Which ST universe is more powerful? The original or the new?

[2046]

TOS ships would have huge advantages in range . . . the Federation ships all seemed to do the Star Wars short range stuff in this film, which nearly got the Monsterprise killed at the end due to the proximity required.

TOS ships would likely have huge advantages in firepower . . . the Monsterprise torpedoes appear to be far, far less powerful than her own warp cores, like a pea shooter versus a 16-inch Iowa gun turret. "But in Generations . . " . . . no. That featured a warp core breach that sent the mass of the ship outward at high velocity, but in the case of the Monsterprise escaping the black hole there was no mass but for the core containers.

TOS ships would likely have huge advantages in maneuverability . . . the Monsterprise lumbers like a garbage scow.

The Altstitutions and other ships in that fleet might have some advantages, but I'd take a real Constitution any day of the week.

[sonofccn]

I didn't notice a whole lot of difference beyond dramatic license for the beaming sequences. It was a bit unusual for the transporter to fail to grab Amanda the way it did, though I can't recall a similar circumstance in ST:ENT, TOS-Prime or the TNG-era for comparison.

I could be remembering it wrong, and if I am I apologize, but they initially had troubling scoring a lock, once a lock was secure they had to stand perfectly still while the "shimmer effect" occurred which lasted as long as a standard beam out and Amanda's falling totally disrupted the effect. In comparison we know that by the 24 century Prime Timeline a bullet can be transported midflight without issue from a portable transporter unit which should have been traveling faster and was a far more off the cuff affair than Amanda fall. Now I admit Vulcan was reaching critical at the time and that could have been playing hell with their systems but as shown the pre-scotty transporter was inferior to the Prime version.

[Mike DiCenso]

I didn't notice a whole lot of difference beyond dramatic license for the beaming sequences. It was a bit unusual for the transporter to fail to grab Amanda the way it did, though I can't recall a similar circumstance in ST:ENT, TOS-Prime or the TNG-era for comparison.

I could be remembering it wrong, and if I am I apologize, but they initially had troubling scoring a lock, once a lock was secure they had to stand perfectly still while the "shimmer effect" occurred which lasted as long as a standard beam out and Amanda's falling totally disrupted the effect. In comparison we know that by the 24 century Prime Timeline a bullet can be transported midflight without issue from a portable transporter unit which should have been traveling faster and was a far more off the cuff affair than Amanda fall. Now I admit Vulcan was reaching critical at the time and that could have been playing hell with their systems but as shown the pre-scotty transporter was inferior to the Prime version.

You're getting a bit mixed up here. Yes, we know that the Prime timeline 24th century technology is very powerful and can do quite a bit that the Prime TOS and TOS-Alt tech cannot. Otherwise the Narada would have gotten it's ass handed to it when it went up against the rescue fleet, or even substantially before that, the 47 Klingon warbirds. But in a straight up TOS-Prime to TOS-Alt comparison, I don't see any kind of substantial deviation here. In TOS-Prime, we rarely saw any movement and the crew often had to go to a specifc beaming spot and hold still while the beaming was in progress. By the time of the TOS-Prime movies, the transporter looked capable of allowing some movement. But what I'am talking about here is grabbing people out of situation like what happened with Amanda in ST 2009.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

TOS ships would have huge advantages in range . . . the Federation ships all seemed to do the Star Wars short range stuff in this film, which nearly got the Monsterprise killed at the end due to the proximity required.

TOS ships would likely have huge advantages in firepower . . . the Monsterprise torpedoes appear to be far, far less powerful than her own warp cores, like a pea shooter versus a 16-inch Iowa gun turret. "But in Generations . . " . . . no. That featured a warp core breach that sent the mass of the ship outward at high velocity, but in the case of the Monsterprise escaping the black hole there was no mass but for the core containers.

TOS ships would likely have huge advantages in maneuverability . . . the Monsterprise lumbers like a garbage scow.

The Altstitutions and other ships in that fleet might have some advantages, but I'd take a real Constitution any day of the week.

Okay, in comparing the explosions made by the multi-story tall warp cores versus those that can be made by the comparatively tiny (a couple meters long) torpedoes of either TOS-Alt or Prime is silly. If such a thing was possible, Geordi in ST:Insurrection would have just had Riker fire on the subspace rift with a spread of torpedoes rather than a warp core. As for range, most of what we saw was point-defense fire, which was especially important for saving Spock and the Jellyfish at the end. Also bear in mind that throughout much of the TOS movies as well as the TNG series, ships pulling up point-blank in most cases and duking it out was the norm as well. We even see unfortunately in the TOS-remastered visual FX where combat scenes are retconned so that the fighting occurs within kilometers rather than the stated thousands of kilometers.

