Caltrops - Star Trek Online





	[quote name="laudablepuss"][quote name="get on your knees and thank me"]You made me check Memory Alpha, you goddamn son of a bitch. [quote]The prefix code was a numbered code individually assigned to each Federation starship. It was a defensive measure designed to help Starfleet personnel combat enemies who had seized control of a ship of their fleet, and to prevent enemy ships from attempting to seize control of a Starfleet vessel. When the relevant code was entered into the computer system of another ship, that ship was able to remotely control systems on the other ship. This included weapons and defense systems, which enabled the controlling ship to reduce the seized ship's fighting capabilities in order to permit effective attacks. However, a knowledgeable enemy could take the precaution of changing the code. [/quote] That's it. That's all the info on it from Star Trek's very own version of Wookiepedia, straight from the beardiest of beardos. So it was a dumb plot point they came up with that doesn't hold up to 2 seconds of scrutiny, just like the "we knew it could emit catastrophic radiation leaks so we built a shield around it, but never thought to install any means to repair said leaks, short of unprotected suicide bodies" engine warp thingy. Weak points in an otherwise good movie. If you're going to dig into some Starfleet technical manual to rebut, don't bother, because then I'll have won twice (??_?)[/quote] It's hard not to be too harshly critical, because this sort of thinking is pervasive. If a device is used in a movie, then that's what the device was designed and meant for. If a character has a plan, then everything that follows was part of the plan. It just ain't so. No, the prefix code was not designed to be used after a ship has been hijacked. Kirk explicitly states, it's to "prevent an enemy from doing what we are attempting." It's a security measure to prevent the ship's computer from being hacked. In a modern security setting, it's doubtful that other ships would know the prefix codes of their sister vessels, and would likely have to get that info from SFC in some manner. Anyway,I think this was meant to be Kirk's insight, that a measure to prevent unauthorized access could be taken advantage of -- turning the "we're all one big happy fleet" comment against Khan. That leaves everything else in your post unexplained. Where did you get that it can only lower the shields, and then only briefly? Where did you get that it took them no time to override it? Does it help your questions if it's not an explicitly anti-hijacking tool? I have to give you some slack here. They say they're going to lower the shields, they enter the code and nothing else, and the shields go down. This is extremely stupid. We can guess from the name, "prefix code" that the actual use for it is to start any command sent to the vessel with that code. Any command without that code at the beginning will not be accepted by the ship's computer. So you'd have to send the code . . . and a command. Maybe Kirk wasn't fluent in Space Navy CLI and lowering the shields was one command he knew offhand. Although Spock was standing right there and he's basically a walking science deus ex machina. If they had time, I'm sure Spock could have written a script that would have turned off Reliant's inertial dampeners and sent it into a tight barrel roll for half an hour. Then beam the unconcious bodies over and send a hazmat team to clean up the vomit. But lowering the shields was quick and easy so why not. This incidentally ties into the later PADD technology we see in Next Generation. The idea, sadly never stated on screen, was that you could run the entire ship, or at least any individual bridge station, from a PADD. Pretty cool. As for Khan running the ship, it was a line that was cut from the script. He set up sweet automation, better in fact than Scotty's in ST III. I don't think the Enterprise realistically needs 400 guys to operate it, really, at least as far as basically flight and maneuvering operations go.[/quote]