Do phaser arrays amplify energy, or merely direct it?

[EmperorTiberius]

TM suggests that the length matters, which is then backed by oncreen evidence of charge going around the array. When Enterprise fires multiple weak shots, there is not charge. Makes perfect sense.

 

[blssdwlf]

^ Or the effect you see in the long array is a delay in getting the phaser energy from the end of the strip to the firing point.

As to the multiple shots, how do we know they are weak shots? Was it identified in the episode?

 

[Deks]

It never was established that aft phasers or those coming from smaller strips are weaker.
I agree that the long array simply has a delay from the end of the strip to the firing point.

Perhaps it could serve as a 'warming mechanism' for charging the strip so various malfunctions could be avoided and could be used in combat for much longer periods compared to the ball emitters.

TM is NOT canon.

Btw, we have seen long phaser strips firing powerful singular shots without the charge traveling along the length.

The charge could also serve as a tracking point... traveling the strip for the best possible location from where it would discharge, charging up the strip so the remaining emitters would be fired up and ready for action.

Besides, Voyager delivered multiple blows of equal power from all of it's phaser strips to Hirogen vessels in 'Flesh and blood'... there was no charging effect from the main strips either.
Plus, the Enterprise-D had scenes where charges were not visible.

Finally, the phaser banks on the Enterprise-D were described as Type-X.
0 mention that aft strips are of a different type or weaker.

 

[T'Girl]

negates the whole "longer strips for better coverage" idea

If a portion of a strip could be destroyed in battle, but leave the remainder operational, that would be an advantage over having your phaser power come from a small number of "points' on the ships hull. The bigger your array, the harder it is to target weapons.

'Main phaser array' was referred to as the 'saucer based arrays',

When?

I was wondering this myself.

----------

Use of the term "Main" phasers does imply that there are "Not Main" phasers somewhere.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

^ Or the effect you see in the long array is a delay in getting the phaser energy from the end of the strip to the firing point.
As to the multiple shots, how do we know they are weak shots? Was it identified in the episode?

As I said, it's what the people behind the show said. TM might not be canon, but it's a good indicator of where they were going with everything. It's a good guide. In the absence of canon evindence, there is no reason to go with anything else unless it's obviously contradicted with something else. In this case, there is nothing else to go on. On the other hand, with Akira class as an example, the designer said something that is obviously not the case, but that's a whole different topic.

 

[blssdwlf]

Well, the TM has it's own problems like writing the total output for the top phaser array on the E-D to be 1 GW yet in "A Matter of Time" the phasers were being fired with a variance no more than .06 TeraWatts (60 GW) which is significantly more powerful on air than published. So, you can cite the TM but I'll just stick with the on-air stuff to not have to deal with even more potential contradictions .

Since there are no on-aired scenes of the short phaser strips doing less damage (AFAIK) than the longer phaser strips then I see no reason that they are less powerful.

 

[Deks]

Seconded.
The TM also apparently 'indicated' that replicators use raw matter to create meals, objects, etc.
On-screen clearly contradicts this as it's repeated throughout the show that replicators convert energy into matter.
In case of recycling objects using the replicators, it's matter into energy.
Clearly said and repeated several times throughout the shows with no indication of 'raw matter' usage (except that virtually everything onboard a SF ship is recycled - urine, waste, etc... - turns into energy and cycles back into the EPS power grid from what I was able to tell).

Transporters on the other hand were stated to convert matter into energy (which is moved to a specific location) and back again.
Holodecks were also stated to change energy into matter and back again.

TM's may have produced certain indications, but when on-screen dialogue directly states something else (which is also perfectly logical and doable for their level of advancement) I prefer to stick with that.

Of course, some tidbits of on-screen evidence in case of Enterprise NX-01 should be discarded... as in when the ship was travelling at Warp speed, but was traversing 10 000 km's at Warp in about 5 seconds... which was nonsensical.
In this case, on-screen evidence can be disregarded because Warp was stated to be faster than light, and even in Voyager, the speeds in question were much faster than what the NX-01 did (even in low warp) - thankfully, we only have 1 or 2 episodes where this is evident, so it's not a big deal to discard.

Equally so, we can also disregard phasers being fired from torpedo tubes (VFX error - present in both TNG and VOY).
Ds9 on the other hand completely ignored shield FX and numerous SF ships were dropping like flies as a result after only 2 hits (ways around that, but still a bit stupid).

One has to know which evidence to include and which to discard.
TM is something I don't really ascribe to.
I prefer to keep in line with on-screen evidence, but disregard other (minor) on-screen evidence if it blatantly contradicts previously established premises (basis for technology etc.).

