How powerfull is the stardrive section?

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by EmperorTiberius, Feb 20, 2014.

  1. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    Happens a lot, which is why I once went to the trouble of typing it all on an external editor first. Nowadays, I just hit ctrl-A, ctrl-C before hitting "post", just in case.

    Apparently, this "forced logout after fifteen minutes or so" feature isn't universal for TrekBBS, but some sort of a setting I could turn off. I just haven't located such a switch yet. Gimme another decade here and perhaps I'll get it..

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  2. blssdwlf

    blssdwlf Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2010
    I do the Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C before preview or submit because I've lost a reply before as well.
     
  3. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    The thing is that this can only explain the cases where a cascading effect runs over the whole array, not the cases where it starts somewhere on the array. For these, there would have to be additional power connects between individual emitter segments and since we see partial cascading effects start anywhere on an array, there must be many power connects along an array, maybe between every single emitter segment. That's why a long array would use up more internal volume than many short strips, so long as the combined length of them is not equal to the single long one.


    You do realize that my last theory supports your standpoint, do you?

    Please follow my line of thought here:

    You say that even very short strips can fire maximum power shots (maybe not the shortest, but say on the E-D the pylon strips, which have around 40 emitters according to Graham Kennedy) and the ship's power systems are the bottleneck.
    I then asked myself why there are also very long arrays. You know what I think about the "redundancy theory", so I had to come up with a better theory, one that ideally could also explain why there are ships with shorter (split up) main arrays than would be possible, and also why even very short strips are sometimes split up.

    That is exactly what my last theory explains.

    The main reason for having very long arrays is to save internal volume. Where this is not a factor, shorter, more efficient arrays with additional rows of banks under them can be used. Where internal volume is a factor and no more banks are fitted, the shorter arrays are less powerful. But this is mitigated by the higher maneuverability of the ships using these, meaning they can maneuver fast enough so that all their main arrays can fire on the target.

    Another reason is that having more emitters means that they can be operated on lower power levels, thereby increasing their lifetime. So in effect, when constantly operated at very high power levels, shorter arrays fail earlier or need more maintenance. This of course only applies to arrays which also have more banks than one.

    One more reason for having very long arrays is their potentially higher firepower, if also fitted with additional rows of banks under them.
    And this could be a reason for the Galaxy class ships in the dominion war to leave their saucers attached. Maybe the ones built during the war actually have additional banks. This plus your argument that more cargo space is good in the war now supports this theory.

    An advantage of splitting up long arrays (as on the Intrepid class and others) and also very short arrays (as on the aft hull of the Galaxy class) is, as described in my last post, that the number of beams which can be fired from one array simultaneously, regardless of its length, is limited to 2, 3 or maybe 4 beams. Therefore having more arrays allows you to engage more targets simultaneously.
    That's of course an assumption, but we can make it because aside from BoBW's antimatter spread there are no instances where more beams are fired from one array at the same time (AFAIK, if someone knows any, please tell me).


    Summed up:

    Advantages and disadvantages of having the longest possible main phaser arrays:

    Advantages:
    1. longer arrays save internal volume
    2. they have increased emitter lifetime
    3. they are potentially more powerful
    4. with those more important advantages in mind, yes, they are also more redundant

    Disadvantage:
    1. they are less efficient
    2. you can engage fewer enemies simultaneously


    Advantages and disadvantages of having shorter (split up) main phaser arrays:

    Advantages:
    1. they are more efficient
    2. you can engage more enemies at the same time

    Disadvantages:
    1. they use up more internal volume or you have to live with reduced firepower per array
    2. if fitted with more phaser banks (buffers) they have reduced emitter lifetime (when constantly operated at high power levels)
    3. if not fitted with more phaser banks you have to orientate the ship so that as many of them as possible can hit the target (this is mitigated by the higher maneuverability of those ships)

    This explains the array configuration of every Starfleet ship class.