On maneuverbility, there is little that shows in the original TOS series that the E-Prime is so much more maneuverable than it's counterpart in the Alternate timeline. If anything, given it's stated offical size and some of the visuals, the E-Alt showed amazing fighter-like maneuvering while in the fleet debris field!

So while I still think the E-Alt is freakin' ugly and from a strict asthetics standpoint would take the originals over the new, I can't say that the Prime ships are more powerful or anything over their counterparts.
-Mike

[sonofccn]

You're getting a bit mixed up here. Yes, we know that the Prime timeline 24th century technology is very powerful and can do quite a bit that the Prime TOS and TOS-Alt tech cannot. Otherwise the Narada would have gotten it's ass handed to it when it went up against the rescue fleet, or even substantially before that, the 47 Klingon warbirds.

I am aware of technological progress between the centuries, I did not mean to imply otherwise as I noted I was using a 24th century example, however you did ask for examples from TNG and I assumed beyond and the gun example shows velocity is at best a minimum concern. I have to concur with you that there are no movements in TOS era, no doubt to the original technological issues.

But in a straight up TOS-Prime to TOS-Alt comparison, I don't see any kind of substantial deviation here. In TOS-Prime, we rarely saw any movement and the crew often had to go to a specifc beaming spot and hold still while the beaming was in progress. By the time of the TOS-Prime movies, the transporter looked capable of allowing some movement. But what I'am talking about here is grabbing people out of situation like what happened with Amanda in ST 2009.

Beam out spots were not required, referenced the number of times Kirk and co beamed up and down when the plot demanded, and assuming they had a "lock" when the shimmer effect started took longer than a TOS-Prime beam out takes. TOS-Prime may or may not have a similar weakness to sudden movements unless there is an example of beaming something moving that I can't recall but even without that TOS-Prime transporter appear to be the superior.

[2046]

I think I got you a bit confused. Perhaps it'll help to consider the fact that for the purpose of this question (and maybe most others), I don't assume anything carries over from one universe to the other, so I'm taking the Monsterprise as shown with no other assumptions.

Okay, in comparing the explosions made by the multi-story tall warp cores

The Altstitution cores were actually not very big . . . just numerous. They were probably no larger than the escape pod, if even that large.

versus those that can be made by the comparatively tiny (a couple meters long) torpedoes of either TOS-Alt or Prime is silly. If such a thing was possible, Geordi in ST:Insurrection would have just had Riker fire on the subspace rift with a spread of torpedoes rather than a warp core.

Except it was the core that was written to be the trick . . . it was the core pulling the rift like a zipper across space. Thus a torpedo would have done nothing.

The only time this sort of reasoning was not used was with the Delta Flyer's warp core in . . . you guessed it . . . Voyager, when the core was ditched in a nebula to contain the blast. But one could argue that this ended up merely causing the blast, if one ditched the reasonable person standard for the characters of Paris and Torres who were having relationship stuff at the time.

As for range, most of what we saw was point-defense fire, which was especially important for saving Spock and the Jellyfish at the end.

Why would shooting down 27 missiles require that you stay parked in the area thereafter?

Also bear in mind that throughout much of the TOS movies as well as the TNG series, ships pulling up point-blank in most cases and duking it out was the norm as well. We even see unfortunately in the TOS-remastered visual FX where combat scenes are retconned so that the fighting occurs within kilometers rather than the stated thousands of kilometers.

Except older Trek doesn't exclusively show such ranges. So far New Trek does.

On maneuverbility, there is little that shows in the original TOS series that the E-Prime is so much more maneuverable than it's counterpart in the Alternate timeline.

Warp maneuverability, the observed capabilities of the NX Class and Defiant 1764, and so on all point to a far greater capability.

[Mike DiCenso]

I think I got you a bit confused. Perhaps it'll help to consider the fact that for the purpose of this question (and maybe most others), I don't assume anything carries over from one universe to the other, so I'm taking the Monsterprise as shown with no other assumptions.

Okay, in comparing the explosions made by the multi-story tall warp cores

The Altstitution cores were actually not very big . . . just numerous. They were probably no larger than the escape pod, if even that large.

