"Faster than light, no left or right..."

[Mres_was_framed!]

In Voyager, Tom claims his training says, "Faster than light, no left or right..." But we she ships turn at warp all the time. Non-fans criticize this. I have a revolutionary theory that fixes 1 and 3 nacelle-d ships, the "pairs rule," the "line-of-sight rule," and this.

Here it is...

Ships with one warp nacelle can't turn at warp. They must make strait runs, decelerate to turn at impulse speeds, then make another straight run. That is why there must be a "pairs rule" and "line of sight" rule for Enterprise or cruiser redesigns, but other classes of ship may not have to follow this rule, if the don't need to turn at warp. A 3-nacelled ship could make a straigt run faster, but have to deactivate the lone extra nacelle to turn at warp in battle.

Simple, no worrying about two pairs of warp coils or whether the Great Bird would have hated the Saladin class. Thoughts?

 

[Tosk]

I have a revolutionary theory that fixes 1 and 3 nacelle-d ships, the "pairs rule," the "line-of-sight rule," and this.

The "pairs rule" and "line of sight rule" aren't ever mentioned on screen, and are both ignored on screen...so it's hard to call them rules at all.

 

[Takeru]

The "pairs rule" and "line of sight rule" aren't ever mentioned on screen, and are both ignored on screen...so it's hard to call them rules at all.

Exactly, they aren't rules and never have been.

 

[Timo]

It's especially telling that most folks out there manage to do warp (including turns) without nacelles of any sort...

What I think we should remember about Tom Paris' little diddle is that it indeed is a nursery rhyme, a "first thing taught" - essentially a Lie to Children that helps set up the scene for Advanced Warp Maneuvering. It's just that the heroes here are facing an extreme situation, validating not just one extreme approach to warp maneuvering, but two: Paris says "No can do" just to show how close this scenario is to one end, and Janeway says "Let's turn on a dime by pulling the handbrake" just to emphasize the opposite, even though normal operations involve the broad middle.

That said, I have nothing against the idea that single warp nacelles offer less maneuverability than pairs. Perhaps all starships have "rudders" for steering, but only multi-nacelle, "multi-screw" ships can do power steering with asymmetric propulsion? We haven't seen any single-naceller do much turning yet, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Exactly, they aren't rules and never have been.

Makes you wonder, how does the Borg manage to do normal Warp Speeds faster than the Enterprise D without having any visible Warp Grilles. They obviously aren't obeying Warp Coils in pairs or line of sights that we know of.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, their "transwarp coil" is an internal component in singular, as per "Dark Frontier".

Or then a typical ship has dozens, distributed like all Borg gear, but stealing one will suffice for the needs of our heroes. It's not evident from the episode whether the theft of that one coil would cripple the Borg propulsion, as the crippling is already achieved by other means.

The concept of a single warp coil returns in ENT "Damage", where the hero ship's "primary" warp coil is replaced by one stolen from the Illyrians. But multiple ENT episodes establish that the hero ship has lots and lots of coils. We just need to work in this idea of a "primary" one somehow, and we might just as well drop it from later iterations of Starfleet tech.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

One's a Warp Coil, one's a Warp Control Oscillating Induction Loop
Simple!

Unfortunately, not only do engineers love to change things, they also like to abbreviate things

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Maybe they were short that 1 coil needed to get to warp, they may of had 27/28 Warp Coils and needed 1 more.

But they were short that 1 coil and had to go be a pirate to get things done.

 

[uniderth]

In Voyager, Tom claims his training says, "Faster than light, no left or right..." But we she ships turn at warp all the time. Non-fans criticize this. I have a revolutionary theory that fixes 1 and 3 nacelle-d ships, the "pairs rule," the "line-of-sight rule," and this.

Here it is...

Ships with one warp nacelle can't turn at warp. They must make strait runs, decelerate to turn at impulse speeds, then make another straight run. That is why there must be a "pairs rule" and "line of sight" rule for Enterprise or cruiser redesigns, but other classes of ship may not have to follow this rule, if the don't need to turn at warp. A 3-nacelled ship could make a straigt run faster, but have to deactivate the lone extra nacelle to turn at warp in battle.