    Oh and regarding old ships like the Ambassador, Niagara and Freedom classes, their arrays are just short because Starfleet couldn't couple more emitters together at that time. But they could have multiple banks underneath.

    And that gave me a new idea for even older ships with ball-turret emitters:
    As you described in an earlier post, in TOS the Enterprise seems to have 4 phaser banks which were discharged one after another or simultaneously through two emitters.
    So maybe every pair of emitters has 4 banks on that ship. If it has more emitters on other parts of the ship these would have their own sets of banks. So phaser banks don't have to be interconnected throughout the ship, an idea I never really liked.

    On TMP era ships they increased the number of emitters and with that also the number of phaser banks, culminating in the Excelsior class, where multiple emitter pairs (with multiple banks each) have overlapping firing arcs to concentrate as much firepower on one target as possible (or reasonable, because of the internal volume needed by so many phaser banks; as you said, they had to consider practicality).
    Also, with ever more powerful warp cores (or energy systems in general) it may be simply impossible to channel all this energy through one or two emitters anymore, so the Excelsior had to have more of them to be able to utilize that power supply.

    The invention of phaser arrays then changed that again, because they consisted of so many more emitters.


    Because it is in several instances I know ("Star Trek First Contact", "Star Trek Nemesis", "DS9 : What You Leave Behind" (one Galaxy class in the background))
    and also because the partial cascading effect has to be explained too.

    Follow my line of thought here:

    In the beginning, I saw the "glowing energy pulses" as the phaser energy itself accumulating and travelling along the array to the firing point where it is then released. The problem with this was that there would be a beam formed out of a small energy point which seems ridiculous. I compared that to opening up a (small) bottle and then a metres high fountain shoots out for several seconds.

    So I had to come up with something else.
    I came up with the "activation sequence". If the glowing pulses only indicate that the respective emitters are activated and produce a certain amount of phaser energy that is then stored in a conduit inside the array, and we cannot see the actual transfer of that energy to the firing point, then all the different variations of the cascading effect could be explained.

    In the instances where the cascading effect runs over the whole array, either a maximum power discharge is generated or a weaker beam is produced by charging all emitters with lower power levels. The effect allows for both possibilities.

    When the effect runs only over a part of an array, the reason is to produce a beam with higher efficiency (because the distance the cascading effect travels is shorter).
    In that case, either a weaker beam is generated that uses only the part of the bank (energy buffers) lying under the emitters that are activated or a powerful beam is generated which uses the energy of the whole bank in a smaller number of emitters, also resulting in higher efficiency but also resulting in higher load on each emitter.
    The second possibility would require that even the phaser banks can exchange and combine the energy stored in them. But this part of the theory is not required for the rest to work. We would then only have to accept that a beam that is fired after a partial cascading effect is neccessarily less powerful.

    Even the cases where no cascading effect can be seen at all could be explained. Either it is only a single emitter firing (as would be plausible for the shots the E-E fired to find the Scimitar in "Nemesis") or the cascading effect happened offscreen and the charge was held inside the array a bit longer than usual. Another possibility is that there exists another, much slower way to charge the emitters (maybe all of them simultaneously) that produces no visible effect.

    And then there are special cases like "Conundrum" where several short beams are fired from the E-D's ventral saucer array after only one cascading effect is seen.
    The "activation sequence theory" explains this too. The produced phaser energy held in the conduit inside the array is simply split up and transferred to several firing points instead of one.


    All in all, this theory explains:

    1. what's so sprecial about phaser arrays (compared to ball-turret phasers): They're increasing firepower and emitter lifetime by spreading the load over many emitters
    2. why there are ships with very long arrays
    3. why there are also ships with shorter (split up) arrays
    4. why there are also multiple very short arrays on most ship classes
    5. why mostly long arrays are used, but even very short ones are sometimes
    6. the cascading effect in its different variations



    What I meant was this:
    Imagine you have 3 or 4 large enemy ships and several enemy fighters in front of you.
    If every phaser array regardless of its length can only fire 3 or 4 beams simultaneously and you fire these at the large enemy ships, you can't engage the fighters with that array at the same time. You would have to split up your weapons fire.
    But yeah, this would be a so small disadvantage that it seems a bit arbitrary.


