collimated phaser arrays

[Timo]

No matter what, though, there's nothing to indicate that the rollbar phasers are more powerful than the turrets (making me wonder why Kahn relied on them so much), so the logical (yeah i know) conclusion is that they're 'new tech', more efficient, or something - SOMETHING that's more beneficial, since the yields definately aren't.

Perhaps Khan hadn't found the triggers for the saucer phasers? He was "intelligent but inexperienced", after all.

No, really, it could be speculated that Terrell's crew managed to sabotage key components of the Reliant before Khan took over the ship, and the main phasers of the ship were among the components rendered inoperable, at least to somebody with Khan's level of inexperience in repairs or unlocking of 23rd century hardware. How many of the crew Khan really managed to convert to devout servants is not revealed on screen - but he only had a limited supply of those eels, and even Terrell and Chekov were only partially cooperative. Most of the work seemed to be done by Khan's own followers, who might not have had command of all the ship's resources.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tigger]

Heck, Khan may have chosen the rollbar phasers specifically because they were either not as powerful or they had finer control in terms of power output.

Khan's goal, per his dialog, was to disable the Enterprise's power system so they could at least not get away in order to allow him to gloat. So he would not have wanted to shatter the intermix chamber itself as it might very well have resulted in a complete hull loss. Instead, he wanted to damage Engineering and damage the "main energizer" or something that is required to make warp drive possible.

 

[Timo]

...In the first battle, yes. In the second battle, only Kirk wanted to take prisoners. And Khan still only used the roll bar phasers, which didn't do any more damage than they had done on the first round.

It's always possible that Khan's roll bar phasers were the same as Kirk's saucer phasers, while Khan's saucer phasers were significantly weaker (or perhaps stronger, but that's not very likely) than Kirk's. That's what we observe, after all. It doesn't make much sense to assume that Khan's roll bar phasers would have been stronger than Kirk's saucer phasers, since that's not the behavior we observe. But it is possible to speculate that the roll bar phasers were Khan's most powerful weapons - even if the saucer phasers on both ships look identical, this is no guarantee that they would have equal power.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

...In the first battle, yes. In the second battle, only Kirk wanted to take prisoners. And Khan still only used the roll bar phasers, which didn't do any more damage than they had done on the first round.

Actually, in thinking about it, it really is possible that the rollbar phasers were the only ones that were manned. Kahn had a limited crew, and had explicitly transfered the regular crew of the Reliant to Ceti Alpha V. If he was relatively short-staffed, manning the phaser stations with the largest firing arcs (the rollbars) would make the most sense.

 

[Timo]

One might even say that there were shared fire control resources for the photon torpedoes and the roll bar phasers (probably in a cabin in the main hull, rather than next to the weapons stations themselves), so Khan would concentrate on manning those. Sending the crews to the saucer phaser control rooms might have meant depriving the all-important torpedoes of firing crews.

(OTOH, Kirk's TOS ship only seemed to have one phaser fire control room - there was no alternative facility to fire any alternate guns and save the ship in "Balance of Terror", even though many episodes made mention of multiple phaser installations. Then again, Kirk's TOS ship didn't have a modular weapons add-on...)

Fancy how the first battle damages the "photon controls", but Khan still fires torps in the second battle. Was that a priority repair, or were the torps fired without proper control the second time around?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Fancy how the first battle damages the "photon controls", but Khan still fires torps in the second battle. Was that a priority repair, or were the torps fired without proper control the second time around?

Keeping within the fourth wall here, if the Enterprise could get quite a lot of her issues repaired between the first battle and Regula, it's not too hard to assume that Kahn got some jerry-rigged repairs of his own going on the Reliant.

 

[JNG]

[
The Enterprise, in TOS and TNG, was one of the most powerful ships of her time. It's important to keep that in mind when saying things like "it was made nice-nice to be politically correct".