There I disagree... for a number of reasons. First off the majority of the visuals point to a 160 meter tall ship, those cores may appear small and squat next to a ship that tall, but they are still 2-4 decks long, and appear wider that any previously observed warp core design. This makes them much larger volumetrically than any visually observed torpedo casing by several orders of magnitude. Secondly, the scene with the ejecting escape pod is at complete odds with the majority of the evidence for the ship's scaling. We can only reconcile it by maybe assuming the pod is claded in some sort of thick protective outer coverings.

versus those that can be made by the comparatively tiny (a couple meters long) torpedoes of either TOS-Alt or Prime is silly. If such a thing was possible, Geordi in ST:Insurrection would have just had Riker fire on the subspace rift with a spread of torpedoes rather than a warp core.

Except it was the core that was written to be the trick . . . it was the core pulling the rift like a zipper across space. Thus a torpedo would have done nothing.

You're partially correct there. Here's the full dialog from the scene.

LAFORGE: Our warp core is acting like a magnet to the tear. We're pulling it like a zipper across space.
RIKER (on intercom): Options?
LAFORGE: We could eject the core.


RIKER: Will that stop the tear?

LAFORGE: You got me, Commander.


RIKER: Is that your expert opinion?


LAFORGE: Detonating the warp core might neutralise the cascade, but then again it might not. Subspace weapons are unpredictable. That's why they were banned.

The explosion of the warp core is what would seal the rift, not that they were trying to get the subspace tear to chase after the core once it was ejected. If photon torpedoes or quantum torpeodes had enough explosive power as a single core does, they could just fire a few into the tear and close it up before it ever got anywhere near the ship.

Why would shooting down 27 missiles require that you stay parked in the area thereafter?

That's a good point, though we can presume that it was to get Kirk and Spock out of there once their mission was accomplished.

Also bear in mind that throughout much of the TOS movies as well as the TNG series, ships pulling up point-blank in most cases and duking it out was the norm as well. We even see unfortunately in the TOS-remastered visual FX where combat scenes are retconned so that the fighting occurs within kilometers rather than the stated thousands of kilometers.

Except older Trek doesn't exclusively show such ranges. So far New Trek does.

This is true, though we are working from a comparison of only one movie to multitudes of movies and TV episodes.

On maneuverbility, there is little that shows in the original TOS series that the E-Prime is so much more maneuverable than it's counterpart in the Alternate timeline.

Warp maneuverability, the observed capabilities of the NX Class and Defiant 1764, and so on all point to a far greater capability.

The NX Class and the NCC-1764 showed no significantly better performance over what we see the E-Alt do in ST 2009.
-Mike

[2046]

The Altstitution cores were actually not very big . . . just numerous. They were probably no larger than the escape pod, if even that large.

There I disagree... for a number of reasons. First off the majority of the visuals point to a 160 meter tall ship

I'm guessing you refer to the 700ish meter ship. I agree.

This makes them much larger volumetrically than any visually observed torpedo casing by several orders of magnitude.

I agree they're bigger than a torpedo, of course, but not several orders of magnitude in the film. That's no less than 1000 times more volume, you're saying. Assuming 2m^3 for a torpedo, then, you're talking 2000m^3 for a warp core. That's like four runabouts strapped together, or about the cargo capacity of this fat 747.

Negative, sir. I can't go with you there.

Secondly, the scene with the ejecting escape pod is at complete odds with the majority of the evidence for the ship's scaling. We can only reconcile it by maybe assuming the pod is claded in some sort of thick protective outer coverings.

It's okay . . . it's just a big door. That is, the pod doesn't fill the exterior hatch diameter. People are wigging out over nothing.

You're partially correct there. Here's the full dialog from the scene.

LAFORGE: Our warp core is acting like a magnet to the tear. We're pulling it like a zipper across space.

Done.

The explosion of the warp core is what would seal the rift

Out of boredom, so far as we know . . . even Geordi's not sure. In any case, though, there's clearly no evidence that lobbing torpedoes at it would've done squat . . . not because of explosive power, but because they weren't relevant to the tear.

If photon torpedoes or quantum torpeodes had enough explosive power as a single core does, they could just fire a few into the tear and close it up before it ever got anywhere near the ship.

You assume here what you sought to prove.

Why would shooting down 27 missiles require that you stay parked in the area thereafter?

That's a good point, though we can presume that it was to get Kirk and Spock out of there once their mission was accomplished.

No need for that, either, except for short beaming range.

Except older Trek doesn't exclusively show such ranges. So far New Trek does.

This is true, though we are working from a comparison of only one movie to multitudes of movies and TV episodes.

Just wait. I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict sequels. ;)

The NX Class and the NCC-1764 showed no significantly better performance over what we see the E-Alt do in ST 2009.