    Yeah, me too.


    Both cases would work for my theory. But I would prefer the first one, because it would explain where the additional energy in "The Nth degree" and "A Matter of Time" came from.


    First, I think it would be more plausible if the issue is with the phaser system, because nothing happened between those shots that could have damaged the power systems.
    But it certainly could be otherwise.

    Another possibility would be that they deliberately reduced the firepower after the first shot.


    Yeah, they seemed to be limited to impulse power. And at the end of the battle, they seemed to have lost that one too, because the ship could barely be moved with all energy rerouted to the (impulse) engines to ram the Scimitar.

    And that's why I interpreted Data's statement about the status of the phaser banks as meaning that after this long battle, the banks are finally down to only 4%. It seemed to imply a gradual reduction of its charge over the whole length of the battle.

    But it could also be possible that the impulse reactors failed exactly at a moment before the banks could be charged again after the previous shot.
    In either case, I think the 4% should be the average charge of all banks taken together.


    Yeah I forgot that one, although the discharge was much shorter.


    Also possible.


    I would think that the phasers are always fed by the EPS grid, since this is the primary means of distributing energy in Stafleet ships.

    For "The Nth degree" I like the idea most that they routed additional energy to the emitters to combine that with the energy stored in the phaser banks. And they shunted that plasma to only 40 emitters to get the highest possible efficiency.

    And regarding the deflector dish, I think since they had to re-route the warp power to the deflector, it seems it is normally not supplied by the warp core. Although it is possible that by "warp power" they meant only that power which is normally reserved for the warp drive.


    First, I meant discharging only the energy stored in the banks.
    Second, I based my statement on one of your earlier posts where you explained how phaser banks worked in TOS.
    But this is irrelevant now since I think phaser banks work like capacitors, not batteries. Although they have to be able to hold their energy rather long to explain how they could charge their banks with battery power in TWOK.


    Doubling the power expenditure or halving the time of exposure. The latter means doubling the intensity, bringing more energy per time onto the target and that would do more damage, because the target is not able to dissipate that much energy in that little time. It would mean melting instead of heating or vaporizing instead of melting.

    At least that's how I understand it. If there's some professional here who knows it better, please tell me.


    And it is not a problem anymore since short arrays now are not totally weak anymore but only a bit weaker, or maybe even not at all. They have other advantages and disadvatages now.


    And do all these other folks always know every bit of evidence off the top of their heads? Or do they have a "catalogue" of every evidence that could be relevant to their theories? I doubt that. And I doubt that this is in any way important, since this is a discussion forum where everyone registered can post if they knew some facts I forgot. In a way, everyone can be everyone else's "catalogue". That doesn't mean I don't have to consider any evidence in the first place, it only means that I don't have to know everything even before I post my first theory.

    So if you have a problem with my theory disregarding any disproving evidence, be my "catalogue" and give me that evidence or tell me where I find it. :p


    Yeah. A can of Gagh of various sorts, some of them biting back when you try to eat them. :lol:


    Going by the lack of the respective details on the models, we can.
    And saying there are invisible weapons is kind of a moot point, IMHO.
    You know how I regard the cases when weapons fire came from where no weapons are. But as before: YMMV.
     
  4. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    Yeah. I also use an external editor first. But I also have the "trek tech" site open in another tab that is set to reload every 5 minutes. That way I can prevent the forced logout.
     
  5. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    Basically, what I had written was that I like the theories presented here. I watched The Nth Degree, and sure enough they need 30 banks to channel maximum firepower, so some length is necessary.

    One sure thing is that longer arrays would probably have better cool down rate, which would translate to more consistent firepower and longer duration beams. Longer duration beams would translate to more energy delivered on target.

