Comment on Why aren't they using drones and more automation?
CarlsIII@kbin.social 1 year ago
The same reason all the top ranking officers go on all the away missions; so the show isn’t boring.
Comment on Why aren't they using drones and more automation?
CarlsIII@kbin.social 1 year ago
The same reason all the top ranking officers go on all the away missions; so the show isn’t boring.
BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They also don’t have armies in star trek, like, if it makes senses to send 5 armed people why wouldn’t it make sense to send platoons or batallions in some cases? it is always individual enemies they never seem to face entire armies on foot.
sxan@midwest.social 1 year ago
So, this one is a little more justifiable.
Phasers, and starships. And because ST isn’t about war; it’s about diplomacy.
With the exception of the Borg, there are no personal shields. One person with a phaser is a WMD; it’s a sweep-able, incredibly destructive weapon, and if you’re not interested in merely maximum casualties, it also has an effecting area-effect stun mode.
But the other reason is starships. Ignoring plot devices, orbital targetting is incredibly accurate and starship phaser banks can anihilate entire areas. If you tried to move an army across an area, it could be vaporized by a single enemy starship.
Either the enemy has superior technology, in case it doesn’t matter if you send 1 or 1,000 people; or they have inferior technology in which case you need only one person. And if you have air (space) superiority, you can level cities with even a smaller starship.
So ST is more like special forces making surgical strikes, sending in problem solvers and diplomats, and hoping nobody starts shooting in earnest.
Because phasers are OP.
BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I had no idea about this tbh they come of ass very tame weapon, especially the whole stun setting part.
sxan@midwest.social 1 year ago
It can be used that way, sure, and the Very Civilized Starfleet uses them conservatively. But a beam weapon that is capable of disintegrating anything (unshielded) that it touches is crazy powerful. And those are only the hand phasers; we don’t often see the phaser rifles, but holy heck. If phasers scale like projectile weapons do, a single phaser rifle would be capable of vaporizing entire buildings, tanks, aircraft.