their bodies.

Great. So they get to watch and participate in the genocide of others unable to act on their own or stop or die or scream.

You're not making much of an argument for the Borg.

>>49843291
There really isn't an argument for the Borg Collective. It needs to be destroyed.

Reminder that during the otherwise bland Destiny miniseries, Picard descended into "GEORDI, BUILD ME THALARON WEAPONS RIGHT NOW DAMMIT" territory, the Borg terrified and infuriated him so much. This is presented as a bad thing, even when the Borg are no longer assimilating, just annihilating.

>>49843337
>No longer assimilating
>> JUST annihilating
Well, thank goodness they've gone from a plague of cyberzombies to MERELY the end of days! What an improvement!

>>49843354
The Borg were explicitly pissed off because of Janeway's antics at the end of Voyager, as well as some other shenanigans. Casualties at the end of the conflict include Risa among other planets, something like a trillion people, and 40% of the Federation fleet.

The Borg are an angry ex wife's memory engrams that have cybernetically enforced her REEE over the centuries, starting with survivors of the NX-02. Destiny was retarded, but utterly hilarious.

>>49842331
Honestly the TOS movie uniforms were the best hands down. They looked the least like PJ's

>>49843460
That's part of the point, at least for the later ones. It's to make Starfleet look less like a military. The TOS show ones were an outgrowth of the swinging 60s aesthetic, which isn't that bad, aside from the low tailoring budget. Plus if you have a problem with miniskirts as duty wear, there's something wrong with you.

>>49842955
The crystalline entity was one of the most realistically alien things on the show. A creature that is wildly different from humans. The thing is, until the Federation could ascertain whether communication was possible, killing it would be a bit of a black mark. Sure its entirely possible it was the space equivalent of a cow and lifeforce (??) was its grass. Once that's been found out the federation would put it down like they did the vega parasites. However, the episode showed that there was the possibility of communication with it. Sure communication might have come down to "rip and tear" but then the federation would have put it down. The heart of the episode was what if it didn't realize the colonists were sapient and this was another day at the buffet. In which case it could have been reasoned with.

Honestly if PTSD scientist had been kept on a tighter leash they may have found out.

>>49843190
I always liked how that map showed how the federation just spreads everywhere without giving a fuck

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Here's how I see the whole Cardie-Federation treaty thing, taking over 9000 hours in Paint:
1. Old borders, no touching between the two, but plenty of land between.
2. Natural expansion (Feds go everywhere willy-nilly, Cardies go close and to few places because smaller)
3. Cardies see Feds going everywhere, colonize right up to fed border; feds don't annex all space between colonies, just what's immediately around them (if even that), while the Cardies map-paint.
4. Spoonheads declare all space between their homeworld and colonies their rightful clay, including fed colonies of course.
5. Feds say no, fight war(s), eventually come to win. Instead of going to old borders + individual colony systems (the normal Fed way), paint map to borders between them. Allow Cardies to take Fed colonies in exchange for freeing Bajor (not part of the dispute, but a humanitarian thing). Set up DMZ around newly annexted colonies both to make the Cardies less nervous, and protect former fed colonies from becoming Bajor 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Still pretty good from Cardassia's point of view - they come out several colonies ahead, and a lot more normal systems too, much more than they probably would have had without said war. Cardassians in lost territory pack up, those Feds that want to stay home get screwed (but it was their choice).

>>49843570

Which is the entire god damn point. They didn't know and now they will never know and likely will never have another chance to know. Which is why killing is bad. #themoraleofthestory

>>49842326
I thought they went there because they were a combination of borderline racist social messages advised on by Gregory J. Markopoulos, edgy racists looking for a fight to waste their lives on, homespun philosophers and bleeding-heart Starfleet types who were mostly thrown out of the service for failing to understand the complex politics of the region and reducing it to "but they'll lose their hoooomes!".

As Data eloquently made the point when he blew up that aquaduct, it's just shit. You can always build more shit. Not moving because someone else might live where you used to live is classic hoarder mentality, literal ratboy thinking. Hell, it always bothered me that anybody ever bothered to pack when they moved quarters instead of just feeding their stuff into the replicator and picking it up when they've strolled around to their new place.

>>49843488
>Plus if you have a problem with miniskirts as duty wear, there's something wrong with you.
Only on the guys, anon.

>>49843460
Apart from teh first movie which I think were even worse than Enterprise

>>49843216
FASA

I have this headcanon that Picard keeps a box of little model ships by his command chair so that every time the Borg show up, he can pull one out and throw it against the wall to properly express his fury

>>49842765
Not the "Federation" but "Star Fleet" the military wing of the Federation who sometimes act like /tg/ and actually get stuff done. Entity of some kind threating Federation colonists who can leave? Evacuate colonists. Colonsits can't leave? Divert, distract or kill entity, mindless or otherwise. Protecting Federation citizens is one of the things Star Fleet is charged with. If you don't get that, you don't understand sStar Trek even slightly.

>>49844007
was that the movie where they were actually wearing pajamas?

>>49844116
Tailored pajamas. Designed so poorly you had to take the entire outfit off to go to the bathroom.

>>49843744
not everything can be replicated anon. theres still a market for handmade stuff.

>>49843651
Nigga, the Cardassian Union is to be represented by dark orange, not yellow.

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>>49843651
I made this as an sort of demonstration.