    This does bring into questions, why are some arrays split up on ships like Sovereign or Intrepid. Like Timo said, should the engineers be brought up for treason? It could be argued that it's done for endurance in battle. It is possible that there is a feedback pulse along the entire array - if one emitter is shot, the entire array is disabled. Splitting some arrays into two would reduce the rate of fire slightly, but it would double the chances of the ship staying in the fight - an acceptable compromise.

    Also, I wanted to note that in TM, phasers are shown to have a great bulk to them under the hull, what you see above is just a small part. I don't know if this has ever been corroborated on screen in TNG, but in DS9, type XIs seem to be huge, and are definitely not just strips.
     
  6. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    PS.

    Did anyone consider that phaser banks might be located at the ends of long arrays? So when computer targets, banks release their charges, and the charges travels along until they meet at the emitter designated by computer, and it releases the energy?
     
  7. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    This is basically the idea behind my "better lifetime" idea.
    Because the individual emitters have less work to do, the long array does not heat up so fast and so much and that increases the emitter's lifetime.

    The part about longer duration beams would depend on how much energy the ship's power systems can provide. If those are the limit, longer duration beams wouldn't be possible, just as more powerful ones.


    Interesting idea. But with such a significant disadvantage for longer arrays the advantages presented in my last theory wouldn't be enough to justify their use. There had to be a significant advantage like several times more firepower for long arrays again.


    I think I remember DS9's phasers having segments like phaser arrays have.
    If they really are arrays the use of such short ones as powerful weapons would favor the idea that firepower does not correlate so much to array length.
    If they're not arrays, well ... then not. ^^


    Please read the first answer in my last (long) post (#63).
     
  8. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    Yeah I read the lifetime idea, but I believe it would have immediate application in combat. Having better cool-down rate would not only increase the life of the array, but provide more firepower in a give amount of time. There has to be a cool-down time otherwise, the beams would be more continuous.

    DS9 has segmented arrays, but I was saying that there is a significant bulk underneath them, they are not strips on top of the hull:

    [​IMG]
     
  9. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    You would just have to modify your theory a little for my theory to work with yours ;)


    I did read that but I wasn't sure if your observation is correct. I think the points always appear at the end of arrays, but I'm not sure, my memory is hazy
     
  10. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    There are beams of various duration fired in different instances.
    I don't know how much this says about their power, although the longest discharge in "Q Who" was the most powerful. On the other hand the beam they used in VOY: "The Phage" in that strange asteroid with the mirror effect inside to scan for the enemy ship was of long duration and deliberately low-powered.


    I see.


    Oh it would work with my earlier theory where long arrays were much more powerful than short ones. Basically, it would be another reason to explain why there are also ships that have split up arrays.


    Here (go to 6:12): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKnvRPIrl0

    There's also a beam with no cascading effect at all.
     
  11. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    Ok cool about the video.

    What I meant about the duration of the beam is time on target. In a battle where each ship fires off one shot, small array could be equal to a big one, all you need are 30 emitters to channel maximum power. However, in a battle that lasts 10 seconds, a longer array might fire more shots because of better firing rate, which means in the end it delivered more damage on target.
     
  12. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    Yeah there are many possibilities:

    In my earlier theories where only the length of an array indicated their firepower the ship always had enough energy to supply the longest (or second longest) array of a ship to fire one maximum power shot every few seconds or so. So only that one was able to fire maximum power shots and the shorter arrays were so much weaker than they were shorter.

    Another possibility for that theory is that 40 emitters can channel maximum power and it is not possible to combine the maximum power of more emitters than 40, so the longer the array, the more maximum power shots can be fired. That one would favor long arrays because they can fire all of these maximum power shots in the same direction very quickly. Why more than 40 emitters are used so often (judging by the cascading effect) would be explained by spreading the load over more emitters to increase their lifetime and reduce their cooldown time.
    Actually, that one is a good alternative for the earlier theory ... hmm.