No less than the Borg referred to the Enterprise-D as "the strongest ship of the Federation Starfleet" (in "The Best of Both Worlds") and it's hard to imagine political correctness being one of their criteria for strength

Oh the ships are quite powerful but they are not the massive force-projection juggernauts that many fans seem to advocate. 200 torpedoes each with a 50 megaton equivalent warhead? 250 megawatt magic beam? Ability to deflect and disperse similar amounts of incoming energy? Hardly defenseless.

By "doomsday scale" weapons I'm referring to petawatt phasers, 500 gigaton warheads, "deflector dish" cannons and other such nonsense.

The problem is, it seems really easy to exceed any quoted figures for the shields with matter/antimatter detonations. Like, really easy, as in I am not sure how they'd survive a single torpedo detonation in the immediate neighborhood with, say, the TNG Technical Manual shield figure. So some imagine the shields to be vastly more powerful to work on that scale suggested by the non-fictional elements and thus be able to eat multiple torpedo impacts the way they do on TV, and the phasers get a "boost" too to stay in the running with the other systems, and then you end up with the sort of numbers that seem almost incomprehensibly high to us (particularly for the ship's reactor). Wowza, 700 gigaton torpedo yields! But there it is.

It's a fan's choice to do the scaling up or down as vagueness permits, I guess; I can live with the idea that the capabilities are greater than typically shown but there is very rarely a need to push them to the limits. (The only time it really bugs me is when they plink away at one another with the hand phasers on some low "make a burst of sparks" setting instead of, I don't know, causing "heavy geologic displacement" with the maximum setting or whatever. It can always be rationalized, but I'd sure like to see 'em let loose once in a while.)

 

[SicOne]

Regarding the original question, it would seem that the largest issue with refitting older ship designs to replace ball-turret phasers with strip phasers is not necessarily the physical plant changes in the hull by pulling out the smaller balls and emplacing the larger strips (though if you had shield emitters or other apparatus between phaser banks that would now have to be replaced and moved), nor power requirement adjustments such as a larger or more powerful warp core, as it seems the warp core provides power a-plenty for any size phaser (i.e. the phaser type of the Nova-class is the same as that of the larger and more-powerful Intrepid-class), but rather modifications in the conduits that channel warp core power to the phaser banks, which could be more troublesome to relocate or upgrade than the benefit is worth.

It is true that we have not seen any on-screen evidence to suggest that strips are more powerful than balls (minds out of the gutter, you...), but I would suggest watching TNG's "Conundrum", in which the Enterprise-D nails some thirty small unmanned attack ships in about two seconds with multiple phaser shots from the primary saucer ventral strip, or VOY's "Dragon's Teeth" for an example of all-around, three-sixty continuous phaser coverage that I don't believe the older-classes ball turret coverage could accomplish.

In addition, although I have not watched any of the new-effects TOS yet, I don't recall any TOS where phasers had a long dwell-time on-target, just quick shots. Whereas in TNG, we see some longer dwell with strip phasers. The TNG episode "A Matter Of Time", in which the E-D phasers holes in a planet's surface to release buried gas pockets comes to mind, as well as the episode which name I have forgotten, in which the E-D uses lower-powered phasers to perform a sort of Cesearan-section operation on a space-dwelling creature to release an infant.

To summarize, it would seem no real argument favors the power output of ball-turret phasers over strip phasers, but the strips do appear to allow the ship to apply phaser power over a longer period of time, thus being more effective for that purpose than ball-turrets, which have only been seen firing on-screen short bursts.

This has been an interesting discussion so far, guys.

 

[Timo]

...all-around, three-sixty continuous phaser coverage that I don't believe the older-classes ball turret coverage could accomplish.

But the saucers of the TMP ship and her sister designs had awfully many of the balls - a dozen or more. While we never did see two or more of the twin banks firing at the same time, it would seem that the coverage would be there when needed. It would probably be a question of fire control system capabilities rather than coverage, then. Even output power probably wouldn't matter, as a swarm attack would be by fighters or similar small craft that could succumb to a lower-power hit...

