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Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: CH 2: S [Day 01 | 1857 hrs] Expectations
Last post by joshs1000 -[Show/Hide]
“I’ll take a look next time I’m back down there”, he offered. He didn’t want to sound too dismissive but he also was just trying to figure out what this bald officer was all about. A Vulcan who smiled was already a bit strange but he had never known any senior officers so interested in talking to some lowly NCO like himself. Of course it wasn’t exactly like he was just some human who could blend in, he had plenty of other external features that people noticed first. Being an over two meter tall cat person, people tended to notice that first. This Reaver better live up to the hype, he thought to himself, as he focused his mind back to the conversation at hand.
Having finished his first sandwich, Lok picked up the next one and started to gobble it down. Cross meanwhile had asked about engine types, more specifically, getting down to the specifics of what made a specific engine specifically good. The Vulcan then proceeded to use various firearms as an example of what he meant.
For Lok, guns had never been of much interest. As he told the Commander, he thought of them as a tool, broken out when needed; the personal wrinkle for Lok however was he didn’t think there was ever a need for a gun…one that killed anyway. This wasn’t some idealized opinion he had from watching a few politically driven ads in favor of banning phasers, but rather formed from his own experience in the War when he was forced to kill several Jem'Hadar to defend his crewmates. One particular memory that always made him sick to his stomach was during an enemy boarding, a Jem'Hadar he shot didn't die right away and instead suffered for several minutes, convulsing on the floor.
As Cross continued, describing in great detail his fondness of guns from their looks to their function, Lok showed some bit of discomfort but just silently ate his sandwich, not wishing to be rude. Finally when he was finished, Lok swallowed his mouthful of rather good tasting turkey and thought on the original question about “what makes an engine good”. There were many things really, but he figured this was probably more of an opinion based question, getting an idea of Lok personal preferences.
“Well”, he started, “I guess the best thing is reliability…a fast ship is only as reliable as its engines, and if that engine isn’t reliable then that ship isn’t all that fast.” He smiled a little as he remembered the similar quote told to him by his mentor what feels like a lifetime ago now.
“But, it’s like you said, different applications have different requirements.”
He nodded in approval to Cross’s request about taking his discarded veggies then continued. “For a ship like this, you want something very powerful, as fast as you can make it without sacrificing too much reliability or efficiency. That’s something that Starfleet has perfected over the past two centuries, fast reliable ships, and as a bonus, the ships have highly adaptable systems.”
“Then take a class like the Freedom Class, they were not designed for speed but rather for reliability, owing to their duties as workhorses, spending more time traveling short distances between worlds, courier duties, low level transportation, supply runs, and all that. So you had a very stout engine that wasn’t pushing the margins one bit. It was rare for those ships to suffer issues.” Despite their rather uninteresting and underwhelming capabilities, Lok did have a bit of fondness for the Freedoms, one of them was his first ship after all.
“Now if we are talking about fighters, those are all speed, you want to push those margins as close to the edge as possible without the whole thing just exploding. Basically they are all intentionally designed with too much engine for their size, whether it is warp or impulse.”