    EDIT: Although in that case, it would be best to fire as many maximum power beams as possible at the same target simultaneously to combine their firepower, which we don't see.

    Man, I start to forget my own points from earlier posts. :brickwall:


    In my last theory I introduced another limiting factor for maximum power shots, the phaser banks. These must be charged before the array can generate the phaser discharge, and only the longest array (or second longest, or somewhere in between) has a (single) phaser bank of sufficient length to use the full power the ship can provide to fire full power shots every few seconds. For shorter arrays to fire maximum power shots, the banks can be split up into parts the length of the array they're supposed to feed, and that places another lower limit on array length, because for a very short one you would have so many short banks that there's not enough space for them in the ship anymore.
    So, although a short strip with only 40 emitters could channel a maximum power discharge, the number of banks placed underneath limits its firepower. The difference compared to the earlier theory is that a short array can be more powerful than its length would suggest, but certainly not as powerful as a long array. However, from a certain length onwards it becomes practical to place as many banks under them to fire with maximum power, as in the case of the Galaxy battle section's main phaser array.
    In this theory, long arrays would also be preferred because the load is spread over more emitters.

    And the reason for splitting up long arrays, that they have higher efficiency and you can engage more enemies simultaneously, applies for all of my theories.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2014
  13. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    Yeah I like that explanation. There has to be something to it, and that's as good as any theory
     
  14. blssdwlf

    blssdwlf Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2010
    If there are power connects between each emitter then they wouldn't use up internal volume. And if the cascade starts somewhere in the middle of an array that could just mean the power conduit can pass-through emitters without affecting their status. This would explain situations where an array is already discharging and a second beam is fired from the same array.

    Actually that's pretty good.

    I tend to think they would need to be interconnected in order to discharge all 4 banks simultaneously through 2 emitters in "The Paradise Syndrome".

    Dunno. I still think that a single emitter can channel all the energy of an older ship. In "Paradise Lost" the Lakota was using single emitters to fire at the Defiant.

    Although is that to simply spread the wear and tear among emitters?


    Those are pretty good thoughts although if I'm reading it correctly having a long strip vs a short strip is just arbitrary due to the various special cases present.

    Sure. But why would you want to split up your phaser power among 3 large targets? Wouldn't you want to deliver maximum phaser power at one target at a time?

    In TWOK the batteries were still online and used to fire their phasers so the length of time for a bank to hold it's charge is irrelevant here.

    In order to say that phaser banks can hold a charge long after being charged up would depend on finding an example of all the connected power systems becoming unavailable when a phaser fires.

    Beyond asking for a professional opinion, you could just examine the logic here.

    You have a 10 point battery capable of discharging points in 1 second.
    You expend all 10 points into a single beam firing for 1 second or you fire 2 beams at 5 points for 1 second.

    But let's say you somehow modify the battery to be able to discharge twice as fast, 20 points every second. But you only have 10 points total capacity.
    Now you expend 10 points in a single beam firing for 0.5 second or 5 points in 2 beams for 0.5 seconds.

    In both cases, you're still only delivering 10 points of energy to the target. Yes, you've doubled the intensity but it's only for half as long although you could've done that in a single beam.



    Nah, I just think you'd have a stronger and more comprehensive theory if you accounted for all instances of the phaser strips firing. And yes, I've been already providing you with additional data which as I've pointed out earlier - everyone including you will have their own interpretation based on their past exposure to the content and other information. :)

    Considering the Enterprise-D and Defiant has fired phasers from points that do not have visible weapons there is an ongoing precedence of weapons not being detailed on a model.

    Exactly.
     