Simple, no worrying about two pairs of warp coils or whether the Great Bird would have hated the Saladin class. Thoughts?

I think that's an interesting theory. I'd have to rewatch the episode to double check the context. But there has to be a functional reason for different nacelle numbers, their positions, and appearances

The concept of a single warp coil returns in ENT "Damage", where the hero ship's "primary" warp coil is replaced by one stolen from the Illyrians. But multiple ENT episodes establish that the hero ship has lots and lots of coils. We just need to work in this idea of a "primary" one somehow, and we might just as well drop it from later iterations of Starfleet tech.

Timo Saloniemi

Yeah, good luck to you guys trying to figure out Enterprise. I'll just be over here...ya know...not.

 

[blssdwlf]

So we hear this exchange in "Fury":

JANEWAY: Excuse me, Doctor. Tom, what's the first thing they teach you about maneuvering at warp?
PARIS: Faster than light, no left or right. When possible, maintain a linear trajectory. Course corrections could fracture the hull.
JANEWAY: Exactly. We'd have to drop to impulse every time we made a course change but, what if we let Voyager do the driving?​

The dialogue confirms that they can change course at warp but apparently in the Voyager series it could damage their hull.

Has there been any instances where we see Voyager alter course at warp? (We've seen enemy ships maneuver around Voyager at warp so it sounds like a Voyager-era Starfleet safety protocol like "no beaming people out from a sublight target while the ship is at warp" as seen in "Maneuvers".)

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

It's especially telling that most folks out there manage to do warp (including turns) without nacelles of any sort...

What I think we should remember about Tom Paris' little diddle is that it indeed is a nursery rhyme, a "first thing taught" - essentially a Lie to Children that helps set up the scene for Advanced Warp Maneuvering. It's just that the heroes here are facing an extreme situation, validating not just one extreme approach to warp maneuvering, but two: Paris says "No can do" just to show how close this scenario is to one end, and Janeway says "Let's turn on a dime by pulling the handbrake" just to emphasize the opposite, even though normal operations involve the broad middle.

That said, I have nothing against the idea that single warp nacelles offer less maneuverability than pairs. Perhaps all starships have "rudders" for steering, but only multi-nacelle, "multi-screw" ships can do power steering with asymmetric propulsion? We haven't seen any single-naceller do much turning yet, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

I agree with those who have said that they aren't really "rules." I also agree with the poster quoted here who calls it a "Nursery Rhyme." That is, if you are at the Academy you don't know if you will be posted to a Scout with a single nacelle that has minimal maneuvering at warp, or a cruiser that has more maneuvering ability.

I don't remember if w ever see Voyager turn at Warp, but the Nebula Class Phoenix does in "The Wounded" (TNG). It has a nacelle pair but only partial line of sight. That works for me, since these "rules" are really general guidelines.

 

[Timo]

Trek from the very start has tried to say that warp gives greater maneuverability than impulse: in "Elaan of Troyius", restoring of warp capacity allows Kirk's ship to stop "wallowing like a garbage scow" and start "pivoting" at warp. This is why Paris' comment is so jarring.

It is also intuitively easy on the audience to think that the more powerful warp drive is better for everything than the weaker alternative of impulse.

But the intuitive TOS approach doesn't have particularly broad applicability. In Top Gun, is Tom Cruise more agile on his ten-kilowatt motorbike or in his thousands-kilowatt F-14? So not every writer might see things the way the TOS ones did.