 

[SicOne]

I'm not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere in the thread, but I think both the TNGTM and the episode blssdwlf mentioned have done the phaser discussion a bit of a disservice by placing the fictional phaser power in real-world energy measurements (megawatts, terawatts, etc).

If you look at all of the technological innovation we've undergone as a planet in the past 100 years, it may well be possible that such levels of energy can be manipulated and expended well in advance of when the Trek series fictionally takes place. Possibly even within our lifetime.

In much the same fashion, referring to Trek computing power in terms of "quads" without defining how many megabytes or terabytes of data a "quad" is helps keeps Trek ahead of the fictional curve in computer usage. Likewise, instead of using megawatts/terawatts, Trek phasers should have used a fictional measurement in the TMs and on-screen dialogue, similar to the "isotons" measurement of photon and quantum torpedo yields detailed in the DS9TM.

(If I'm not mistaken, I think there had been previous discussion that "isotons" is an actual number, well above a billion megatons or something like that, but so far out of the realm of power measurement that an explosion that big would be like a supernova, if I'm remembering correctly...I'm sure someone more real-life science-minded will step in here.)

Finally, regarding using phasers as point-defense weapons, I think the closest we've seen to that was when the E-D eliminated thirty-odd unmanned defense pods in "Conundrum" and Voyager vaporized several Vaadwuar ships in "Dragon's Teeth" with multiple-aperture phaser fire.

Personally, I'm of the general opinion that the bigger the segmented phaser array the more destructive power it is capable of, as the phaser beam can slide along multiple emitter segments before risk of burnout (i.e. a rear-firing phaser array of 10 emitters can fire for X-number of seconds at full power, while a forward-firing larger array of 200+ emitters atop the primary hull can fire for X-number+15 seconds or so before burnout, shifting the fire along emitter crystals for the whole length of the array). There's various arguments pro and con, but that's just my personal take on it...your mileage may vary.

 

[blssdwlf]

^ To be fair, "A Matter of Time" did not specify the upper range or maximum phaser power output, only the allowable degree of error. The TNGTM on the other hand placed a hard limit.

Point-defense wise, the TOS Enterprise also used her phaser(s) to shoot down/detonate the Romulan mine in "Balance of Terror", and a flight of missiles / single missile in "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" and "Patterns of Force". You could also count the E-D shooting down a Ferengi Missile from "The Price"

Regarding "isotons", Voyager dialogue does indicate the equivalent destructive power of varying yields:

4,000,000,000 isoton antimatter waste igniting would destroy everything within 3 LY. "Juggernaut"

5,000,000 isoton multikinetic neutronic mine could produce a shockwave to disperse nanoprobes over a radius of 5 LY. "Scorpion"

200 isoton Class-6 Photon torpedo complement carried aboard Voyager. Or it could be alternatively interpreted as 6.25 isoton per Class-6 Photon torpedo for a total of 200 isotons. "Scorpion"

A photon torpedo was modified to carry a 54 isoton (and later 80 isoton) gravitic charge. "Omega Directive", IIRC.

"Nightingale" also has isotons used as measurement for ore.

Also isotons were mentioned in DS9:

90 isoton enriched ultritium used to destroy a Jem'hedar storage facility on an asteroid and everything within 800 Km. "A Time To Stand"

10 isoton ultritium concussion shells detonated near a downed Jem'hedar ship. Dax notes a direct hit would destroy the ship. "The Ship"

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Are you sure about the attack direction?

For the very few sneak attacks actually executed, yes, and most of the remainder were performed by people who had ZERO reason to worry about their opponent's return fire.

The times when a starship opponent fighting the TOS / TMP Enterprise could control the attack direction we didn't see them sneaking up on the Enterprise from the lower aft. (Original TOS FX referenced.)

There was Elaan of Troyus, where the Klingon ship consistently attacked the Enterprise from its port-rear side. In this case, though, the Klingon ship was only ABLE to do this because the Enterprise lacked maneuvering power.

"Journey to Babel" - Orion ship strafed them consistently at high rate of speed from high to low, approaching even from the front of Enterprise. Even when the Enterprise was thought to be crippled, approached from the front of Enterprise.

And at no point in this entire exchange did the Orion ship have any reason to worry about Enterprise's return fire.

"The Search for Spock" - Kruge's BOP decloaked head-on with the Enterprise. (But they did decloaked and attacked the Grissom from behind.)

TSFS is hard to interpret in this context since Kruge didn't believe Enterprise saw him coming; an inexperienced captain like Esteban would have done a whole "WTF? Try to analyze that distortion thingie... hmmm... what do you make of it?" before having his engines shot out from under him.

On the other hand, Enterprise opened with torpedoes, not phasers, evidently because only the torpedoes could be targeted and fired fast enough to make the shot. If Kruge HAD attacked from the rear aspect he would have had better luck whether the aft phasers were weaker or not.