  15. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    After watching a bit of Voyager, I saw that the cascading effect is shown less often there, so I had to come up with a new theory:

    First a question:

    Is the cascading effect absent in any instance when the ship has only auxiliary power? (I can exclude TNG: "Booby Trap" so far)

    If this is not the case, let's go back to Timo's idea from post #51:


    There's actually no contradiction. IF the answer to the above question is NO it could be as follows:

    Maximum firepower fed directly by the warp core can be channeled through one emitter but auxillary power is not enough for that, so it must be built up in the phaser banks (banks in this case could be the arrays themselves).

    Phaser banks should probably be linked throughout the whole ship to have shorter arrays be able to fire with the same firepower as long arrays and also to explain why mostly only single beams are fired. Otherwise all arrays should fire simultanously on one target.

    So, the one example I am aware of where warp power failed and we saw the cascading effect in all shots from all arrays is "Nemesis".
    When we see a ship fire when it has warp power the energy stored in the banks is only added to the beam to give it an extra punch. This makes sense for all those instances where we would assume high-powered shots (but it wouldn't be necessary).

    This could also be where the energy from "all EPS taps" goes in "A Matter of Time". They're all discharged through the phaser bank for additional firepower.
    The same could be true in "The Nth degree" but the energy is only fed to 40 emitters.

    Why they're pumping it through only 40 emitters here and not the whole array I don't know yet. Although this wouldn't hurt the theory so far.

    After all, the cascading effect now could be the actual phaser energy travelling on the array again.
    Or inside the array glowing through the emitters.
    Or the energy stored in the bank (in cells inside every emitter) built up to feed the one emitter where the pulses meet; to have enough energy there to energize the emitter, which then produces the phaser energy.

    I think I like the last one the most.

    Oh and if many emitters can built up a charge why not just let one emitter fire this energy without a cascading effect? There the intensity thing comes into play. It's about shooting out a short intense beam instead of letting it trickle out through one emitter. First, I stand by what I said about energy being applied over less time means more damage (because the thing fired upon can't dissipate the energy fast enough to remain undamaged) and second, if you want to hit a target fast you should make the discharge as short as possible.

    This poses further questions that could mitigate the problem if the answer to the first question above is YES.
    First, is the beam of long duration?
    Second, would it be a problem if it is?
    Third, would it be a problem if it isn't?


    All in all, this theory would mean:

    - a single emitter can channel maximum firepower, so every array regardless of length can
    - phaser banks are part of the arrays
    - long arrays can store more energy, but since they're all connected throughout the ship every array can fire all the stored energy
    - having arrays split up makes no difference in that regard
    - the absence of long arrays means having less phaser bank capacity

    That last point of course means the poor battle section has lower firepower again. But think about it:
    It already has fewer impulse reactors!
    Also, if phaser banks store energy and regardless if they're part of the arrays or just somewhere near them it would mean that taking away the saucer section would take away phaser banks. Either that, or the saucer has none.

    So what does that mean?
    First, since the shield bubble is smaller the saved energy can be used in the phasers instead (directly or through the banks to compensate for the missing impulse reactors).
    Second, since the combined phaser bank capacity is much smaller, they could be charged and discharged faster. So the beams fed by the banks are less powerful but they can be fired more rapidly.

    So is the battle section less powerful? Yes, but only slightly, plus it is more maneuverable and it is still not supposed to be an über-warship but only the part of the ship that stands its ground while the other part flees. It can do some battling. It can do much battling. It only can't combine quite as much firepower into ONE beam.


    First, I meant power connects connecting the array to the EPS grid below and not power connects connecting the emitters with one another.

    Second, if the energy has to come from the ends of an array, damaging an array on one point (or two, because Voyager also has cascading effects from only one side) would disable the array.
    So there would have to be at least several power connects along the array if you want it to be redundant at all.
    But yeah, that one would still be an alternative.


    I meant the 4 banks are all behind the 2 emitters we always see firing. They are interconnected, but not with other banks in other parts of the ship, for example the aft phasers shown in ENT: "In a Mirror Darkly". Those have their own 4 banks.


    You expend all 10 points into a single beam firing for 1 second or you fire 2 beams at 5 points each for 0.5 second.


