• @[email protected]
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    175 days ago

    They did so in TOS, TAS, and TNG before the “warp factor” system got retconned for VOY.

    • NegativeNullOPM
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      225 days ago

      warp speed is always a plot device in Trek. There’s never any consistency.

      • @[email protected]
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        185 days ago

        I get what you mean and don’t want to ummm acshually you, I just wanted to mention in TNG how they discovered high warp speeds were essentially causing damage to the universe and this resulted in the federation limiting warp speeds. I believe they even had to request permission to use a higher warp speed in a later episode, though I could be misremembering. I know they kept to the speed limit except in case of truly emergency situations

      • @[email protected]
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        75 days ago

        Does a higher warp factor use more dilithium or something? I have wondered, when a captain orders “take us to warp one”, why not choose warp two?

        • Miles O'Brien
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          115 days ago

          The higher the amount of energy you require from the dilithium, the quicker it fractures. In newer starships they recrystallize whioe still in use, but in older federation ships like when Those Old Scientists were roaming the stars, it was a real danger that you’d break the only dilithium crystals on the ship and be more or less stranded if you pushed them too hard.

          Of course you still have to deal with warp core stress and heat dispersion on newer ships.

          So when a sovereign class goes to warp 6, that’s more or less cruising speed. When she goes to warp 9.975, she needs to haul ass to get somewhere right the fuck now

          Especially with subspace damage at higher warps with less streamlined ships/warp bubbles, starfleet limited travel in general to warp 6 and some areas the speed limit is warp 3.

          /uMO So in other words… Whatever the plot currently demands, that’s what they go with. It’s just a show of “we need to be there quickly” or “we have some time to kill” more or less.

            • Miles O'Brien
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              55 days ago

              un-miles-obrien, basically a cheeky way of saying unjerk my role play… Yeah not very clever mind you, but I work on transporters not words.

        • @Thebeardedsinglemalt
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          5 days ago

          Dilithium only regulates the matter/anti-matter reaction to keep the flow consistent. The core itself is powered by the matter anti-matter reaction, which has always been shown to be fueled by deuterium.

          I can’t remember if it was stated onscreen, but I always understood it to be that the cruising speed of a starship is where they find the maximum efficiency of fuel use vs speed as well as wear-and-tear on the nacelles and warp coils.

          • Shawdow194
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            35 days ago

            Makes sense since most ships cruise at warp 6-7 which I like to imagine is a nice cool 55mph on the highway

            • NerfHerder
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              15 days ago

              I assumed they cruised under impulse power and only went into warp when they needed to cross larger distances.

    • @Thebeardedsinglemalt
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      125 days ago

      I don’t think it was really retconned per se, but they did refactor the warp scales throughout that time. Like Warp 4 during Archers time may have been slower than Warp 4 during Kirk’s era, which itaelf may have been slower than Warp 4 during Picard’s.

    • 👍Maximum Derek👍
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      55 days ago

      When they try to justify the handwavium speeds above warp 10 they’ll throw in terms like “multi-warp,” “transwarp,” or I think there might be another superwarp term too.