I don't recall any TOS where phasers had a long dwell-time on-target, just quick shots.

The dwell times were considerable (dozens of seconds on screen, perhaps minutes when the camera wasn't looking) whenever the ship fired on surface installations protected by shields - say, at Vaal in "The Apple" or Apollo's temple in "Who Mourns".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SicOne]

Thanks for correcting on TOS phaser dwell times, Timo. I have only seen a handful of TOS episodes, and not the ones you mentioned.

Regarding ball-turret coverage, I am thinking of TMP-era ships, but also of the Miranda, which has ball turrets covering forward, port, and starboard, but not aft (though it does have the mega-phasers, for lack of a better word). On the refit-Enterprise, though I have not seen close-ups of the studio model or looked at close-ups on-screen of the movies, I wonder if the refit has the port-and-starboard ball turrets on the bottom of the secondary hull, as well as the two single emplacements on the fantail right above the shuttlebay doors? Those are shown in "Ships Of The Star Fleet" and would indeed provide much greater coverage.

In regards to fire control, I am thinking of something like the old-style trackball of Missile Command, where the tactical officer follows the target and whichever ball turret happens to be in direct line-of-fire takes it from there. Where I have a problem with 360 coverage comes from ball turrets being destroyed, leaving that section of the ship vulnerable, while undamaged phaser strip segments can (presumably) still fire unabated...the only way to render that portion of the ship vulnerable would be to destroy the entire strip, as seen in Voyager's "Year of Hell", where a Krenim torpedo caused a chain reaction explosion of one of the dorsal strips.

While we don't know for certain, it is fun to speculate.

Timo, you've been around Trek Tech for a long time now; could you think of any reasons why older TMP-era ships could not be retrofitted with strips? If Starfleet went to the trouble of upgrading the USS Lakota with stronger shields and more powerful weapons, what would you think be the reason why phaser strips were not emplaced?



ahi

 

[Timo]

On the refit-Enterprise, though I have not seen close-ups of the studio model or looked at close-ups on-screen of the movies, I wonder if the refit has the port-and-starboard ball turrets on the bottom of the secondary hull, as well as the two single emplacements on the fantail right above the shuttlebay doors?

Yeah, those are definitely all there in the photographic model. And there is a ventral shot of the Reliant model that suggests there might be two single turrets flanking the underside of that ship's impulse engine, although commercial kits don't reproduce those.

...whichever ball turret happens to be in direct line-of-fire takes it from there.

This would seem to be what happens when the Defiant fights the Lakota in "Paradise Lost". The latter ship fires from all sorts of locations (including three that don't actually have ball turrets on that model!), showing no preference for "main" over "secondary" guns, but indeed showing that the ship can effortlessly transfer the firing task to that emitter which is the most optimally placed.

Where I have a problem with 360 coverage comes from ball turrets being destroyed, leaving that section of the ship vulnerable, while undamaged phaser strip segments can (presumably) still fire unabated...

I wonder... The strip looks as if it could be seriously compromised with a hit at a single spot of its length. I mean, the phaser effect that emerges from a strip is classically shown as "accumulating" from a pair of effects that begin at the very ends of the strip, race along its length, and meet at the point of emergence. If there's a cut in the strip so that one of these effects cannot arrive at its destination, can the beam emerge at all?

Then again, this "accumulating" effect is only shown on some occasions, while in other cases the VFX folks were too lazy/time-strapped to insert it. We might argue that a nicely accumulated shot is stronger, while the other sort can be squeezed off faster... A ship with a damaged strip might thus lose the ability to fire the strongest pulses from that strip.

The TNG Tech Manual also claims that the longer the strip, the stronger the pulse - but this is unlikely to be true, since most strip-phaser starships are built with needlessly short strips. For example, the aft phasers of the Galaxy are divided into two short strips. If this really is weaker than a combined, double-length strip, then the designer should be shot!

