My absolute favorite ship-based weapon is the phaser lance used by the alternate Enterprise-D in "All Good Things". But that's not on the list, so I went with the Defiant's pulse phasers. (My favorite *personal* phaser is the 29th-century one that was used in "Future's End". Mostly because, like the phaser lance I just described, it actually behaved like a light-based weapon should: there was no noticeable "time" that the beam travelled. With most phasers we actually get to see the beam move, which seems a bit odd, as any weapon based on light should not have any noticeable transition time. But that's a minor nitpick, really.)
Definitely TNG style phaser strips, the two charging pulses travelling over the strip then connecting sending forth a surge of phaser energy was the coolest thing to my young mind, and still is. It's a shame Voyager kept the strips but by series 5 or so had completely dropped the pulse charging element. Sometimes they remembered but the majority of the time they couldn't be bothered with it I guess it was either VFX artist laziness or a new team were involved and hadn't been briefed nor watched any previous episode. Ho Hum.
The phaser charging pulses were pretty cool. But you're right in that they were kind of hit and miss in the later seasons. The FX artists in DS9 and VOY both sometimes forgot. Maybe it was a cost thing. I did actually think about the AGT phaser cannon and the Vengeance's phasers when making the poll, but decided to go with just the main ships seen for the most part. Vengeance's phasers were strange and kind of illogical with their zig zag pattern. Didn't both the phasers and torpedoes do that? How can you program an energy discharge to randomly move once fired when it has no control mechanism like a torpedo.
I was so ready to accept the zig zag at first glance because I thought, "well, of COURSE! Phasers don't work well at warp*, so firing ahead and letting the target ram into them is genius." But then on a couple more viewings, seeing the same zig zag pattern in normal space really drained the charm. *per TNG, of course. I'm aware that TOS occasionally used phasers at warp. And I recall one TNG episode where the ship fired aft phasers at warp during a chase scene, but I can forgive that since the pursuer would be running into the blast.
Vengeance phasers were a creative twist from the usual feddy beam weapons. When I see the berman tng/ds9/voy phaser effects (especially that generic beam sound fx) it reminds me of how little I cared about space battles.
I've always been a fan of a good space battle. Trek battles prior to DS9 especially because you didn't see them all that often. Plus Starfleet before the war only used them in defense, so if they were firing it was usually a pretty dire spot. DS9 battles were confusing. Sometimes the shields and weapons acted like they had in every show prior, sometimes we saw ships like the Mirandas and Excelsiors being taken out in one shot. Mixed bag for sure.
^^^ Space battles probably should be chaotic in nature at times, especially the bigger they are. During the engagement, different ships could have shield strength at different levels depending on what they're hit with, how they're hit, and whatever may be going on inside them in regards to damage. Instances in which we've seen a ship taken out with one shot, that ship may have taken numerous earlier hits when the camera wasn't on them. It's also possible for a ship to just be taken out with a lucky shot (one that might match a ship's weak or weakened shield frequency at a vulnerable location--which could explain what happened to the late Starship Grissom from Star Trek III maybe).
I love the Defiant's pulse phaser cannon, but the TNG/VOY phaser beam is probably my favorite because it is so iconic.
I agree that they should be chaotic. But I use this shot in DS9 of Defiant at 1:00 with a pair of escort Miranda's as example. Three fresh ships. Defiant takes a hit the shields work. The Mirandas though are destroyed immediately. No shields. One with a shorn of nacelle on the first shot. [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89WcIwjlQxA&t=1m0s[/yt]
Those are actually the ships I'm thinking about. As I said earlier, it's possible for ships to have taken damage when the camera wasn't on them or to be taken out from being hit in a crucial area. Of the two Miranda-class ships escorting the Defiant there, an aforementioned one had a compromised nacelle, while the second one took a sustained disruptor hit on its saucer section before it was penetrated and going entirely belly up. Both could have been the victims of their shields just being overwhelmed from direct hits. Other vessels may last longer by taking only glancing blows. There also might be real-world budgetary/special effects limitations at play in that scene. While we generally see "shield bubble hits" in a scene with one or a small handful of ships, in a major battle sequence involving a large number of ships like this one, it may not have been possible for the VFX team to have shield bubble hits for every vessel struck (or to even show every hit a vessel might have taken for that matter).
I'm gonna get really nerdy (it's a Trek forum, what do you expect?), but those two Mirandas were with the Defiant from the start. The dialogue and action in the B-plot implies that this battle had been raging for horus by the time we got to the scene in question, and then when the ships were destroyed, I think the dialogue on the bridge also implied that the Defiant's defenses were slowly wearing down. But... I do agree overall with your point, though. Sometimes they can be reasoned out like above; and sometimes they just happen haphazardly, like the final battle of DS9, or the battle at the end of Season 6, where ships blew up with a lot of ease. It's inconsistent at times.
What I get confused about is that in the the very first episode of DS-9 they use the defensive shield with some technobabble to move the station a good distance to the wormhole using only thrusters. It becomes visible during this and we see a sphere surrounding the station. Later with the Klingons and further along the Dominion we see the station under attack. Instead of the shield bubble surrounding the whole structure we have explosions wrapping around parts of the docking ring and pylons and ships flying through the interior space. The shields are still up, the dialog talks about them weakening but they would need to be skin tight around the hull for the SFX to make sense...
The bubble would have been using the shields to simulate something like a warp field around the station. All later instances of it under attack have the shields in much closer to the hull, likely so it takes less power.
I'm actually surprised that the TNG beam got so many votes. For some reason I figured TOS would win for it's old school awesomeness.
As long as that bubble shield was not being fired upon, they could use it. For the stress of battle, keep it skin tight--as in MR. SCOTT'S GUIDE TO THE ENTERPRISE.
Easily TWOK pulse beams. Not only did they look cool but the sound affects attached to them IMO are a happy departure from the multiple variants of the TOS phaser sounds which, to this day, I am convinced are a sample of 13- or 17-year cicadas. The fidelity of the mp3 file on the site there doesn't really do the sound justice, but the fist time I heard them it sounded just like a TOS phaser. Probably why I don't like that sound any more.
ST09's were the most useful-seeming. I can't imagine any of the others being able to shoot down al those missiles.
This. I loved them at the time, and I love them just as much today. The first Reliant attack where when they sounded the best for some reason though, but it was just such a visceral, other-worldly burst of energy.