"The Undiscovered Country" - Chang's BOP attacked from all directions.

And Enterprise never fired her phasers at any point in the battle.

This is kind of my point about the sneak attack aspect. When you're being sucker-punched by an aggressive foe, your quick-draw weapon is actually photon torpedoes, not phasers. Not all starships even HAVE aft torpedo launchers, which lends some credibility to the thought that starships do not usually turn their backs to their opponents if they can help it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, the TM has it's own problems like writing the total output for the top phaser array on the E-D to be 1 GW yet in "A Matter of Time" the phasers were being fired with a variance no more than .06 TeraWatts (60 GW) which is significantly more powerful on air than published.

That's likely a dialog error since a "variance" of 60GW is a ridiculous thing to have to worry about (it's the equivalent of detonating a very large bomb and not being sure if it'll go off like a mouse fart or level three city blocks). Unless you expect us to believe Enterprise has no reliable way of controlling the power levels of its main weapons, the only way you could really interpret that line is in terms of what the phaser beam is doing to the atmosphere in terms of the chain reaction they were trying to set off, in which case you're talking about a reaction whose total output could be thousands of terawatts and "plus or minus point six" is a very small margin for error.

So, you can cite the TM but I'll just stick with the on-air stuff to not have to deal with even more potential contradictions .

If nothing on-air contradicts it, the TM's information is still entirely valid, as has been the rule of thumb for this board for the last several years. And you know this perfectly well.

Since there are no on-aired scenes of the short phaser strips doing less damage (AFAIK) than the longer phaser strips then I see no reason that they are less powerful.

As far as TNG, there are almost no on-air scenes of the aft phasers being fired AT ALL. The few times they show up in Voyager are always against smaller targets with no comparable strike from the main banks. In the end, then, there isn't anything to CONTRADICT the theory, and we're back to the logical problem you keep trying to swim around: if the longer strips provide no tangible benefit, then why have them at all?

One has to know which evidence to include and which to discard.

But deciding which is which needs to be more than just a matter of personal taste. This is the main reason we have always considered the Tech Manual to be "canon unless contradicted on screen," because it avoids the temptation to start pulling ad hoc theories out of our collective asses and then label them "canon" despite the mountains of contravening evidence that we don't like.

FWIW, the tech manual explicitly states that the main advantage of phsaer arrays is that the multitude of phaser emitters can each amplify the phaser charge before passing it on to its neighbor to be amplified again. If you want to retcon this to be consistent with "a matter of time" then you could easily say that each SINGLE emitter has an output of about 1GW. If the long strip on the Galaxy class has, say, 256 emitters in series, then you'd have a maximum output of around 200GW with a full charge. Based on what we see in "The Survivors" this would be a pretty significant output.

 

[blssdwlf]

Are you sure about the attack direction?

For the very few sneak attacks actually executed, yes, and most of the remainder were performed by people who had ZERO reason to worry about their opponent's return fire.

So which episodes do we see these "sneak attacks" executed from below and aft of the Enterprise?

There was Elaan of Troyus, where the Klingon ship consistently attacked the Enterprise from its port-rear side. In this case, though, the Klingon ship was only ABLE to do this because the Enterprise lacked maneuvering power.

But not lower aft. The initial attack runs were from above. Agree on maneuvering power.

And at no point in this entire exchange did the Orion ship have any reason to worry about Enterprise's return fire.

Even then, why not perform the coup de'grace from the aft or side rather than approach the front of the ship?

TSFS is hard to interpret in this context since Kruge didn't believe Enterprise saw him coming; an inexperienced captain like Esteban would have done a whole "WTF? Try to analyze that distortion thingie... hmmm... what do you make of it?" before having his engines shot out from under him.

Kruge attacked the Grissom from behind, but the Enterprise from straight ahead. Certainly doesn't follow the "attack from below aft" scenario.

On the other hand, Enterprise opened with torpedoes, not phasers, evidently because only the torpedoes could be targeted and fired fast enough to make the shot. If Kruge HAD attacked from the rear aspect he would have had better luck whether the aft phasers were weaker or not.

Or the torpedoes were cheaper to arm or harder for the Klingons to detect armed. The same thing arguably happened in "Elaan of Troyius". We know from "A Taste of Armageddon" that photon torpedoes use less energy than full power phasers.

"The Undiscovered Country" - Chang's BOP attacked from all directions.

And Enterprise never fired her phasers at any point in the battle.

Or the Enterprise's power was likely used up by the shields ala "The Changeling" leaving only power for torpedoes.