..could you think of any reasons why older TMP-era ships could not be retrofitted with strips?

I still prefer to claim that the strips aren't so markedly better than the turrets, and that it just happens to be cheap in the 24th century to manufacture strips and a certain type of hull, and not worth the while to do the modifications that a 24th century hull (plus power systems etc.) would need for the installation of the strip. Easier to install a newer and better turret instead: at least it doesn't call for hull changes even if it needs new power arrangements.

Parallels could be found in the way some military or police branches stick to the older revolver technology because (semi-)automatic pistols provide no clear advantage other than slightly larger magazine size and are more prone to jamming. Or in how there are pros and cons to both turbine and piston engines in light aircraft. The newer technology may be just sufficiently better to make the industry favor it - but the customer need not follow that lead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SicOne]

Good points, Timo. I especially agree with the accumulated-versus-quick-shot on the strips. I think undamaged segments could still work, but not as powerfully as a fully-intact segment allowed to accumulate a full charge.

And in regards to the ball turrets, they probably put an off-the-shelf emitter from a collimated phaser array in there, and make it work just as well as a strip phaser, without all that retrofitting.

With decades of strip phaser advances, there must be something to the ball turret design, in order for it to be on the Lakota, otherwise Lakota would have had strip phasers.

 

[kent]

People are right, it was around the 2330-2340's. The Ambassador class was the first ship with phaser array's instead of turrets.

The registry codes don't really make any sense at all, and it's been said by the producers that they don't really follow any strict rule. Generally speaking they do get larger as the centuries go on though. That said, perhaps the older ships with the higher registry codes were renamed...perhaps a fleet admiral somewhere wanted the name of that ship and renamed the older ship something newer or gave that ship the name of his. Or perhaps the older ships with higher registry codes were in fact recently built. Both explanations seem odd. I doubt a fleet admiral would be so crass as to take another ships name, UNLESS it was in a crew transitionary phase....actually now that makes 100% sense. This coincides with the evidence that there aren't many older ships with high registry numbers as it takes a while for crews to be changed over to different ships and Captain's to be promoted or what have you.

The Prometheus is an odd duck...it's registry codes are in the fives. It's not named after theNebula class USS Prometheus as that registry number is 71201. I guess the ship was named after another Prometheus class the pre-dated the Nebula class Prometheus. OR, which is another plausible answer, perhaps the idea for this ship was born in the era where the registries were in the fives, which would be in the 2350's.

That actually makes perfect sense. A design like the Prometheus would be a logical next step after the Cardassian wars. Starfleet probably wanted to create a ship that would be able to head off anything later on. AND it would be, as the ship was EXTREMELY advanced, a long haul project. My guess is with the peacetime's of the 2360's, the project was mothbolled until the breakout of the Dominion war. But they probably kept the registry number that was assigned to it in the 2350's for eases sake. The registry code is essentially the contract number of the design of ship. So keeping it in the fives makes sense if the ship was first contracted for creation in the 2350's.

 

[Praetor]

People are right, it was around the 2330-2340's. The Ambassador class was the first ship with phaser array's instead of turrets.

Ah yes, I remember those heady days like it was yesterday. The Federation News Service was wall-to-wall Ambassador launch coverage. My replicated pot roast was a bit dry.

Sorry, had to.

The registry codes don't really make any sense at all, and it's been said by the producers that they don't really follow any strict rule. Generally speaking they do get larger as the centuries go on though. That said, perhaps the older ships with the higher registry codes were renamed...perhaps a fleet admiral somewhere wanted the name of that ship and renamed the older ship something newer or gave that ship the name of his. Or perhaps the older ships with higher registry codes were in fact recently built. Both explanations seem odd.

How so? I think both of those could work. I'd suggest alternatively that sometimes older ships are placed in a reserve and then recommissioned with a higher number.