According to a fair few maps, Bajor is a good distance from the DMZ

>>49843316
Better the Borg than the Undine

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Remember when a Starfleet captain murdered a crewmember in cold blood whilst he begged for his life?

>>49843570
I agree that AT THE TIME, killing it was wrong when you were on the cusp of establishing communications.

However, I never would have let it get that far. Any number of genocided colonies greater than "1" is far, far too many to tolerate. Starfleet should have been tracking that thing the moment it started attacking colonies, located it, and gave it one chance to prove itself sapient. After that, phasers & photon torpedoes.

But yeah, Dr. PTSD should damn well have been kept on a tighter leash.

>>49845100
It's not an either-or situation. The Undine were beaten back with a single piece of super-science pulled out of Voyager's ass. Imagine what all of Starfleet could have done if they'd known what was going on. Later on they proved that they, unlike the Borg, could be reasoned with. They're not such a threat that we need to help arm the fucking Borg.

But then, there were a lot of shitty decisions on that show. Case in point: >>49845139

>>49845185
Oh sweet Jesus this.

Borg getting raped by weird aliens. You don't know the aliens are hostile. In fact it should be assumed that they are not because they are wholesale slaughtering Borg. That puts them in the "On our side until proven otherwise" camp.

Yes yo develop a weapon against them a stick it in the "just in case" heap.

You don't set a course for the nearest cube and hand over the weapon. Fucking hell that was stupid.

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>>49845293

8472 were an unknown quantity, the Borg, awful as they were, were a known one.
And there was no guarantee that the Undine would be in the least bit remotely interested in Voyager's aid, or friendship, or in providing them with any kind of safe passage through Borg territory. Also, hadn't 8472 repeatedly refused any overtures of communication with Voyager at that point?

>>49845384
They had refused one attempt at diplomacy at the point when Voyager decided that they were worse than the Borg based on very limited information. But, as is known to happen sometimes, the second attempt at diplomacy a couple years later was an unmitigated success. If they'd just let 8472 use their unique advantages to decimate the Borg collective, they could have worked out a peace or fought them off later.

>>49845593

COULD they have?
Voyager was on a time crunch. They couldn't exactly hang around in the area to see how 8472 was doing vs. the Borg, because unlike 8472, they were very, very vulnerable to being swatted by random Borg cubes. There's no reason to suspect they wouldn't be hostile or at least indifferent-but-willing-to-allow-passage to Voyager if they wrekt the Collective and took over their space, and there's no way to be sure the Borg wouldn't have found some way to defeat 8472 on their own, or assimilated it from someone else.

Voyager needed to get across that space, NOW. Not after loitering around and watching a war between 8472 unfold, and they were faced with two species which were apparently hostile and uninterested in them; but the Borg they knew how to treat with, and with the arrival of 8472, they actually HAD something that the Borg WOULD treat for, something they couldn't just take by assimilation, thus giving them LEVERAGE to force the Borg to the table.

In the long term, from the point of view of the UFP, it might have been the wrong call, but it's easy to be a saint in Paradise. Then and there, on the command bridge of USS Voyager, it was the right call.

>>49845163

"Mercilessly hunt down space creature and give it a ten count to communicate before murdering it," is why you would never be.a starship captain. In fact I'm fairly comfortable assuming that if you lived in the Federation you'd end up in prison.

This is a society that doesn't even punish treason with death, and you're making it your FIRST resort because this creature killed a colony when you know NOTHING about it. A human serial killer who wiped out a colony by raping every single settler to death wouldn't even be treated that way, and you're going to do it to what could as easily be a god damn Space Cow as anything else.

>>49845673
The right call, even on the short term, would have been to get the fuck out of there and not bargain with either side.

>>49845756
A human prisoner also wouldn't impossible to contain, capable of achieving warp flight on his own.

Hostile space monsters with the blood of thousands on their metaphorical hands shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt.

Goddamn, anon, I'm so fucking glad YOU'RE not in charge of my safety, because you'd let someone slit my throat and then check to make sure they didn't get their clothes too dirty with my blood!

>>49845765
Sure, that's an option. And it means abandoning pretty much all hope of returning Voyager to the Federation, because going around Borg space is not possible. It's through or bust.

>>49845756
They don't execute individual humans because they don't need to. It's possible to imprison and rehabilitate an individual human. And if it were a human wiping out whole colonies, that's what they would have done, and been justified in doing so. But it wasn't a human. It was a creature with power comparable to a whole fleet of ships. Maybe there was a way to disable the thing by force without killing it and keeping it from doing any further harm like they would have done with a human, but it didn't seem like there was.

>>49845810
Remember how the Equinox got past Borg space without ever encountering them? That shows that there was another route.

>>49845843
Exactly.

I'm not advocating execution, I'm advocating lethal self-defense-and-defense-of-others being on the table when nonlethal measures are impractical/impossible.
You don't try to slap cuffs on an entire Romulan Warbird, when they go a-raidin', you order them to surrender, then it's time for phasers and shattered shields.

The Crystalline Entity was at least as deadly as a rogue Miranda-class warship. If they won't surrender, you have to blow them the fuck out of space.

>>49845868
That was really bad writing, and nothing more. There's no way a tiny Nova-class should have pulled that off. That, or the Equinox pulled off a one-off science bullshit mumbojumbo trick. Or perhaps they snuck through the Borg's transwarp conduit system via a trick that the Borg detected and adapted to, thus meaning THEY got through, but Voyager couldn't have.