This is kind of my point about the sneak attack aspect. When you're being sucker-punched by an aggressive foe, your quick-draw weapon is actually photon torpedoes, not phasers. Not all starships even HAVE aft torpedo launchers, which lends some credibility to the thought that starships do not usually turn their backs to their opponents if they can help it.

I'd argue that the quick-draw weapon could be either phasers or torpedoes, depending on power available. I do agree that starships like the Enterprise would prefer to fight facing their enemy but more on the grounds that the forward shields are likely stronger and they can present a minimum target profile.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Are you sure about the attack direction?

For the very few sneak attacks actually executed, yes, and most of the remainder were performed by people who had ZERO reason to worry about their opponent's return fire.

So which episodes do we see these "sneak attacks" executed from below and aft of the Enterprise?

"The Wounded," for one, and also apparently in "Face of the Enemy" where the Romulan warbird moves directly beneath the Enterprise as a way of judging whether or not the ship's sensors can see them. There's also the Klingon attack in "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the Klingon ship seems to be focussing its attention directly on the Enterprise-C, attacking from starboard slightly aft. The second time the Klingons attack, Enterprise intentionally turns in space to face them and bring its forward torpedoes and phasers to bear. When the Klingons go after Enterprise-C, the -D moves to put itself between them to allow the smaller ship to escape... and yet, still only fires off the main phasers in the saucer, NOT the smaller arrays.

This occurs again in "Rascals," which uses stock footage from both "The Wounded" and "Yesterday's Enterprise" to show Enterprise being ambushed from both the front AND the rear by the stolen Klingon ships. Again, Enterprise never actually fires any of its smaller arrays and only ever uses the main phasers against the forward target. This may be due to use of stock footage from "Yesterday's Enterprise", but it's a point nonetheless.

Even then, why not perform the coup de'grace from the aft or side rather than approach the front of the ship?

Because "where are their phasers?" is VASTLY less important than "where are their shields weakest" or "Where are their primary systems located?" If YOU don't have to worry about return fire--either because your shields are holding, or you can dodge his fire, or you've sabotaged his power systems somehow--then your most effective tactic is in figuring out where are his shields weakest and what part of his ship is most vulnerable to attack.

Think of it like a couple of main battle tanks dueling in the desert. You're probably better off wondering where his armor is weakest than sitting there trying to figure out which way his turret is pointing, if only because if you can take him out fast enough, it won't MATTER where his weapons are, he'll be dead or disabled and you've scored the kill.

Kruge attacked the Grissom from behind, but the Enterprise from straight ahead. Certainly doesn't follow the "attack from below aft" scenario.

That's not a scenario, it's just something we've seen often enough. In Kruge's case, he was depending on the Enterprise not seeing him coming. It's not as if he decloaked into a hail of phaser fire and thought "Gee, I should have attacked from behind where their weapons were weaker." His actual mistake was loosing the element of surprise, without which it wouldn't have mattered where he attacked from because Enterprise still would have nailed him.

Or the torpedoes were cheaper to arm or harder for the Klingons to detect armed.

"All power to the weapons" isn't that specific. Scotty had his pick and he chose torpedoes, evidently because they could do more damage faster with less reliable targeting. They did the same thing in "TWOK" when they needed to sucker-punch Reliant without inviting a return fire, and again in TUC when they needed to take out the bird of prey quickly before it could recover. Riker apparently did the same thing in "Generations" while attacking the Duras sisters, and there's Enterprise-E firing blindly into space with phasers, only to switch to torpedoes the moment Scimitar became (briefly) visible.

The overall pattern is that torpedoes are the go-to weapon when you're in WAY over your head. And, again, many ships do not even have aft torpedo launchers, suggesting that starships aren't meant to fight enemies over their shoulders.

Or the Enterprise's power was likely used up by the shields ala "The Changeling" leaving only power for torpedoes.

Which would make a disparity between main and secondary phasers kind of irrelevant. You wouldn't normally be using phsaers anyway when heavily engaged, so you wouldn't need especially powerful weapons except directly up front to be used in strafing attacks against soft targets.

I'd argue that the quick-draw weapon could be either phasers or torpedoes, depending on power available. I do agree that starships like the Enterprise would prefer to fight facing their enemy but more on the grounds that the forward shields are likely stronger and they can present a minimum target profile.

And if forward shields are stronger anyway--making this a "preferred" attack aspect in such situations--when is the utility of powerful rear-facing phasers that are rarely used and aren't neccesary anyway since the forward phasers can just as easily be brought to bear on a rearward target?

 

[blssdwlf]

Well, the TM has it's own problems like writing the total output for the top phaser array on the E-D to be 1 GW yet in "A Matter of Time" the phasers were being fired with a variance no more than .06 TeraWatts (60 GW) which is significantly more powerful on air than published.