I doubt a fleet admiral would be so crass as to take another ships name, UNLESS it was in a crew transitionary phase....actually now that makes 100% sense. This coincides with the evidence that there aren't many older ships with high registry numbers as it takes a while for crews to be changed over to different ships and Captain's to be promoted or what have you.

Wait, you mean that the ship's crew would take the registry number with it? Except for the one big exception to recognizing the special achievements of a crew (i.e. the Enterprise) I don't see how this is feasible.

The Prometheus is an odd duck...it's registry codes are in the fives. It's not named after theNebula class USS Prometheus as that registry number is 71201. I guess the ship was named after another Prometheus class the pre-dated the Nebula class Prometheus. OR, which is another plausible answer, perhaps the idea for this ship was born in the era where the registries were in the fives, which would be in the 2350's.

That actually makes perfect sense. A design like the Prometheus would be a logical next step after the Cardassian wars. Starfleet probably wanted to create a ship that would be able to head off anything later on. AND it would be, as the ship was EXTREMELY advanced, a long haul project. My guess is with the peacetime's of the 2360's, the project was mothbolled until the breakout of the Dominion war. But they probably kept the registry number that was assigned to it in the 2350's for eases sake. The registry code is essentially the contract number of the design of ship. So keeping it in the fives makes sense if the ship was first contracted for creation in the 2350's.

Emphasis mine. Now that makes sense. I, and probably a lot of others, would debate the registry number being the contract number. But a numerical designation for navigational contact assigned at the onset of construction? Sure, why not.

 

[Major Chord]

^

Okay...but what does that have to do with phasers?

My theory is that regardless of power output ( because I'm sure that there are arrays that are weaker than ball turrets), the advantage probably lays in the firing arcs. An array ( I'm assuming that it's laid against a flat piece of hull, say, the top of the saucer), would have a firing arc of close to 180 degrees from the horizontal plane of the hull, without any moving pieces ( that we know of). A phaser turret, unless it's mounted above the hull ( most we see seem to be embedded in the hull), would have an arc less than that, and would have moving parts that could fail in battle. Yes, I'm assuming that the turret, as it's name implies, actually moves so that the phasers can firein different directions. If any of these moving parts, you have a phaser that at best, can only fire in a very tight arc ( the direction that the turret stopped at). To give a current analogy, you've effectively turned a triple mount of 16 inch naval guns into a battery of 18th century 20 pounders. In keeping with that analogy, phaser arrays would be like the ship-to ship mounted missiles, or 5 inch guns on modern ships, in that their firing arc it greatly increased from the last generation of weaponry.

 

[Praetor]

^

Okay...but what does that have to do with phasers?

I believe kent was trying to rationalize when the phaser arrays came into being the standard type of ship-mounted phaser armament and diverged into rationalizing whether registries were chronological.

My theory is that regardless of power output ( because I'm sure that there are arrays that are weaker than ball turrets), the advantage probably lays in the firing arcs. An array ( I'm assuming that it's laid against a flat piece of hull, say, the top of the saucer), would have a firing arc of close to 180 degrees from the horizontal plane of the hull, without any moving pieces ( that we know of). A phaser turret, unless it's mounted above the hull ( most we see seem to be embedded in the hull), would have an arc less than that, and would have moving parts that could fail in battle. Yes, I'm assuming that the turret, as it's name implies, actually moves so that the phasers can firein different directions. If any of these moving parts, you have a phaser that at best, can only fire in a very tight arc ( the direction that the turret stopped at). To give a current analogy, you've effectively turned a triple mount of 16 inch naval guns into a battery of 18th century 20 pounders. In keeping with that analogy, phaser arrays would be like the ship-to ship mounted missiles, or 5 inch guns on modern ships, in that their firing arc it greatly increased from the last generation of weaponry.

