Would this work!? Manipulating the warp field to change...

[Lan Parker]

Ensign De'Havean did a quick check of herself and then entered once the door fully opened. Coming to a stop before Commander Von. "Need to take the Jackal out on a test run with engineering crew and few others to validate new maneuvers using just the warp magnetic fields that is produced by the Nacelles that enables the ship to travel at light speeds." Pausing to take a breath after the initial outburst.

Liarra chuckled a little. "Calm down, Ensign. What are you talking about? How do your maneuvers work?"

"Meow! This is all done a sublight.. Slower than light speeds... normal maneuvering speeds, Ma'am!" Erica smiled and purred softly, hoping her success in the holodeck could translate into reality, giving the USS Jackal an advantage. "It combines using the warp magnetic fields that pull the ship through space. Only this is used to change direction... Example.. Square turns or sudden climb or decent out of the way of harm." Erica handed over the PADD that showed her test results in the holodeck. "Iz just need to have permission to take the Jackal out for a quick spin to test the results out."

"I'm leaving in just a few days, Ensign. I'd be happy to let you test your theory, but I'm not going to be able to be there to see it. The Jackal's new chief engineer will be arriving in a few days as well. Get with her and Lieutenant Kelly about the modifications that you want to make. I'll make sure he's notified so he knows what's going on."

Okay so from how I understand it... I'm a little confused by the term 'Light-speeds' my understanding is light speed is warp 1. From my stand point, the USS Jackal would be using the 'bubble and basically turning it on an axis (y axis for now) and quite literally throwing it in a different direction. Wouldn't this have an effect on the ship? Can the bubble polarity fields be moved in such a way?

O_o

The reason I'm bringing this hear is that, established Canon seems to infer that it wouldn't work this way, it'd tear the ship apart because the warp protection bubble itself would break down. Not to mention the extra added systems that would be needed to keep the generation of the warp field stable enabling the ship to pass from point a to point b. I always thought that it was only possible for the ship to go forwards and/or backwards (by reversing the field) but forwards mostly due to the positioning of the polarity generators.

(Do I get an award for Tech speak?)

[Yunalesca]

Actually, from what little of an understanding I've collected, it'd just dissipate. To my knowledge, unless the warp field is a specific design, it can't exist, and, it'd either dissipate, or tear a hole in time, space, and dimensions(Which I've used in a mission, but that's an aside.), with a great deal of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

Basically, either the ship would drop out of warp, and you'd spend a good few hours fixing the borscht of warp control programming that someone made out of it, or the starship would have a 70% chance, of actually becoming borscht.

[Blackcat]

Wouldn't work. The nacelles have to work in conjunction with one another, in alignment, or else the warp field (bubble) would collapse. Most likely this failure would be catastrophic, severely damaging if not destroying the ship. Warp engines are uni-directional, forward only, and can make only slight variations without the warp field collapsing. The warp bubble is a type of subspace field that separates what it's surrounding from normal space as well as impelling the ship forward.

It's also important to remember that a vehicle in space may be faster, but will never be as nimble as a vehicle in atmosphere. In atmosphere, the craft has flaps, airlons, etc that allow it to maneuver much better than can be done in space. The warp field just doesn't work that way. In space, if a vehicle has to apply force, not just to move, but to change it's direction and even to stop. That's why there are sub-light engines as well as warp engines.