That's likely a dialog error since a "variance" of 60GW is a ridiculous thing to have to worry about (it's the equivalent of detonating a very large bomb and not being sure if it'll go off like a mouse fart or level three city blocks). Unless you expect us to believe Enterprise has no reliable way of controlling the power levels of its main weapons,

Well, the dialogue certainly points to the possibility that the phaser output might be off by up to 60 GW and not a dialogue error. What's interesting also (to the OP) is that warp power is being routed to the main deflector to discharge into the atmosphere while almost immediately afterwards the phasers are fired by all the EPS taps. So it could be the manner in which they are dumping all the power into the phasers that could account for the variability.

DATA: If our phaser discharge is off by as little as point zero six terawatts...
...
WORF: Warp power has being rerouted to the main deflector dish, Commander.
LAFORGE: Keep those phasers on active surge control, Worf. We're only going to get one shot at this.
RASMUSSEN: Well, this is it!
RIKER: You have the sequence locked in, Data?
DATA: Yes, sir. After an eight point three second burst from the dish, we'll discharge all EPS taps through the phasers.
​

So, you can cite the TM but I'll just stick with the on-air stuff to not have to deal with even more potential contradictions .

If nothing on-air contradicts it, the TM's information is still entirely valid, as has been the rule of thumb for this board for the last several years. And you know this perfectly well.

No. Actually I don't reference the TM just to avoid this silliness. When a TM that actually follows the show is put out, then I'd be happy to reference it

Since there are no on-aired scenes of the short phaser strips doing less damage (AFAIK) than the longer phaser strips then I see no reason that they are less powerful.

As far as TNG, there are almost no on-air scenes of the aft phasers being fired AT ALL.

As you said, almost no on-air scenes. But there is one that happens to be when they fire all weapons at the Borg.

The few times they show up in Voyager are always against smaller targets with no comparable strike from the main banks.

Not just smaller targets. In the compilation below, you can see Voyager using the belly strip against large ships and there was one part where the starboard warp pylon strip was used against a Borg tactical? cube in conjunction with the longer phasers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zonqRRcFkzk

In the end, then, there isn't anything to CONTRADICT the theory, and we're back to the logical problem you keep trying to swim around: if the longer strips provide no tangible benefit, then why have them at all?

Yet there is nothing to SUPPORT the theory that phaser array length = power output either. Why not acknowledge longer strips could mean more redundancy or continuous phaser coverage as benefits?

If you were to go by the TM, with each emitter being 5 MW and the TM's stated 200 emitters on the top saucer phaser array then the max output is 1GW for that phaser array.

From "Who Watches the Watchers"

LAFORGE: We've finished replicating the parts they'll need, but what I don't understand is why a three man station would need a reactor capable of producing four point two gigawatts.
RIKER: Enough to power a small phaser bank, a subspace relay station, or
​

So I guess that long phaser array on the E-D is a "tiny" phaser bank then

Or "The Mind's Eye" where a phaser rifle's energy cell was discharging 1MW. 5 of these would be equal in power to a single TM phaser emitter. When all is lost, just have a bunch of guys with phaser rifles strapped to the hull as backup phasers

 

[blssdwlf]

"The Wounded," for one,

That looked like the Cardassian attacked from the front ("increase power to forward shields') and then circled around to the starboard.

and also apparently in "Face of the Enemy" where the Romulan warbird moves directly beneath the Enterprise as a way of judging whether or not the ship's sensors can see them.

Ok - that makes sense. Chang's BOP does the same trick in TUC. But not for attacking the Enterprise... hmm...

There's also the Klingon attack in "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the Klingon ship seems to be focussing its attention directly on the Enterprise-C, attacking from starboard slightly aft. The second time the Klingons attack, Enterprise intentionally turns in space to face them and bring its forward torpedoes and phasers to bear. When the Klingons go after Enterprise-C, the -D moves to put itself between them to allow the smaller ship to escape... and yet, still only fires off the main phasers in the saucer, NOT the smaller arrays.

I don't see at any point the Klingons moving below and behind the E-D to get out of the field of fire from the saucer arrays. Then again, Picard takes so much time to give micromanaging orders between ordering "Fire" when the E-D did the most damage only when he orders "Continual Fire".

This occurs again in "Rascals," which uses stock footage from both "The Wounded" and "Yesterday's Enterprise" to show Enterprise being ambushed from both the front AND the rear by the stolen Klingon ships. Again, Enterprise never actually fires any of its smaller arrays and only ever uses the main phasers against the forward target. This may be due to use of stock footage from "Yesterday's Enterprise", but it's a point nonetheless.