That makes perfect sense, and indeed is how I've always thought the turrets worked even if we didn't 'see' it.

 

[kent]

Praetor:

I don't see how the registry number would be the navigational contact code...then they wouldn't follow a pattern like being in the fives during the 2350's, the 6's and sevens in the 2360's, and the 7's in the 2370's. The codes would be at random if they were the contact numbers.

I'm taking this information based on our navy where the numbers are project contract numbers. Much of Starfleet is based on our navy, so it makes sense that considering the seeming order of the registry numbers that they would be the project contract numbers. Besides, I am pretty sure i've heard it written somehwere before from a good source that that is what they were. I'm just to lazy to try and find it again lol.

OHHHH actually google this: what is NCC???

It was on ex-astris or something like that. Basically it was decided that NCC was Naval Construction Contract, and the following number was the contract number. It made the most sense as to what NCC meant, as Roddenberry never gave it a meaning, he took it from the navy in which he seved where the ships would have NC (naval contract) and he added an extra C. You have to admit it makes sense considering the registry numbers appear to have a pattern.

 

[kent]

And i don't know why i mentioned registry codes to be honest...i think someone mentioned it somwhere on here or maybe i'm flat out challenged.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I've tried to rationalize phaser arrays in two terms. Firstly, it's similar to the switch from swingarm missile launchers to the VLS tubes on American missile cruisers. You can still fire the same kinds of weapons (more or less), only you can fire them faster and at multiple targets simultaneously.

I figure the same thing happened with phaser arrays, and then I go back and watch Wrath of Khan with the "machinegun/tracer" VFX, and suddenly I start to imagine that phaser arrays are intended to simplify the processing of arming, locking and firing phasers in the same way.

In other words, the ball turrets represent a single phaser weapon with a huge energy capacitor. Phaser arrays are multiple standalone emitters with small individual capacitors. When all phasers are fired at a single target, from the TWOK effects standard, it would look something like the antimatter spreads fired against the Borg: a huge barrage of short phaser pulses, all directed at a single distant target, or at as many distant targets as there are emitters.

Enterprise' blind-firing patterns in Nemesis would be, in this case, the only true and proper use of the phaser arrays as originally intended. Picture that, when engaged by a Romulan vessel, the USS Enterprise-C locks onto its target and then fires every one of its forward phaser arrays; the Romulans would "see" a huge number of short phaser pulses leaping out of the array strip like a line of antiaircraft guns on a WW-II battleship. Each phaser array has a small capacitor, so it doesn't take long for it to recharge; meanwhile, as a single emitter or group of emitters are charging, their neighbors can still discharge, and the ship achieves a much greater weight of fire, constantly punishing its target without ever having to stop and reenergize.

In a way, this would kind of imply that by the 24th century phasers have become purely defensive weapons and Starships use photon torpedoes exclusively for the destruction of belligerent targets.

 

[kent]

I don't see how quoting abstract physics will help solve the fundamental incompatibility problems of starship power systems. The power flowing through an Excelsior may well be fundamentally different from the power flowing through an Akira, and it might be utterly impossible for one ship to even recharge the shuttles of the other, let alone swap phaser assemblies.



Timo Saloniemi

How in the hell is that even true???? What would be the point of an entire fleet that is incompatible in a most basic way?? That would make starfleet quite ineffective at rescuing other starfleet ships, and frankly nearly impossible.

OF COURSE they are compatible!! The ships are designed to be flesxible and interchangable, and, well, in case you didn't know all federation warp cores operate on the same principle: a standard dueterium brand mixing with a standard form of anti-deuterium, flowing through a dilithium (which are all the same or the process wouldn't really work.), and into standardly built warp coils.

There will be subtle differences, like different fusion reactor units, but since they all work the same way in prinicple, and all use standard starfleet hardwiring, interchanging them shouldn't be a problem. Why would starfleet build such ineffective ships.

That simply makes no sense what so ever.