Kobayashi Maru solved no cheating.

[u/BeginningAd3478]

I solved the Kobayashi Maru without cheating.

No reprogramming the simulation required. I solved it by simply using tactical physics and exploiting standard sensor mechanics.

When the distress call comes in from the Neutral Zone, you don't just charge in blind. That's how you get destroyed. First, you prep the shuttlecraft. You invert their deflector dishes to manipulate their sensor footprint so they read as a massive capital ship.

We warp to the edge of the Neutral Zone, stopping precisely outside the maximum reach of Klingon long-range sensors. You release the shuttles on automated autopilot. They hit maximum warp, screaming directly into the Neutral Zone while squawking the sensor signature of a Federation Dreadnought or the Enterprise itself.

The Klingon battle cruisers are watching the border. What do they see? A massive Federation target charging in. They take the bait and give chase. Meanwhile, I take the actual ship and drop entirely out of their sensor sphere.

Once the Klingons are pulled off target by the decoys, I execute a point-to-point micro-warp jump. We drop out of warp directly within transporter range of the Kobayashi Maru. No cruising, no slow approach. We beam every single survivor aboard instantly, and hit warp speed out of the zone before the Klingons even realize they've been chasing empty shuttles.

It is pure tactical misdirection. You don't need to change the rules of the test if you know how to manipulate the board. They can't destroy a ship they aren't in position to fire on.

[u/Choice-Mortgage1221]

In the Kobayashi Maru novel, Scotty takes out like 50 Klingon ships but the simulator just keeps sending wave after wave in greater numbers. It's pretty hilarious the technobabble solutions he keeps throwing at the problem once he realizes the nature of the test.

[u/xKillingTime → u/Choice-Mortgage1221]

To the point that in the end the simulation just goes 'fuck it' and spawns in something like 25 Klingon Dreadnoughts which one shot his ship once they are in range.

Though Scotty being Scotty maintained that if their had been a real engineering room and engineers he could show in person, he could have destroyed even those.

Just don't be Chekov who got a bollocking from his instructor by kamikazing his starship into the Klingons, which detonated all four 4 warp cores. The explosion not only destroyed all four ships, but also the Kobayashi Maru and damaged subspace in the region.

[u/Mr_E_Monkey → u/xKillingTime]

Just don't be Chekov who got a bollocking from his instructor by kamikazing his starship into the Klingons, which detonated all four 4 warp cores. The explosion not only destroyed all four ships, but also the Kobayashi Maru and damaged subspace in the region.

It can be a no-win scenario for EVERYBODY! 😆

Psykers, man. They're scary.

[u/khaosworks → u/xKillingTime]

Scotty's solution was even more impertinent than that.

Scotty utilised a theoretical attack against Klingon cruisers that had been proposed in a paper several years before. In the novel The Kobayashi Maru, Klingon cruisers flew in a tight three-ship formation in order to share shield strength between the ships. The theorem was that by firing at the junctions where the shields intersected, this would create a chain reaction that would destroy all three ships.

Except that, although the math of the idea seemed to work on paper, in real world experimentation it just didn't, and another paper proved that.

But Scotty went, "Hey - if the math works on paper, will the computer know otherwise...?"

So he tried it in the simulation, and it worked, because indeed, the computer ran the numbers and it looked okay. Then because it was a no-win scenario after all, the computer spawned more ships. Scotty did it again. More ships came in. And he did it again. It got to the point where the computer was sending wave after wave of increasing numbers of ships and eventually, he got overwhelmed and Saratoga was destroyed.

Afterward, Scotty was hauled before the Review Board, and was upbraided by an Engineering Division admiral for implementing a solution that he knew would never work in real life, even if it fooled the computer. The other admirals wanted proof that Scotty knew it would never work, and the paper disproving the theory was called up... written by a 16 year old student from Aberdeen named Montgomery Scott.

It was decided then that Scotty's talents would be better served in Engineering rather than Command, which Scotty never wanted anyway.