From behind yes, but not below. The saucer's top phaser array could've hit the aft BOP. Heck even the aft photon torpedoes. They didn't fire much also because they were slow in responding. (And that darn power coupling went out as well )

Because "where are their phasers?" is VASTLY less important than "where are their shields weakest" or "Where are their primary systems located?" If YOU don't have to worry about return fire--either because your shields are holding, or you can dodge his fire, or you've sabotaged his power systems somehow--then your most effective tactic is in figuring out where are his shields weakest and what part of his ship is most vulnerable to attack.

However, if the theory is that phaser array length = phaser strength then "Where are their phasers" becomes mighty important. A phaser array that is 10x shorter in the secondary hull is a lot more approachable than the long ones from the front. However, we just don't see that being exploited and that is likely because phaser output is the same whether it is from the aft emitter or the forward one.

That's not a scenario, it's just something we've seen often enough. In Kruge's case, he was depending on the Enterprise not seeing him coming. It's not as if he decloaked into a hail of phaser fire and thought "Gee, I should have attacked from behind where their weapons were weaker." His actual mistake was loosing the element of surprise, without which it wouldn't have mattered where he attacked from because Enterprise still would have nailed him.

That still doesn't explain why he didn't sneak up from below and aft. I still haven't seen any episode where an enemy ship takes advantage of this attack vector in a sneak attack.

"All power to the weapons" isn't that specific. Scotty had his pick and he chose torpedoes, evidently because they could do more damage faster with less reliable targeting.

In "Elaan of Troyius", Kirk specifically calls for torpedoes. (Although on the Klingon's initial "scare run" Kirk calls for phasers thinking he still had phaser power.)

In "A Taste of Armageddon":

SCOTT: We can't fire full phasers with our screens up, and We can't lower our screens with their disruptors on us. Of course I could treat them to a few dozen photon torpedoes.

They did the same thing in "TWOK" when they needed to sucker-punch Reliant without inviting a return fire,

You mean in the end battle where the Enterprise had to be taken off of her "partial main power" and was running on what's left of her batteries (or auxiliaries, depending on your interpretation)?

and again in TUC when they needed to take out the bird of prey quickly before it could recover.

Funny enough, I think that first torpedo mission killed Chang's BOP. The rest were kinda unnecessary In anycase, the Enterprise-A's auxiliary circuits were out leaving main power which looked like were so strained that shields couldn't be maintained. I doubt there would have been power for a full-power phaser strike. The Excelsior, OTOH, we don't know what her power situation was like, but they used torpedoes as well.

Riker apparently did the same thing in "Generations" while attacking the Duras sisters, and there's Enterprise-E firing blindly into space with phasers, only to switch to torpedoes the moment Scimitar became (briefly) visible.

In "Generations" it's weird because they stopped firing phasers after the first shot, like they just gave up. And they waited for the shield trick to work on the Duras BOP before firing the torpedoes. The E-E battle with the Scimitar was just all over the place.

The overall pattern is that torpedoes are the go-to weapon when you're in WAY over your head. And, again, many ships do not even have aft torpedo launchers, suggesting that starships aren't meant to fight enemies over their shoulders.

Or the use of torpedoes is a last resort when the primary weapon, the phasers, aren't working either because they aren't effective or there is a lack of power...

Or the Enterprise's power was likely used up by the shields ala "The Changeling" leaving only power for torpedoes.

Which would make a disparity between main and secondary phasers kind of irrelevant. You wouldn't normally be using phsaers anyway when heavily engaged, so you wouldn't need especially powerful weapons except directly up front to be used in strafing attacks against soft targets.

It depends on the enemy. An enemy that can pour enough continuous weapons fire on your shields could cause the shields to suck up so much power that your phaser output would be diminished. However, if there are gaps in fire or the enemy weapons are on par with yours, then that spare energy could be dumped into the phaser attack which seems to be the preferred go to weapon against shielded and unshielded targets at both warp and sublight. Torpedoes seem to come into play when you can get close enough to a maneuverable enemy or against a not maneuverable enemy from a distance. Or in TNG's case, when you need to drop a bunch of torpedoes behind you while running at high warp speeds.

And if forward shields are stronger anyway--making this a "preferred" attack aspect in such situations--when is the utility of powerful rear-facing phasers that are rarely used and aren't neccesary anyway since the forward phasers can just as easily be brought to bear on a rearward target?

After looking again, I don't think that in TOS that the forward shields are any stronger than the aft shields. I don't see any dialogue to indicate stronger forward shields. It might just be a minimum target profile or that's where the ship points to when accelerating at warp. Or to keep the warp pods/nacelles from getting directly hit by keeping the saucer more or less in the line of fire...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, the TM has it's own problems like writing the total output for the top phaser array on the E-D to be 1 GW yet in "A Matter of Time" the phasers were being fired with a variance no more than .06 TeraWatts (60 GW) which is significantly more powerful on air than published.

