possible reason we never seen the phaser rifle after w.n.m.h.g.b.

Just another name for the "intermediate stage" pistols.

The transition weapon between the obsolete EM pistols, and the still not ready for deployment laser pistols.

 

It's not about the inner workings of the device that I mentioned this. It's due to the hand-eye coordination needed to aim the device. A TOS P-II phaser is fine for close quarters but not long range. Anything further than 50 feet needs direct eye sighting to be effective for precision shots.

The Space:1999 hand gun actually makes a weird squiggly vertical laser pattern, so all you need to worry about is one axis (X). With that you can kind of get away with the staple gun design.

 

Beyond 50 meters, a slugthrowing pistol already compensates for the non-beeline trajectory of the bullet: the aiming system doesn't equate line-of-sight with line-of-flight / line-of-barrel. There wouldn't be need to equate the two for other types of weapon, either.

Really, hand-eye coordination would probably be the one thing that is completely removed from the equation once futuristic recoilless, barrel-less personal weapons are introduced. Taking the weapon off the hands of the user would free those hands for meaningful work; the weapon could be mounted elsewhere (say, on a simple body harness, or on a helmet, but preferably hovering autonomously somewhere near the user), and targeted by sight alone.

Timo Saloniemi

 

If someone is shooting at me, I'd rather stick my fist (with weapon) around a corner, than expose my head or chest.

A hovering weapon the size of a hand phaser would seem to be beyond TOS technology.

 

Assuming Ent is a reboot means I don't need to rationalize any conflicts between The Only Series and Early Nu Trek.

You needn't follow my example, just sayin' it's easier, IMO.

 

So naturally the weapon would have a telescoping arm for the purpose.

Dramatically speaking, a shoulder mount such as seen in Predator would probably be the way to go.

Only in the sense of being difficult to do VFX- or SFX-wise. Otherwise, not only would TOS have been free to establish its level of technology, after which the various spinoffs would have had to comply - but TOS as actually portrayed is fully compatible with hovering, remotely operated things. They have silent and strong antigravs, for example. And while independently intelligent robots seem to be a no-no, waldo technology would be right up the 1960s alley. Heck, they even turned Spock into a waldo once!

Timo Saloniemi