The Monsterprise couldn't even avoid hitting another ship that was dead ahead and ten seconds away at a velocity measured in the dozens to low-hundreds of meters per second . . . I'd call 140m/s a pretty good high-end value for the relative velocity, assuming a 700m ship that must move about two shiplengths to hit the target. All they needed, top-end, was a 15-degree course correction.

Compare that to the NX-01 from a hundred years prior, a ship nearly equal in volume to the Constitution but with much less advanced technology, which can perform L-4 maneuversin impulse-harsh environments with ease, among other feats.

I'm just not seeing the Monsterprise as having shown herself to be less than a whale.

[Roondar]

2) It was hugely refreshing to see a starship shoot the hell out of the missiles fired at it (and even more so when the same tactic was used to protect Spocks ship). Point defense is a good thing and I'm glad to see at least someone in the world of Trek finally agrees ;)

It's not the first time this has been shown in Trek. As far back as TOS' "Patterns of Force" the Enterprise shoots down a missle fired at it. A year later, this is repeated in "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky".

In the TNG-era, we have the E-D shooting down a missile in "The Price" and destroying several Lysian drones in "Conundrum".
-Mike

Apart from the Lysian drones, which I'll get to in abit, I just don't agree. There is a world of difference between shooting down a single missile and taking your sweet time doing so and the kind of point defense we're shown here (i.e. shooting down 25 missiles in the same time). I might not remember all of ST, but I've never seen that many phaser shots in that short time, all (or allmost all) hitting their targets by a single starship. The E-Alt acts as if it's phasers are point defense. The other enterprises have, on rare occasions, used their otherwise decidely non-point-defense weapons in a point defense role and then only versus a very small number of targets.

And who can forget the infamous example from Generations, where a phaser lock on a single missile would take several seconds to do. As I said, not in the same league.

The Lysian drones are more interesting, but they are still miles from being in the same league as what the E-alt showed. There where what, six of them? Both the starship battles we saw in the movie involved easily an order of magnitude more objects, which where both smaller and moved faster. Also interesting is that the missiles where almost all (if not all, but I don't remember for sure) shot down at higher ranges than the Lysian probes. The E-D let the probes move within a hundred meters or so before shooting them.

The shields don't flare in a TNG-era manner, that is for sure. Given how powerful the Narada was, I'am not suprised that even modestly upgraded TOS-era shields could hold out against it. Also this is hardly the first time in Trek that we have seen where shields don't even so much as flicker when hit with overwhelming firepowe; much of the DS9 Dominion War battles have taken this liberty.

The shields (which where up and 'fresh' at the time) did well, nothing, to the saucer section which scraped the E-Alt. This is rather poor performance. Not to mention that the E-alts shields actually held against the first few hits and still seemed to have zero effect. We never saw that in DS9 ;)

Sick bay look like the "Dark ages"? I don't think so. It looked kind of like the TMP-style sick bay rather than the TOS-prime, and I really did not notice all that much of a difference in what McCoy did as far as applying medicine than what he did in the field in TOS-Prime or in sick bay.
-Mike

I said sick bay and medicine. I've never seen such a rediculous scene (as far as medicine goes in ST) as the whole make-kirk-sick-and-then-poke-him-with-a-hundred-needles-to-fix-him comic relief thing (mind you that is from the angle of evaluating the status of medical abilites of Starfleet, not from the scene itself as it was kind of funny)

As to the look of sickbay, as I remember it resembled a military field medicine post (ala MASH) more than a Starfleet sick bay, though I could be misremembering as I didn't watch the movie that recent.

[Mr. Oragahn]

So UFP starships in altverse are like star destroyers, are fat whales, but with some good ability at intercepting missiles (good point defense), and unfortunately not so good shields?

From a naval standpoint, if I were to classify this kind of ship from these elements only, I'd say they really behave like destroyers, or perhaps gunships, with an ability to deliver large firepower at a good distance, but mostly relying on PDs to shoot down enemy missiles instead of uber shields, therefore telling us that close combat is not something they'd be looking for usually.
Which might not fit with the movie at all --which I have not seen yet.

[sonofccn]

So UFP starships in altverse are like star destroyers, are fat whales, but with some good ability at intercepting missiles (good point defense), and unfortunately not so good shields?