That's likely a dialog error since a "variance" of 60GW is a ridiculous thing to have to worry about (it's the equivalent of detonating a very large bomb and not being sure if it'll go off like a mouse fart or level three city blocks). Unless you expect us to believe Enterprise has no reliable way of controlling the power levels of its main weapons,

Well, the dialogue certainly points to the possibility that the phaser output might be off by up to 60 GW and not a dialogue error.

That is highly improbable. "off by 60GW" is a pretty fucking huge thing not to be able to control.

No. Actually I don't reference the TM just to avoid this silliness. When a TM that actually follows the show is put out, then I'd be happy to reference it

"Follows the show?" the manual was written by the people who PRODUCED the show. If anything, the show mostly follows the manual, not the other way around.

As you said, almost no on-air scenes. But there is one that happens to be when they fire all weapons at the Borg.

That's the first thing that comes to mind in this case. Evidently the only thing in the world scary enough to make them fire their secondary phasers is, in fact, a Borg cube in the middle of a killgasm.

Yet there is nothing to SUPPORT the theory that phaser array length = power output either.

It isn't power output as much as a qualitative difference. There is the tech manual's direct reference, and occasional references to "main phasers" being distinct from "non-main" phasers. Power output is one possible explanation for the difference, as are endurance, accuracy and firing range (the tech manual implies that the longer strip is capable of sustaining a phaser beam longer than the shorter ones by discharging a larger number of emitters throughout the firing sequence). One way or another, there IS a qualitative difference between the two, we're just not sure what it is.

If you don't think it's firepower, that leaves other possibilities, but "nothing" isn't one of them.

Why not acknowledge longer strips could mean more redundancy or continuous phaser coverage as benefits?

Because a larger number of shorter strips would accomplish that as well, though probably better since multiple strips could be fired at the same target.

If you were to go by the TM, with each emitter being 5 MW and the TM's stated 200 emitters on the top saucer phaser array then the max output is 1GW for that phaser array. From "Who Watches the Watchers"

LAFORGE: We've finished replicating the parts they'll need, but what I don't understand is why a three man station would need a reactor capable of producing four point two gigawatts.
RIKER: Enough to power a small phaser bank, a subspace relay station, or
​

So I guess that long phaser array on the E-D is a "tiny" phaser bank then

Input and output are not the same thing. In this case, a generator that is 50% efficient feeding a phaser that is 25% efficient would have an output of about 500MW.

In this context, a "small phaser bank" is probably the Type-8 that the Cardassians were complaining about.

Or "The Mind's Eye" where a phaser rifle's energy cell was discharging 1MW. 5 of these would be equal in power to a single TM phaser emitter.

I do not immediately see why that would be a problem. Actually, it tells us a lot more about the phaser rifles than it does about the Enterprise' phaser banks.

When all is lost, just have a bunch of guys with phaser rifles strapped to the hull as backup phasers

Sounds like a pitch for Mythbusters: Star Trek edition.

Seriously, though: why not? Get 500 gets on the hull with some phaser rifles and get them to all fire at the same target at maximum power... infeasible for tactical reasons, but I could see them shooting down a Bird of Prey or a Jem'hadar battle bug if they hit it just right.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

From behind yes, but not below. The saucer's top phaser array could've hit the aft BOP.

It DIDN'T, though, which makes this discussion kind of immaterial.

However, if the theory is that phaser array length = phaser strength then "Where are their phasers" becomes mighty important.

Not in the slightest. Again, any attack you have planned has to take into account the possibility of return fire and take that into account. If your chance of success depends in any way on their NOT finding a way to bring their main phasers to bear on you, then you are already in way over your head even if none of his aft phasers are working.

We would probably expect this kind of behavior from someone like the Maquis or the Bajoran resistance, who are already vastly outgunned and are squeezing out any advantage you can get. But in most situations, an attacker has to count on his first shot being decisive and for his shields to protect him from the enemy's return fire, if any.

However, we just don't see that being exploited and that is likely because phaser output is the same whether it is from the aft emitter or the forward one.

Actually, it's more likely because most people either don't KNOW about it, or don't care. It's just not a big enough advantage to exploit unless you're either desperate or really really inexperienced and can't think of a better idea.

That still doesn't explain why he didn't sneak up from below and aft.

Yes it does: because Kruge had no intention of receiving return fire of ANY kind, so he didn't know or care where Enterprise's main phasers were pointing.

Minor science quibble: for two co-orbiting vessels closing on a single point, neither of them can really control their approach axis. Kruge probably would have PREFERRED to attack from behind, considering he was targeting Enterprise' engines, but since Enterprise wasn't flying backwards that day, he didn't have a choice.

