Which is exactly my point: it SHOULDN'T take eight torpedoes to destroy something that doesn't have any shields at all. We've seen the Enterprise destroy asteroids ore freighters, even Klingon warships with a single torpedo. In ST09, Kirk destroys four Klingon warships with "one photon each" and nobody thinks this is particularly unusual, which it isn't, because their shields are down.
The reason for this IN THE GAME is because projectile weapons would kill PVP playability if you could actually use them the way they would be used in real life or, for that matter, even in the show. The reason for this in film is because photon torpedoes and phasers are used interchangeably and do essentially the same amount of damage. In both cases, however, it actually makes very little sense for starships to carry two different types of weapons that do essentially the same thing in slightly different ways (power transfer issue notwithstanding).
No more so than phasers. Which is THE PROBLEM.
The whole point of having multiple types of weapon systems on a fighter aircraft or naval vessels is that there are situations where one weapon may not be suited to engage a particular target, either because of distance or environment or the target's defensive capabilities. But other than a loss of power to the phasers, there are NO situations where only one weapon or the other is truly effective. In which case, if a loss of phaser power is a problem that sometimes happens, why would you bother having phasers at all?
Which is a question I've asked myself many times in STO after discovering that properly leveled transphasics will kill just about anything, shields or no shields. And that's even WITH torpedoes being nerfed to hell.
If that were the case, in canon we'd never see anyone firing torpedoes at shielded targets. Which we do. ALOT.
No, my issue is the fact that the shows use phasers and torpedoes interchangeably to the point that the latter isn't depicted as being any more powerful than the former. This is mainly just "needs of the plot outweighs the needs of the logic" since the story can only ever happen the way the writers say it does. The most recent example is the destruction of the Gagarin; having lost its shields, the ship experiences critical existence failure when hit by a single torpedo. Discovery takes the other torpedo up the ass, loosing around 50% of its shields as a result. On the surface, that would seem to suggest energy weapons really ARE more effective against shields... until you remember that it's possible to fire more than one torpedo at a time. Which means that with any sort of consistency, that fight should have been over ten minutes ago; the first three torpedoes will collapse your shields, and the fourth kills you. But it's TV, and there are hero shields, and writers don't really have to be consistent as long as the drama holds up.
Game designers don't have that luxury, as the game mechanics have to be based on consistent rules. And when they built the rules for torpedoes based on guidelines from the show, they immediately discovered that torpedoes AREN'T interchangeable with phasers and would be ridiculously overpowered if they had the same firing rate.
tl;dr: if torpedoes worked in the game -- or anywhere else -- the way the technical manuals, writing guides or, hell, even background dialog claims they do, no one would ever use phasers. Not when you can use torpedoes at just about any range, in just about any situation, against just about any target, AND they even have variable yields which means you can still use them when "firing to disable." There is not and has never been a really clear distinction of when it is better to use one than the other; even in STO, it depends mainly on playstyle.
Where it took ONE phaser hit to destroy the Klingon cruiser in "Day of the Dove."
Meanwhile a single torpedo killed USS Grissom and the Duras Sisters and the simulated warships in the Kobyashi Maru test.
Inconsistency is inconsistent
Last edited:
