Torpedoes are illogical

[All Seeing Eye]

Torpedoes are illogical, they would not work in the Trekverse.

Ships have tractor beams capable of toeing enormous ships, when torpedoes get fired all the targeted ship needs to do is fire a tractor beam in the direction of the torpedo. The computer could be programmed to do it automatically when a torpedo is detected inbound on sensors.

Torpedoes shouldn't even be capable of reaching an enemy ship.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

And how many tractor beam emitters does any given ship have?

The average seems to be 2 or so - certainly not enough to deflect a barrage of torpedoes.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

One single tractor beam can spread across a vast area. 1 Tractor beam fired in the direction of the enemy ship can stop ALL torpedoes. The torpedoes would only need to pass in the general area of the tractor beam to be stopped. Torpedoes are tiny, very little weight and a tractor beam can tractor a large area and move large ships.

 

[JuanBolio]

Care to cite examples as to when a tractor beam has ever been used to cover a "wide area" or been shown to have a range of more than a few miles (a range at which a single photon torpedo would still be lethal)?

More to the point, starships already have a defensive measure that allows them to deflect incoming fire in much the same way that a specialized tractor beam does. Its called a DEFLECTOR SHIELD!

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Care to cite examples as to when a tractor beam has ever been used to cover a "wide area"

yes, when tractoring other vessels. The beams have sometimes covered entire saucer sections area wise.

 

[JuanBolio]

Care to cite examples as to when a tractor beam has ever been used to cover a "wide area"

yes, when tractoring other vessels. The beams have sometimes covered entire saucer sections area wise.

That's not very wide, considering that a photon torpedo can come in at any angle from millions of kilometers away at speeds in excess of the speed of light. Even if you did manage to snag a photon with a tractor beam, what would you do with it?

Reel it in? Boom! You're dead.

Hold it steady? Boom! You're well within its lethal radius already, and you're dead.

Reverse the pull and shoot it off into space? Boom! It probably detonated as soon as your beam grabbed it anyway. Why would a warhead be set any other way? You're dead.

 

[The Badger]

Torpedoes are illogical, they would not work in the Trekverse.

Except we've got dozens of episodes showing that they do work in the Trekverse.

Please forgive me TS, this isn't a personal attack. You keep making these claims that something in the Trekverse shouldn't work. The thing is, if it is in the Trekverse, and we are shown it working, then it does work.

Now sometimes these things may make little sense to us. So if it bothers you, come up with an explanation that satisfies you. Or, put it forward to a thread like this one, and open it up for discussion. Who knows, someone else may come up with such an explanation.

So for this thread, instead of insisting 'torpedoes can't possibly work, as they can be stopped by tractor beams', we could ask 'why aren't tractor beams used to stop torpedoes?'.

I would suggest that, as portrayed in Trek, tractor beams do seem to need to be focused on objects, rather than just aimed in a general area. Given the size and speed of torpedoes, it seems unlikely one could catch one before it hits you.

Also, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a tractor beam can be used through shields. Deactivating an all round defence, and thus leaving oneself open to further attacks, in order to stop one torpedo seems a little short sighted.

 

[Wally]

On a similar note, torpedoes should be able to be easily shot by shipboard phaser arrays before they even 'arm' and be safely destroyed. But they don't. Obviously torpedoes are designed and built against several different countermeasures. Perhaps they have a certain or are composed of a certain material that reflects tractor beams. Heck, if darn near anything can mess with sensors and transporters, there has got to something out there that is unnaffected by tractor beams.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Indeed.

 

[Saquist]

And how many tractor beam emitters does any given ship have?

The average seems to be 2 or so - certainly not enough to deflect a barrage of torpedoes.

The typical Federation Starship might have quite a few tractor beams and 2 main emitters. The TNG manual says there is a tractor package in every thruster package which are called mooring beams.

 

[03myersd]

Maybe this is where we find out why they are called "photon" torpedo's. Perhaps they are not conventional warheads that we know of but are in fact pulses of energy? A tractor beam would have no effect on them?

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Maybe this is where we find out why they are called "photon" torpedo's. Perhaps they are not conventional warheads that we know of but are in fact pulses of energy? A tractor beam would have no effect on them?

Photon torpedoes are matter/antimatter warheads located within a physical torpedo casing.

 

[Cyke101]

More to the point, starships already have a defensive measure that allows them to deflect incoming fire in much the same way that a specialized tractor beam does. Its called a DEFLECTOR SHIELD!

To be fair, we never really see the deflector shield deflect anything, really. I know how cost-prohibitive it would be to show tiny rocks and particles and space dust being shoved out of the way every single time they hit 1/4th impulse (nevermind warp), but even around large wreckage and fair-sized asteroids, the deflectors never really push them. Sometimes the hero ship even has to maneuver out of the way!

 

[JuanBolio]

More to the point, starships already have a defensive measure that allows them to deflect incoming fire in much the same way that a specialized tractor beam does. Its called a DEFLECTOR SHIELD!

To be fair, we never really see the deflector shield deflect anything, really. I know how cost-prohibitive it would be to show tiny rocks and particles and space dust being shoved out of the way every single time they hit 1/4th impulse (nevermind warp), but even around large wreckage and fair-sized asteroids, the deflectors never really push them. Sometimes the hero ship even has to maneuver out of the way!

Well, we rarely see a lot of things that are supposed to happen on the show, but deflector shields are supposed to deflect objects and energy by means of gravity/space-warp. Doubtlessly torpedoes are designed to detonate as soon as they encounter such a field, so the deflector has to do the best it can to deflect as much of the resulting gamma ray burst as possible.

 

[buzzknox]

More to the point, starships already have a defensive measure that allows them to deflect incoming fire in much the same way that a specialized tractor beam does. Its called a DEFLECTOR SHIELD!

To be fair, we never really see the deflector shield deflect anything, really. I know how cost-prohibitive it would be to show tiny rocks and particles and space dust being shoved out of the way every single time they hit 1/4th impulse (nevermind warp), but even around large wreckage and fair-sized asteroids, the deflectors never really push them. Sometimes the hero ship even has to maneuver out of the way!

There was an occasion when a smaller ship bounced off the Ent-D's shields. Was that the episode with the supersoldiers who had been imprisoned as their world found them "too dangerous" to have around?

 

[Unicron]

Yep. They were "too dangerous" because the government couldn't undo the conditioning it had originally created for them, and thus they couldn't reassimilate into civilian life.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue that trying to "countermand" torpedoes is a bit like trying to stop bullets. If you have a super-duper radar-guided gatling gun hooked up to some really fancy software, you might try to shoot down the bullets from a sniper rifle today. But if you are driving in a tank, there's no good reason why you should try. Your armor does the work of stopping the bullet much, much better than any sort of an active countermeasure. Moreover, it not only stops sniper rifle bullets; it also stops simultaneous machine gun fire from eight directions, which the gatling setup cannot do, and does it without any sort of extra cost.

It may simply be that, while tractor beams can grab and phasers can shoot down torpedoes, only an idiot would attempt that when the energy and computing time is much better used in reinforcing one's shields instead. If you have extra energy that you could theoretically pump to some sort of CIWS phasers, the only smart thing is to route that extra energy to your shields instead.

Now, that only holds true for a certain type of balance between torp hitting power and shield stopping power. If a given amount of power gives you weak shields that don't stop a torp, or alternatively a CIWS phaser, and your ship cannot produce more than this given amount, then it's obvious that you should choose CIWS. We only have to accept that the balance in Star Trek is such that any effort on CIWS systems is effort wasted.

Now add some self-defense measures on the torps if you wish. But clearly the relevant rat race in Trek isn't one between cleverly maneuvering, feinting warheads and a set of guns trying to intercept them; torpedoes never feel the need to maneuver to avoid defenses, indicating that the defender has long since given up trying to intercept them. The same sort of development is happening with antiship missiles today: maneuvering is becoming less desirable than crazy-ass hypersonic speed, because the latter basically ensures a deadly hit even if the defender manages to score a one-in-a-million counterhit with his CIWS. The hurt missile will still cannonball into the target ship and score a kill...

...Speaking of cannonballs, those are probably an excellent analogy for photon torpedoes. You need a sustained volley of them to hurt the enemy, just like back in the days of sailing ships. You don't try to dodge them, or deflect them - you try to endure them, and then respond in kind (or preferably worse).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Torpedoes are illogical, they would not work in the Trekverse.

Ships have tractor beams capable of toeing enormous ships, when torpedoes get fired all the targeted ship needs to do is fire a tractor beam in the direction of the torpedo. The computer could be programmed to do it automatically when a torpedo is detected inbound on sensors.

Torpedoes shouldn't even be capable of reaching an enemy ship.

Tractor beams are area devices, and even given that, it's difficult to lock onto a target. We've seen evidence of that on-screen... and it's also something which has been very effectively modeled in various "Trek combat" type games.

I'm sure that if you were able to get a "tractor beam lock" onto a torpedo, you'd have defeated it... until it either self-destructed or you destroyed it yourself.

But how often have we heard how difficult it is to "get a lock" (weapons, transporter, or tractor beam) on a small, evasive, fast-moving object?

I actually think that an ACTIVE defense... say, a "deflector wave" projected towards the projectile to fool it into thinking it's just impacted... is a better defense against a torpedo.

The trick isn't to capture it, it's to detonate it at a safe distance. Tractor beams aren't the best tool to do that, I think.

Also, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a tractor beam can be used through shields. Deactivating an all round defence, and thus leaving oneself open to further attacks, in order to stop one torpedo seems a little short sighted.

We have at least one canonical example of what you're talking about. The Enterprise had to drop its tractor beam on the Constellation when the Doomsday machine showed up. I'm sure that there are other examples, but that's the only one which immediately comes to mind.

I have vague recollection of TNG, where they were able to do this, but only by expanding their shields to encompass both vessels (no idea which episode that was, though). Of course, in this case, the shields were much reduced in effectiveness.

More to the point, starships already have a defensive measure that allows them to deflect incoming fire in much the same way that a specialized tractor beam does. Its called a DEFLECTOR SHIELD!

To be fair, we never really see the deflector shield deflect anything, really. I know how cost-prohibitive it would be to show tiny rocks and particles and space dust being shoved out of the way every single time they hit 1/4th impulse (nevermind warp), but even around large wreckage and fair-sized asteroids, the deflectors never really push them. Sometimes the hero ship even has to maneuver out of the way!

To be entirely accurate (at least through TOS and TMP eras, and I'd argue continuing through the TNG era, though it's less clear by that point), you have two SEPARATE defensive systems there.

A number of times, you'll hear commands to "raise screens and shields." In TMP, they explicitly refer to "forcefields" as well as "deflectors."

The general treatment was that you had "shields" which were a close-fitting "second skin" forcefield... effectively an additional layer of hull made up of energy. And, INDEPENDENT FROM THAT, you had "deflector screens" which form a generally ovoid shape at a significant distance from the hull. These two systems do different things.

The deflectors, or screens, literally deflect incoming targets. They're a gravity-based system which acts sort of like a prism... imagine it being like trying to see the bottom of a swimming pool when viewing it from a shallow angle. The view you SEE isn't the REAL view... the light has been "deflected" in a similar sort of sense. This is what they do to protect again real physical objects... they steer them away from the target, making a "miss" much more likely. They also DIFFUSE incoming fire... so a beam weapon which might be concentrated in a 1mm^2 "needle point" will be spread out to cover a 1km^2 area... with some energy missing entirely and the rest being much more evenly distributed (and thus less capable of damaging any particular point).

Whatever makes it through the deflectors hits the shields... and if it makes it through that energy-based outer layer of hull, it then strikes the physical hull plating.

Just sayin... the term "deflector shields" isn't a TOS/TMP-era invention at all. And if you read the TNG tech manual, this is still in-place by that point, though it was often ignored onscreen.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I recall one episode, I think of TNG, where Worf said it would take a certain number of second (15?) to lock phasers onto an incoming torpedo. OR something like that. Point is, a torpedo moves and and a lock has to be made for the tractor beam.

And anyone correct me if wrong, but doesn't a standard TNG Federation issued torpedo have a small amount of anitmatter that is set off after shot from the ship, so it reaches it's target fasterm which means a torpedo moves very quickly. Maybe too quickly for a tractor beam to grab hold. I also recall tractor beams are really only affective at sub light towing or slower.

 

[JuanBolio]

To be entirely accurate (at least through TOS and TMP eras, and I'd argue continuing through the TNG era, though it's less clear by that point), you have two SEPARATE defensive systems there.

A number of times, you'll hear commands to "raise screens and shields." In TMP, they explicitly refer to "forcefields" as well as "deflectors."

The general treatment was that you had "shields" which were a close-fitting "second skin" forcefield... effectively an additional layer of hull made up of energy. And, INDEPENDENT FROM THAT, you had "deflector screens" which form a generally ovoid shape at a significant distance from the hull. These two systems do different things.

The deflectors, or screens, literally deflect incoming targets. They're a gravity-based system which acts sort of like a prism... imagine it being like trying to see the bottom of a swimming pool when viewing it from a shallow angle. The view you SEE isn't the REAL view... the light has been "deflected" in a similar sort of sense. This is what they do to protect again real physical objects... they steer them away from the target, making a "miss" much more likely. They also DIFFUSE incoming fire... so a beam weapon which might be concentrated in a 1mm^2 "needle point" will be spread out to cover a 1km^2 area... with some energy missing entirely and the rest being much more evenly distributed (and thus less capable of damaging any particular point).

Whatever makes it through the deflectors hits the shields... and if it makes it through that energy-based outer layer of hull, it then strikes the physical hull plating.

Just sayin... the term "deflector shields" isn't a TOS/TMP-era invention at all. And if you read the TNG tech manual, this is still in-place by that point, though it was often ignored onscreen.

I understand this and agree, I simply misused the term in my post. Outer deflector screen deflects fire, inner energy shield absorbs it.

I was just saying that a torpedo would likely be set to detonate as soon as it encountered a deflector screen, so as to release its energy as close to the target as possible.