In case you missed it over there
Ok here is my belief about the new time line.
Nero’s ship:
[According to the “official” prequel comic- cannon or not TBD] Nero’s ship was outfitted with Borg Tech as well as some of the best “non military” grade 24th or early 25th century shields, superstructure, and weapons. Superior sensors, transporters, etc, tec.
Kirks family situation:
Kirk shout’s “hey Georgie” to the kid he passes while driving the Corvette.
My belief:
The older brother George (cannon episode Operation:Anialte) was in a boarding school or with relatives as the Kelvin didn’t allow families.
I believe Mrs. Kirk was an officer on the Kelvin. She served up until time to give birth… which happened to be the very hour of the emergency.
After the event she goes home and gets assigned to a home base for a few years and leaves the boys with their uncle or stepdad whenever duty takes her away from earth.
The Timeline.
When the Kelvin comes in contact with Nero’s ship they get a good scan of the ship. They transmit much of the data gathered back to Starfleet OR they have the info on the shuttles, either way this has several effects on history.
1: Romulans look like Vulcans. Now everyone knows it. The cat is out of the bag. The Vulcans probably are forthcoming with all the info they have on them at this time. (Instead of keeping it a state secret as Enterprise episodes tell us in season 4)
2: The Federation now believes that the Romulan Empire has this superior technology that could destroy them all tomorrow. This changes the entire attitude that the federation has towards their deployments, doctrine, and Stratedgic plan.
3. Some of the sensor data is able to be studied to engineer technology for the federation that the Federation didn’t have during TOS. (It is understood in Trek that simply leaving a communicator on a planet can affect their technical track… imagine what sensor data of superior technology can do)
4. The Kelvin incident is a lot like the “q-who” episode of TNG. After the Kelvin the plan of exploration isn’t followed thou with as much. They don’t build the Constitution class ships that we know of (like Commodore April’s) they continue to try to spend their budget on a more advanced ship (like the one we see here. They don’t train officers as much for exploration as much as they are trying to pump out officers like WW2. (Hence 4 years after graduation, one might expect to be a captain)
The idea is pump out hundreds of ships instead of 13 ships. They are scared. They know that Nero’s ship is still out there. They are building a “Peace Keeping Armada” not explorers.
Politically:
This is a different universe now. They are not F’ing around with all the exploration and the conflict…. They have been living scared. They are terrified. They have lost the bulk of their fleet. The Klingons have taken serious losses…. They may or may not know the state of the empire or any other unexplored worlds……
In theory… anything that has ever been established as cannon has been changed as of the Kelvin incident. We could talk at length about anything you could bring up from TOS and I can just answer with “the Kelvin incident changed that," … or “due to breakthroughs that occurred in science due to the Kelvin incident… things evolved differently.