From a naval standpoint, if I were to classify this kind of ship from these elements only, I'd say they really behave like destroyers, or perhaps gunships, with an ability to deliver large firepower at a good distance, but mostly relying on PDs to shoot down enemy missiles instead of uber shields, therefore telling us that close combat is not something they'd be looking for usually.
Which might not fit with the movie at all --which I have not seen yet.

Possible but , bearing in mind Alt trek has limited data for us to draw conclusions from, I don't think we saw anything to get a proper judge on the shields, beyond thier more War invisible shieldish now which is just a VFX differnce, since most of the time the ships were getting a pounding by a ship a century ahead of them. We do know the Klingon vessels, who should be rough technological equals, removed of thier shields are rendered vunerable to attack, turning an unwinnable battle into a cake walk assuming Kirk didn't alter any other conditions in the simulation. Now again we do simply have a very limited amount of information do deal with.

As to the Alt-Feds overall I wouldn't say they focused soley on industrial output, warp drive appears faster than generally, very very rough average of Trek as a whole, accepted and the PD trick , very accurate spam of beams, isn't something we saw TOS-Prime able to do that I recall, through it did shoot down the odd missile but what we saw of the actual firing was simply the same effect as a normal phaser shot IIRC, which would appear to be improvements versus transporters, ships seem to carry more shuttles than baseline indictating it's more common place than in TOS-Prime, and possible shields. To me that suggests a culture that focused on direct appliaction/conventional technology opposed to more exotic technology. A klingonish mind set when you think about it :)

[Mith]

The shields in this movie acted like the shields in The Undiscovered Country. The shields where still up, but the Klingon Torpedos where still damaging the hull. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KwTW6EzY1c

It should be noted that although the Enterprise A was taking a heavy beating, that the Excelsior was taking the shots without any damage to the hull at all. I would suspect that the old age of the ship was showing in that instance and that the fact that a new Klingon Bird of Prey design had enough firepower to take out one of their battlecruisers was enough to cause Starfleet to retire her as well (not to mention the Enterprise B was going to be launched soon and the main bridge crew was retiring).

As for the nEnterprise, her design is rather interesting. First, we have to think just what happened during the initial conflict between the Narada and the Kelvin. The Kelvin probably scanned her, picking up massive technological advancements all over her. It's also rather common for the ships of the TOS period to launch a black box containing their records. Presuming that this was instead on one of the ships, it would clearly show to hold the information that the Kelvin picked up.

Now, with this in mind, we should look at TOS era Starfleet at the time. We see that with the Kelvin, there was an emphasis on point-defense guns. Even more strange is why in fact, these ships even had phasers. Remember, the Enterprise Prime was refitted with phasers just before Kirk took command. It also looked exactly the same.

The only thing I could think of is that phasers at the time were incredibly energy intensive and therefore the Enterprise wasn't armed with them, but a massive ship like the Kelvin had the sufficient energy to power them.

My guess is that after the incident with the Narada the UFP went with the supersize approach and used the technology their sensors picked up to further enhance their ships. I would almost go as far to say that where as the pre-Narada ships had their phaser banks tied to a seperate power source (as TOS had), the ones that came afterward probably had their phaser banks tied into the warpcore, a design that wouldn't be realized until the later part of the 23rd century.

The torpedo issue was also interesting and may have to do with the advancement of shields. Look at the TOS era; most weapons are capable of being absorbed by the shield. Even overwhelming firepower (90x stronger torpedoes=p) against the Enterprise Prime wasn't overwhelming and the shield could take it to some degree. The Narada however, proved that Starfleet's shielding was worthless. As one of the officers said, it was like their shields weren't even there. Now, given this, it would seem that the logical response would be to focus on point defense guns. This is actually rather clever on Starfleet's part; they didn't sit around trying to think about how they could fix the shield; they thought about how they were going to enhance their defenses. Shielding itself would be more shifted to the point of warding off energy weapons rather than an all first level of defense. Prime ST ships seem to focus more on energy shielding first and point defense abilities second (although they could easily be devistating against small objects, as the speed of their phaser arrays seen in Nemesis and Contagion are just downright scary).

The warp core issue is also fascinating. We can clearly see that the warp cores in TNG are far more advanced, but they never went with a multi-warpcore idea, save for perhaps the Prometheus and that was for entirely different reasons. Instead, we see them focusing on more powerful cores. Why? If the nEnterprise was supposed to be incredibly advanced thanks to stolen technology, why use a different form of a core?