    And since they're invisible trying to infer their firepower from their look is impossible.
    Also since they're invisible they're irrelevant to a discussion about phaser arrays.

    BTW, regarding the example of Voyager fighting against the tactical cube: The phaser beam actually comes from the underside from the nacelle, so it's not the pylon array firing but yet another invisible weapon.
     
  16. EmperorTiberius

    EmperorTiberius Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2009
    I wouldn't try to come up with a grand unification theory based on every time they fire on screen, you'll just pull your hair out trying to do that. Just a general idea of how and why is good enough in my book ;)
     
  17. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    ...But if a GUT were needed, it wouldn't be that difficult to formulate one. Note how when Kirk's old ship fired phasers, they emerged from various locations unrelated both to specific surface features and to the points of emergence in other episodes - and often the locations did not connect to the hull of the ship at all, but were clearly distant from it. Logic then dictates that a phaser emitter can generate a beam originating at a random point in space and pointing at a desired direction, and it's merely the most energy-efficient to generate the beam at a point very close to the emitter machinery. Sometimes tactical considerations overrule efficiency, though, and beams are generated far away from emitters. Obviously. :vulcan:

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  18. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    ...Yeah. And the advantage of invisible weapons is that the ship looks less hostile.
    But firing the beam out of the actual emitter is way more efficient so Starfleet used these again in the (more militaristic) TMP era. Then they increased the number of emitters to have more coverage redundancy (Excelsior) and then arrays were developed culminating in the Galaxy class that had almost the same freedom over where the beam emerges from as the Constitution class again but with the added advantage of higher efficiency. Brilliant! :techman:

    And the cascading effect explaination from my last post would be still another advantage of arrays in this.

    Oh and another reason why the saucer of the Galaxy class has the long arrays (and therefore the long banks too) is because she needs them to fire her phasers at all when seperated.
     
  19. blssdwlf

    blssdwlf Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2010
    I'm not aware of that many episodes where a ship with strips is firing only on aux power. The only one I can think of is the E-E in "Nemesis" and they were using almost all the strips and you can see the cascade effect on the long strips when the phasers fired.

    Actually those seem reasonable. It's a little counter-intuitive though to think of the long strips to compensate for a weak power system but in an odd way does make sense for the Saucer-Battlesection layout.

    Keep in mind that I'm not disagreeing that delivering more power over a shorter period of time can be more effective.

    I'm disagreeing that we've seen via "The Nth Degree" that the ship has hit their maximum limit on delivering as much power possible via a phaser beam. If they had extra power available to fire a second beam at the same power (effectively increasing amount energy per same amount of time) we would have seen it. OTOH, perhaps in the later series these ships get phasers and power systems upgraded for the Dominion War and Borg threat and therefore we see more 2-3 beam attacks...

    Agreed.

    Although I'd have to ask why would Starfleet design it like that? If they knew that the phaser array strip length already compensated for the weaker impulse-only saucer design then they'd have more incentive then to just keep the phaser bank capacity either equally distributed between saucer and battlesection or majority in the battlesection for the very purpose of the battlesection in order to go into battle. Remember the battlesection keeps the warp core and it's generally preferable to have that over the impulse reactors.

    I don't think that assessment accounts for the fact that the battlesection will have the warp core and the saucer section won't. That in itself will indicate that the battlesection will be significantly more powerful than the saucer section from a power generation capability. And that translates into speed, maneuverability, phaser power and endurance.

    That would suggest then that the TOS-Enterprise had something in excess of 20 banks? I dunno. I've always thought of it as only four banks that powered the whole phaser emitter network that way "phaser 1" powering the 3 separate phaser pulses appearing from 3 different points in "Balance of Terror" makes sense :)


    Yes. I'm just pointing out that you'd need a more powerful energy source to increase the power output since they are likely already hitting a throughput limit.

    I'm just replying to your question about the apparent lack of armaments on the Akira or aft torpedo tube on the Enterprise.

