I’ve got a buddy who works aircraft maintenance in the US Navy. He’s told me about quite a few of those malicious compliance situations and all of them are both on par with everything else I’ve heard from engineers in civilian sectors. I’ve yet to meet an Engineer who was a bad liar. They washout way too quickly.
I always appreciate how the game FTL made “diverting power from life support” make sense. You don’t do it when your shield generators are damaged, you do it when your reactor is too damaged to output enough power for both shields and life support.
I mean, if diverting life support power would make the FTL engines work, so you could effectively teleport from A to B in seconds or minutes, it could be worth it? Especially if the destination is a safe harbor for repairs. Then resume life support. Not likely to cause instant death?
Yeah, life support being off or at reduced power would mean carbon dioxide build up and it would probably get a bit sweaty, but you can survive for quite a long time in a sealed room, especially with how much spare space is in Star Trek rooms.
Unless life support includes something like “shields that keep all the air in” or something.
I agree with the theme of the post, but some of the examples need more work, possibly at the expense of being less quippy
Yup that’s actually a tradeoff you have to consider in the game, putting more power into the engines speeds up how long it takes to make an FTL jump. So if you don’t think you can beat the ship you’re fighting, it can make sense to put all power into the engines to try and jump away before they destroy your ship. Turning off life support still leaves you with the air currently in the ship which lasts for some amount of time depending on how big your ship is/how many crew members you have/how many hull breaches, open airlocks, or fires there are.
Or when the generator simply isn’t powerful enough to supply everything. Because resources are finite and you don’t always have enough power for everything.
It's a plot point in the Scotty TNG episode that Scotty outright doubles and triples time estimates as well as lowballs system specifications in documentation. And teaches Geordi to do the same.
It’s a plot point on Lower Decks that lower deckers employ buffer time
From memory alpha:
Buffer time was a means of creatively estimating or exaggerating how long it takes to complete an assignment. A lower decks tradition, it was built on the premise that command level officers had no idea how long it took to complete a task, combining the “you never admit the actual amount of time it takes to finish a job…” so that “you’re a hero when it’s done early.” This allowed the crew time to relax between jobs.
The immediate hackles up/rage from the Captain at discovering buffer time has always been hilarious to me. I swear to god I saw my former micromanaging manager in those crazy eyes.
“Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.”
“Yeah, well, I told the Captain I’d have this analysis done in an hour.”
“How long will it really take?”
“An hour!”
“Oh, you didn’t tell him how long it would really take, did ya?”
“Well, of course I did.”
“Oh, laddie. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.”
Isn’t that what NG does allot of the time? There’s a bunch of episodes that start with them leaving a spaceport or station. They just never show them at those places.
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