Well, it's probably a mix of generation and military protocol. Remember, the Kelvin got its ass kicked in the shielding department and obviously the point defense guns shows another train of thought for Starfleet. They couldn't rely upon their shields to protect them from a lucky shot at the warpcore. Obviously, if the core was hit, the ship was fucked. Even if they could eject the core, they wouldn't have the power to fight against a superior enemy, especially if we assume that these new phaser banks were tied into the warpcore (bit of a stretch, I know). But with multiple warpcores, even if one was hit, you could either shut it down or eject it and you'd still have about seven others running; you could keep fighting. I also suspect that the generators here are probably pretty powerful, but I wouldn't go as far to say that each one is as powerful as a Enterprise Prime singular warpcore. I would go as far to say that the cores probably supply 2-3 times the power that the Enterprise Prime could supply with its core.

Honestly, I would probably put nEnterprise a few lenghts ahead of the Enterprise A but probably not stronger than the Excelsior. The Excelsior's energy generation, even with a singular core, is probably higher than that of the nEnterprise, not to mention that Excelsior has a a great deal of phaser banks on her; probably as much if not more than the nEnterprise has guns. And although it probably isn't fair to mention, the torpedoes for the Excelsior are probably much more advanced, as we see that they have a different glow (although nEnterprise's torpedoes might be fucking huge considering the size of the launcher...).

So I would say that as far as technology goes, the nTOS was pushed ahead by a few decades.

[Mr. Oragahn]

So UFP starships in altverse are like star destroyers, are fat whales, but with some good ability at intercepting missiles (good point defense), and unfortunately not so good shields?

From a naval standpoint, if I were to classify this kind of ship from these elements only, I'd say they really behave like destroyers, or perhaps gunships, with an ability to deliver large firepower at a good distance, but mostly relying on PDs to shoot down enemy missiles instead of uber shields, therefore telling us that close combat is not something they'd be looking for usually.
Which might not fit with the movie at all --which I have not seen yet.

Possible but , bearing in mind Alt trek has limited data for us to draw conclusions from, I don't think we saw anything to get a proper judge on the shields, beyond thier more War invisible shieldish now which is just a VFX differnce, since most of the time the ships were getting a pounding by a ship a century ahead of them. We do know the Klingon vessels, who should be rough technological equals, removed of thier shields are rendered vunerable to attack, turning an unwinnable battle into a cake walk assuming Kirk didn't alter any other conditions in the simulation. Now again we do simply have a very limited amount of information do deal with.

As to the Alt-Feds overall I wouldn't say they focused soley on industrial output, warp drive appears faster than generally, very very rough average of Trek as a whole, accepted and the PD trick , very accurate spam of beams, isn't something we saw TOS-Prime able to do that I recall, through it did shoot down the odd missile but what we saw of the actual firing was simply the same effect as a normal phaser shot IIRC, which would appear to be improvements versus transporters, ships seem to carry more shuttles than baseline indictating it's more common place than in TOS-Prime, and possible shields. To me that suggests a culture that focused on direct appliaction/conventional technology opposed to more exotic technology. A klingonish mind set when you think about it :)

This conclusion is pretty much in agreement with my first point, mentioned earlier on.

[Mr. Oragahn]

So I would say that as far as technology goes, the nTOS was pushed ahead by a few decades.

Funny thing. By reading your post, I'd have thought you'd conclude on the opposite.
That story of multi cores reminds me of that not so distant period when ATI was cramming plenty of lower tech GPU cores and this and that on their graphic cards, with huge ventilators, while nVivia were coming with top notch stuff, one core, a smaller ventilator, and worker just as well if not quite better.

That or nTOS being us using multicore CPUs and TOS having already moved to the true new generation of chipsets.

[Roondar]

So I would say that as far as technology goes, the nTOS was pushed ahead by a few decades.

Funny thing. By reading your post, I'd have thought you'd conclude on the opposite.
That story of multi cores reminds me of that not so distant period when ATI was cramming plenty of lower tech GPU cores and this and that on their graphic cards, with huge ventilators, while nVivia were coming with top notch stuff, one core, a smaller ventilator, and worker just as well if not quite better.

That or nTOS being us using multicore CPUs and TOS having already moved to the true new generation of chipsets.

Well, in 'the real world' a bigger powerplant is usually more efficient than a smaller one. However, that assumes you can safely build said larger plant and your technology scales up without limits.

If you can't... Well then having multiple smaller ones makes sense (to keep with the CPU/GPU analogy - it's like Intel (et al) reaching diminising returns with a single core so they switched to multiple cores). I got the impression they upped the number of cores to 'pay' for the faster warp and phaser-spammage.

I wonder if the new Enterprise is still using as many fusion cores as the old one did.