Russell,

I screwed up the Smarba dates. Smarba was in Y159. The KR and K5R were in Y160. The WE and SNA were in Y162.

Sorry for the screwup.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 01:23 am: Edit

The Romulans have Non-Tactical Warp (Mod Y page 3). But there is something very different between tactical warp and NTW.

The recent fiction piece suggested the Romulans were close to making a breakthrough on the development of tactical warp. That implementation of tactical warp had some significant drawbacks; page 4 of CL#29 indicates that the Romulan ship would destruct if it fired any weapons while under the flawed Romulan tactical warp design. Mind that was a simulation and simulations of non-existent technologies could be wrong so the Romulans might actually have working tactical warp and just never built it.

My suggestion is that the Romulans (at some later date) recover that flawed tactical warp design and start to build some ships that use with the provision that the tactical warp ships lack weapons but carry sublight units that do have weapons. Over time, the Romulans would improve their tactical warp and mount increasing numbers of weapons on tactical warp ships. The net result would be a fleet very different from the published fleet especially in the earliest incarnation.

Frankly, several pages of backstory creating an implausible method for the Romulans to steal technology in order to produce chunky versions of the fleet they already have bores me. Bigger, badder Eagle derivatives could be added to the existing game as a Romulan divergent design path that were dropped when the hawks won out.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 08:34 am: Edit

Richard,

Presumably, if the flawed warp field will cause the ship to blow up when it fired weapons, then it is probably going to blow up when hit by weapons, too. In such case, the flawed warp field they have *is* Non-Tactical Warp.

It would seem that the big attraction of giving the Romulans warp earlier is to be able to have a blank slate on their MY/GW ship designs. It is a chance to design a new fleet without designing a new race. These designs then show the designer's views on what the Romulans should "really" look like, allowing them to toss out the parts they don't like. Quite frankly, this is a pretty big lure, so I don't see it going away until someone "wins".

By Barton Pyle (Bart) on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 02:39 pm: Edit

Well, since this is a Stellar Shadows proposal, how about that the Gorns were unsuccesful in their raid in destroying the Romulans warp drive. Then the Romulans would not need the treaty of Sarmba.

If this idea was already posted, sorry for mentioning it again.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 04:03 pm: Edit

Barton,

I agree that the most consistent seamless way for the Romulans to get warp is for the Gorn/Romulan raids to have failed. (I think I said as much earlier in the thread.)

However, I haven't really pursued that line of thought here because the base thread idea is what would happen if the Treaty of Smarba didn't happen. I thought backing things all the way up to the conjecturally failed raid would derail the conversation too much.

By Russell J. Manning (Rjmanning) on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 09:19 pm: Edit

Mike,

Excuse my ignorance but when did the raid happen?

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 10:15 pm: Edit

The raid occurred in Y67.

By Jeff Williams (Jeff) on Monday, February 13, 2006 - 04:46 am: Edit

I read all the competing ideas about how to get Roms tactical warp without the Treaty of Smarba. I see a lot of creativity and thought going into all of it and I must say, there are some suitable ideas out there. Having said that, I am also a believer in Occam's razor.

Why not just follow the simplest solution? The Treaty of Smarba was never necessary because the Gorn raid in Y67.......FAILED.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, February 13, 2006 - 01:13 pm: Edit

That's been mentioned.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 01:07 am: Edit

Well, you are assuming that if the Romulans would have gained warp in Y67, then everything would progress uniformly.

However, we know that the "Eagle" ships took quite a while to get working "right". For example, while the KE is a great little ship, the precursor WE wasn't that great a ship, maxing out at speed 20/21. It took time to figure this all out.

So, who says that the Romulans would successfully cascade through the W-era warp, to the Y-era warp, to the MY-era warp? It is still quite possible that the Romulans would stagnate at a particular level. (Maybe the *next* inter-House raid succeeded. Maybe the Gorns are successful this time.)

Also, who says that things would be rosy for the Romulans if they did get warp? If not successful, it is quite likely that the real sponsors of the raid would be discovered (it only takes one live prisoner). In that case you could have full-on Romulan civil war. (Don't forget that weak emporer. He won't be stopping anything.) That would set them back a bit. Heck, it could even completely change the character of their government.

Furthermore, don't forget that mask/veil/cloak was only fully funded due to the success of that Y67 raid. Had the raid failed, and warp research was fully funded, then it is quite likely the cloaking device wouldn't have been invented.

As a result, even if the Romulans *did* discover warp in Y67, it is pretty easy to postulate a scenario where they would still have to agree to a Smarba-like treaty to catch up. If so, you would end up in a situation where the Romulans were in the exact same spot in Y162 (and later), but *without* having cloaking technology.

So, having the raids in Y67 fail is no guarantee of Romulan success. It will change the Romulans' story, but doesn't necessarily make the story turn out any better for them.