    Yeah, I had mistaken it for a warp pylon strip.

    In anycase, I've uploaded a compilation of phaser firings that you can watch if you're interested. The video will stay up for a week or two and then I'll remove it.

    http://youtu.be/tKVDaKp-NK4

    What's interesting is that the E-D rarely uses her smaller arrays while Voyager used almost all her strips at some point. The Galaxy-class ships in DS9 tend to also stick with only the strips on the saucer. The cascade effect seems to be somewhat arbitrary in that it isn't consistently shown.

    Also, the E-D rarely fired more than 1 beam at a time while the later DS9 Galaxy's you can see 2 beams at once in some big battles. Voyager seems to like firing 2 or even 3 beams at once.
     
  20. Egger

    Egger Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2013
    Location:
    Germany
    Yeah, me too. And in "Nemesis" even the short arrays have the cascading effect and I think even its duration is the same.


    Yeah. And also remember that in this theory I see the banks as integrated into the arrays so they don't use up any internal volume anymore (compared to ball-turret phasers). So that's another advantage.


    Yeah. "The Nth degree" would show the maximum power the ship can fire. And regarding the later examples of two or more beams, I agree, upgrades seem to be a reasonable explaination.


    If I understand your question correctly the answer would be that the (impulse only) saucer simply needs the capacity of the long banks to produce a phaser beam of any significant firepower, so that it can defend itself when seperated from the battle section.

    And the saucer's firepower can be anything that is reasonable, she even could be able to fire a short maximum intensity burst every 30 seconds or so only by charging her banks with impulse power. Accomplishing this could also be a reason why the saucer arrays are that long.


    Significantly more powerful overall, yes. What I meant was that the battle section can't produce a single beam that is quite as powerful as the whole ship can, beacuse there are fewer phaser banks and therefore less power to combine with what the warp core can offer.


    Yeah, that was an answer regarding the (now) older theory and in my new theory the ship can have its 4 banks again, because I see arrays as also connected throughout the whole ship. Isn't that nice? :beer:

    The reason for why the banks should be interconnected is that otherwise short arrays would be useless again when warp power is unavailable. That would contradict the use of them (firing one at a time) in "Nemesis".


    Basically, I think a buffer in the array would be needed to compress the energy to the same density again as it had before it was split up. Without that, firing the energy with two emitters would halve the intensity of each beam while keeping the discharge length.

    But this part of the discussion has become kind of pointless since my last theory accounts for the fact that (mostly) single beams are fired. Where more beams are fired, they're either not fired with maximum power or the power systems are upgraded to a point where a single emitter isn't able to handle that anymore, as you pointed out.


    Yeah, I see what you mean. Sure, invisible weapons could be anywhere.


    Nice video, thanks.

    Regarding the E-D's phaser use: Yeah, maybe the long arrays are considered the main (phaser) armament while the saucer is docked and the battle section's strips are only used when necessary.

    Regarding the cascade effect, yes it is a bit arbitrary. But there could be explainations for the different instances:

    If the effect is shown, the ship either uses only the energy in the banks or the combined energy of the banks and the warp core. How much energy comes from which source can be completely arbitrary.
    The reason for using the energy from the banks combined with warp power could be that the bank's energy is completely used up in the first moments of the beam firing, so it has a higher intensity in the beginning. That increases the beam's impact damage on the target. ("Sacrifice of Angels", "BoBW", ...)
    Of course the bank's energy can also be added in a steady fashion.

    If the effect is not shown, the ship uses only its warp power. Voyager does this often.
    Alternatively it could also use auxiliary power without builing it up in the array, so the resulting beam would be very weak (that's what my questions were about).

    In the special case of "Conundrum" the first shot (or the first two shots) are fired with energy from the banks and the rest is using warp power. Why? Maybe they wanted to use only the energy from the banks but the enemy ships flew past the E-D and there wasn't enough time to build up a new charge on the other side of the array.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2014