Possibly, Crossing of the Delphic Expanse and defeating the
The Earth - Romulan War (non-canon)
- Thread starter Rahul
- Start date
This remains the single most difficult thing to rationalize in canon. There just really doesn't appear to be any possible way a war (wars) with the Kzinti occured when they did.
The only possible way is if in reality, the Vulcans did the heavy lifting here and it was really the Vulcans fighting the Kzinti on behalf of Earth. In that case... no, Earth probably didn't get much from them.
You mean in space, okay. Not in WWIII.
Eh, more reason I don’t like ENT. The Romulan War in TOS was more a submarine movie between parties that never saw each other and with the humans anyway using nuclear weapons. TOS was as different from the 22 century as it was the 24th. ENT was the 24th all over again. Bah, humbug.
I don’t know if the original poster meant in space or not. I just know what a flashbang is.
There's still a way to do that even with the ENT stuff.
I suggested that Earth spammed a bunch of lower-tech ships crammed with lasers and nukes because they were cheap and quick to build.
Certainly hope he meant in space. It’s a hell of a strategy to nuke your own planet…to stop aliens from nuking your own planet.
A strategy so insane only a genius could've thought of it!Certainly hope he meant in space. It’s a hell of a strategy to nuke your own planet…to stop aliens from nuking your own planet.
A Major Slim Pickens Sisko, no doubt.A strategy so insane only a genius could've thought of it!
In a TOS novel, Strangers from the Sky, it introduced something call the PentaKrem - a portmanteau of the Pentagon and the Kremlin - which formed as the military authority of Earth after WWIII.
IMHC, Cochrane and Lily Sloane showed their work to the PentaKrem. Then PentaKrem shared Cochrane's work with the British government and any other remaining government at the time, put Cochrane's engine on spaceships & spaceplanes with plasma weapons (SNW confirmed it to be 21st century weaponry) and possibly miniaturised nukes. And sent them to fight, or at least ward off, the approaching Kzinti battleships.
Vulcans negotiated the peace treaty on behalf of Earth.
The tech seen in ENT is not really a problem to me. Not anymore at least.
Those NX ships for United Earth, and BoPs and drones for the Romulans to me were all experimental crafts. The phase cannons, photonic torpedoes and disruptors were all equally experimental technology.
The actual ships used in the war were far more primitive. Think Conestoga class , Warp Deltas, and Y-Class freighters. The Romulans themselves have their mines.
And since an NX ship is expensive to produce according to the novels, where 1 NX ship = 2 Intrepids = 3 Daedaluses. Maybe BoPs that use cloaks, and drones that use telepresence, holoemitters and warp drive, are equally as expensive for the Romulans.
Maybe for the Romulans, 1 cloaked BoP = 2 warp capable drones = 3 primitive, possibly A.I. controlled, Romulan ships.
And those primitive Romulan ships are able to travel vast distances without warp drive by navigating unstable wormholes near Vulcan/Andoria/Tellarite/Rigelian/Denobulan/human colonies. Maybe there are underspace corridors in the Beta Quadrant that the Romulans use that no one knows about.
It also depends on how far some of these planets and colonies are for Earth forces to defend them, or even repair their ships and engage in shore leave, if their ships aren't very fast. Alpha Centauri is only 4 lightyears away from Earth. Wolf 359 is only 7 lightyears from Earth. Vulcan is 16 lightyears away. Vega is 25 lightyears away. The Trialas system, where the Augments in ENT grew up, and the neighbouring Borderland where the Orion Syndicate operate, is within 90 lightyears. Rigel and Andoria are within 90 lightyears. We know Risa is 90 lightyears away.
If no human by 2152 had travelled further than 90 lightyears, and it takes a damaged NX class starship a decade to return to Jupiter Station, there would need to be some starbases set up, either by Starfleet or the Stellar Navy, for the beneift of the ships and crews.
Totally agree with this! And to add a bit of my own head cannon, perhaps only the NX Class had viewscreens, which would explain the line in *Balance of Terror*
I just go even easier... it's just Romulans being Romulans. A good chunk of their warfare is psychological... they're playing into the whole mysterious thing by simply just refusing to use visuals.
I could see a case for the actual visual communications technology to be a fairly high tech thing that doesn't make it onto less advanced ships in general... they may have a "viewscreen", but not quite like the one on an NX. They could use it to do like, something like more of a traditional video call but it probably can't take an alien signal and interpret its code to be compatible with and display on a viewscreen. So basically... less advanced ships can do visuals with each other, but the technology probably won't be compatible with aliens. It would be like one side using Skype, and one side using Facetime. It's the same thing, but... they just work together.
Sure but it still doesn't make any sense lore wise.
The Xindi "war" was already stretching lore credibility to it's absolute max... and that was one ship dicking around in an unknown area of space.
I don't buy that Earth as of 2153 in ENT had already successfully waged a series of interstellar wars AND WON!
