What The Hell? What Is Up With The Side Hull Torpedo Bays?

^^^ those arcing phasers are a great new spin of Trek phaser tech - and are awesome! Hoping to see more of this type of weapon in future Trek movies to come...

 

I thought that it was because they were traveling faster than phasers. After all, that was one of the main reasons why phasers were not to be used at warp in TNG (at least, in the sourcebooks? If so, then is it canon?) and why torpedoes, which can travel at warp, were the preferred weapon. I would think this would mean that the occasional phaser at warp was from the aft and thus would be okay, since the chasing attacker would run into the phaser blast anyway.

Of course, there were times in other shows like Voyager (the Prometheus, for example) when forward phasers were used. I chalk that up to production mistake, but I'm sure more than a few folks have come up with explanations already.

If the phaser arcs because of warp speed, it would be consistent with TNG phaser theory, sure. And obviously it worked. But then it begs the question: why would Marcus use phasers anyway? As we saw, the ship needed to fire at virtual point blank to hit the Enterprise. Why not use torpedoes from a greater distance, especially if Marcus was trying to catch up?

 

Weren't the phasers also arcing when the Vengeance was stationary and firing at the damaged Enterprise (with the moon as the backdrop), after both ships had come out of warp?

Neither ship was at warp at that stage, yet I thought there were arcing phasers (as well as the drones) in that scene also... or am I imagining things?

 

Yup, points of luminescence appear a split second before on the Enterprise, the phasers arc to that point, could be a way of maintaining phaser fire at warp in this universe (lightening bolt effect as described in another thread).

 

I might be missing that, too. At that point in the battle, my eyes were fixated on the explosions and the occasional photon torpedo (which, for some reason, seem to do just as much damage as phasers, at least for the Vengeance).

Edit: Yeah, just rewatched that scene. When Marcus maintains fire, the phasers travel a straight line. However, when Khan takes over the Vengeance and resumes fire, the phasers do indeed arc, like tracking shots.

Funny thing is, I also rewatched the warp chase scene, and a couple of the Vengeance phaser blasts arc but miss the Enterprise. Because they arc, they eventually fly out of the warp tunnel, which would give credence to the idea that phasers don't perform well at warp. However, yeah, then the arc the same way when Khan fires. Maybe he's trickshot with ship-board phasers?

 

Or maybe Khan needs Phaser Viagra to fix his floppy phasers.

I watched the movie at the theaters once, and once on disc, and completely missed the arcing Phasers, I gotta watch for that on my next rewatch

 

So does that mean that Torpedoes are no longer bright energy balls and are missiles that leave a smoke trail?

 

From what I've seen, they are, for some reason, bright energy balls that leave a smoke trail.

Of course, that could just be the torpedoes on the Vengeance. When the Enterprise fired torpedoes on the Narada, they were energy balls sans smoke trail.