How to remain consistent? Well, it's relative, and we can look at Top Gun again. Sure, the F-14 is agile in its own realm, surprisingly so for such a giant turkey of a jet; similarly, Voyager is a particularly agile starship. But no starship turns sharp corners at warp, not even the hero ship; and in this episode, the heroes are facing nothing but hull-fracturingly sharp corners. For navigating through the dozens of pylons of a power station, Tom would still prefer to land and switch to his motorbike. But he can't, so he does this highly unorthodox thing, flapping the VG wings and airbrakes of his jet on and off like mad. And, being Tom, he succeeds, as does the other Tom, even though any non-hero would simply see his ride torn to shreds from around him.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Would it have been that hard to have the Voyager dialogue in "Fury" changed to this

JANEWAY: Excuse me, Doctor. Tom, can you avoid those vacuoles at warp?
PARIS: Voyager at warp can't make a sharp enough turn without hitting a vacuole. I could do it if I dropped down to impulse for each turn but it would get tiring after a hundred turns.
JANEWAY: Exactly. We'd have to drop to impulse every time we made a course change. but, what if we let Voyager do the driving?​

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Trek from the very start has tried to say that warp gives greater maneuverability than impulse: in "Elaan of Troyius", restoring of warp capacity allows Kirk's ship to stop "wallowing like a garbage scow" and start "pivoting" at warp. This is why Paris' comment is so jarring.

Maybe the phrase referred to "greater tactical manueverability than outright physical manueverability". Having the ability to cross great distances at FTL is far more useful than being stuck at STL where everybody at FTL can catch up to you.
No matter how big or small of a ship, if you're stuck at STL, you might as well be "wallowing like a garbage scow" because you'll always be slower than FTL vessels and be open to being attacked by vessels who are capable of such speeds.

 

[Santaman]

We see the BOP make a HUGE swing around the sun at a very high warp factor to gather speed for the time jump, we see the Ent D turning while it accelerates to warp a lot of time in TNG so I think someone drank too much when he wrote that line...

 

[Kemaiku]

Yes but, at even a low warp factor, the Bird of Prey would have shot past the Sun in the first few seconds.

In Enterprise, they may not have needed a nacelle coil, but an injector coil for the core itself. Maybe the initial matter/antimatter injection constrictor, not an easy thing to replace.

I think the phrase Tom used was just meant to say they couldn't make sharp turns at warp. In DS9 they had a Bird of Prey drop to impulse, turn, then re-engage the drive to save time.

 

[thribs]

You can do slight turns at warp but nothing abrupt. Turning circles would be massive.
In that situations where they had to make abrupt turns to avoid collisions, they would have to come out of light to make the correction.

 

[blssdwlf]

The BOP swinging around the sun at high warp was still at a very low c speed which funny enough is consistent with what we see in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Operation Annihilate" and "The Voyage Home" (see BOP warp out of the atmosphere). Warp in TOS slows down around large masses like stars or close to a planet. So they have to crank up the warp factor to go faster. In open space, TOS warp is very fast and that might be too fast to make a 90 degree turn in a short length of space. As far as turning at warp, TOS did it multiple times. 180 degree turn at Warp 8 in "Operation Annihilate", 40 degree turn at Warp 3 in "The Squire of Gothos", Warp 2 pivot in "Elaan of Troyius" and so on.

In "Fury", Voyager (and TNG) warp is a different animal since they had to drop to impulse to make a 2.3 degree turn and then jump to high warp treating it more like hyperspace jumps than warp maneuvering...

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The slow turning arc at high speed is no different with modern day Super Sonic flight.

Anybody going that fast will have very wide turning arcs.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

Would it have been that hard to have the Voyager dialogue in "Fury" changed to this

JANEWAY: Excuse me, Doctor. Tom, can you avoid those vacuoles at warp?
PARIS: Voyager at warp can't make a sharp enough turn without hitting a vacuole. I could do it if I dropped down to impulse for each turn but it would get tiring after a hundred turns.
JANEWAY: Exactly. We'd have to drop to impulse every time we made a course change. but, what if we let Voyager do the driving?​

I love Voyager, but that modified exchange you wrote still sounds pretty much like corresponding part of most of every other episode of Voyager anyway.

Seriously, though, I appreciate the many examples given here. One thing strikes me: Every example of a warp turn, except the Bird of Prey which is not a Federation ship, has at least a pair of warp nacelles. As I said earlier, perhaps this is an indication that a ship needs a pair of warp nacelles to turn at Warp and that's why GR made that rule, but in universe we can say 1 nacelles ships exist but can't turn, or have much limited turning at warp.