I might be able to buy that the "wars" with the Kzinti were small border skirmishes fought near one of Earth's colonies. Like Earth had established Vega colony, and the Kzinti had began to raid it. As it turns out, Earth and the Kzinti were on roughly similar tech levels, so you've got two very early warp civilizations basically taking pot shots at each other. Earth won... but that win was basically making the Kzinti stop attacking the Vega colony.
Calling it a "war" is a bit overdramatic.
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Also one can argue the Romulan's didn't want to risk exposing their infiltration/allies in the Vulcan High Command.
Taking ENT into account:
Earth had only two "heavy" modern ships, ENT and COL.
So when the evil Romies tried to lob Earth into a war, Earth had no choice but to hurriedly attach old style nukes to slow ass ships that had very little visual capabilities or POW quarters.
There, we now have canon reason why Spock said what he said in BoT.
Earth had only two "heavy" modern ships, ENT and COL.
So when the evil Romies tried to lob Earth into a war, Earth had no choice but to hurriedly attach old style nukes to slow ass ships that had very little visual capabilities or POW quarters.
There, we now have canon reason why Spock said what he said in BoT.
Technically they had 4, we just never saw the NX-03 and NX-04 launched as they were still in development. And there's nothing in canon that suggest those launches were disastrous either.
Earth also had at least seven other ships, including 2x Intrepid and 2x Warp Deltas, which are able to fend off a Klingon BoP. Earth could also re-purposed and mass produce the NX-Beta and NX-Delta into space fighters, and add a phase cannon to the undercarriage if they wished.
Frankly, with ships as fast as the NX class (and not even accounting for the NX-refit either), it would be logical for United Earth to have them doing as much recon as possible, along with surgical strikes and MACO raids if necessary. Just strap Suliban cloaks on each NX ship and let them do their thing.
It's why I think Conestoga class and Y class freighters seem like the most plausible ships they used for the offense, until the Daedalus class is developed. While Intrepids and Warp Deltas were used for picket duty and convoy duty.
We don't actually know if/when they were launched in canon. We only know they were planned. I would generally be comfortable assuming they launched somewhere in the vicinity of 2155 though, although given Columbia had some hiccups on launch they may have been delayed for some redesigns.
I always felt the Suliban cloaks would have been cracked fairly early. We know they work differently than the later Romulan cloaks... the Suliban cloaks emit a radiation that cloaks, which can persist on objects even when unpowered, like Trips arm. Once the radiation is known, it should be fairly simple to just scan for it. Later Romulan cloaks were definitely powered, and bent light around the ship... no need for cloaking radiation.
I'm not sure I follow the logic... why wouldn't you have the freighters do... convoy duty over other vessels?
frontline supply? they are slow but they are big
Perhaps Kzinti starships and tech are rigged to explode if tampered with?
I don't think those ships would have been scrubbed. Delayed because of engine trouble, or because they were to receive the NX refit, maybe. But those ships would have been launched.
I had a though about the cloaks the Suliban used.
What if the Suliban cloaks were actually more advanced than the Romulan BoP cloaks?
The Suliban got their tech from Future Guy, who hails from the 28th century. Daniels then gave Enterprise a quantum beacon to identify them, likely from the 31st century. And the Romulans managed to harvest that tech for their mines. But they had not yet reversed engineered for their ships yet.
It makes sense if you consider that when Enterprise is using the quantum beacon, it’s designed to look for advanced cloaking tech, instead of something that’s not so advanced. Like trying to detect boat by carbon emissions, when that method won’t work on low-tech sailboats.
So, the quantum beacon won’t work on Romulan ships, because the Romulans haven’t developed the tech yet that would allow them to be discovered. However, continuous research by Starfleet, and later the Federation, on quantum beacon technology would be enough of a reason for the Romulans to never develop that tech in the first place.
It also explains why the cloak the Romulans used in ‘balance of Terror” was considered to be so groundbreaking and revolutionary – because it countered the quantum beacon tech that the Federation had been developing for years.
And also explains why the Suliban have not been seen again - the Federation does not have the quantum beacon tech to find them as of the early 25th century.
Well, for one, the weapons the freighters use are considered pop shooter, as Mayweather described it. Meant to shoot small meteors. They can barely defend against rival pirate ships. They aren't standing a chance a warship, let alone a fleet of them. And dropping their cargo probabaly wonlt mean a damn thing to the Romulans, since they aren't after the cargo. They are waging a war of attrition.
But even if the freighters upgraded their weapons, the Intrepid and Warp Deltas are just better equipped for combat. And will be in a better position to defend against an ambush from Romulans, whether it be a single Bird or Prey, or three BoPs, or five. This would then mean that the supply chain to and from the human colonies is not disrupted. And frontline supply would be critical for the colony worlds.
Do you guys know about the fanfic The Edge of Midnight? I listen to the audio version and just really love it. Thought I’d pass it doing given a few of the points made/questions raised here. There’s also a map in progress by another fan. Really exemplary stuff. 