You mean in the end battle where the Enterprise had to be taken off of her "partial main power" and was running on what's left of her batteries (or auxiliaries, depending on your interpretation)?

Yes, that one. His very first shot was a torpedo hit, disabling Reliant's torpedo launcher and removing the other ship's ability to quickly return fire (as Reliant did the FIRST time Enterprise attacked from behind). Then they followed up with phasers and another torpedo hit.

So photon torpedoes are the weapon of choice when you need to fire off a quick shot and can't be sure of a weapons lock.

Funny enough, I think that first torpedo mission killed Chang's BOP. The rest were kinda unnecessary

Yeah, but THEY didn't know that, and they couldn't take the chance of Chang getting his shields up and attacking Enterprise

In "Generations" it's weird because they stopped firing phasers after the first shot, like they just gave up. And they waited for the shield trick to work on the Duras BOP before firing the torpedoes

Exactly. Riker says "We have to target them the moment they cloak." You'd think phasers would be more effective in this situation, but apparently torpedoes are better off when there's no visible target.

That sort of works for the retcon to Balance of Terror where the "proximity blasts" are widely interpreted as being torpedoes anyway.

The E-E battle with the Scimitar was just all over the place.

True, but two times we see Enterprise falling back on torpedoes when it really needs to be quick: once, when Picard fires blindly with phasers to locate Scimitar and then follows up with torpedoes, and later, when Troi telepathically targets them and fires a spread of quantum torpedoes.

It depends on the enemy. An enemy that can pour enough continuous weapons fire on your shields could cause the shields to suck up so much power that your phaser output would be diminished. However, if there are gaps in fire or the enemy weapons are on par with yours, then that spare energy could be dumped into the phaser attack which seems to be the preferred go to weapon against shielded and unshielded targets at both warp and sublight.

All true, but I don't see that being inconsistent with the "main phasers are forward" idea. Starships generally avoid turning their back on anything they're planning to shoot at, so secondary phasers wouldn't normally even come into play unless you are fighting at suicidally close range and every little bit helps.

After looking again, I don't think that in TOS that the forward shields are any stronger than the aft shields. I don't see any dialogue to indicate stronger forward shields. It might just be a minimum target profile or that's where the ship points to when accelerating at warp. Or to keep the warp pods/nacelles from getting directly hit by keeping the saucer more or less in the line of fire...

Or some combination thereof. Either way, there's got to be some concrete reason why starships PREFER to face their enemies instead of trying to fire broadsides. Granted that forward and aft shields are probably equal, but that again leaves us to wonder about "main" and "secondary" phasers.

 

[blssdwlf]

That's likely a dialog error since a "variance" of 60GW is a ridiculous thing to have to worry about (it's the equivalent of detonating a very large bomb and not being sure if it'll go off like a mouse fart or level three city blocks). Unless you expect us to believe Enterprise has no reliable way of controlling the power levels of its main weapons,

Well, the dialogue certainly points to the possibility that the phaser output might be off by up to 60 GW and not a dialogue error.

That is highly improbable. "off by 60GW" is a pretty fucking huge thing not to be able to control.

Well if it's a pretty f*cking huge phaser blast then 60 GW would be a small percentage in the big picture of things. Not improbable at all.

"Follows the show?" the manual was written by the people who PRODUCED the show. If anything, the show mostly follows the manual, not the other way around.

It doesn't matter if they produced the show when the show doesn't follow everything in the manual. Heck, "Who Watches the Watchers" with the small 4 GW phaser bank preceded the manual's publication and "A Matter of Time" came after the publication. Those numbers do not support the manual.

And more to the point, the manual isn't even after the run of the TNG series or even the entire TNG-VOY-DS9-ENT series so it doesn't even account for any of the deviations in tech.

That's the first thing that comes to mind in this case. Evidently the only thing in the world scary enough to make them fire their secondary phasers is, in fact, a Borg cube in the middle of a killgasm.

But they did fire them. And we don't know if those are "secondary" phasers.

It isn't power output as much as a qualitative difference. There is the tech manual's direct reference, and occasional references to "main phasers" being distinct from "non-main" phasers. Power output is one possible explanation for the difference, as are endurance, accuracy and firing range (the tech manual implies that the longer strip is capable of sustaining a phaser beam longer than the shorter ones by discharging a larger number of emitters throughout the firing sequence). One way or another, there IS a qualitative difference between the two, we're just not sure what it is.

If you don't think it's firepower, that leaves other possibilities, but "nothing" isn't one of them.

Well the TM also calls the short strips "Type X" just like the long strips and has no problems calling them into use in the threat scenarios. Of course we don't see them in use in the series... hmmm. And "nothing" is one of them since we're not sure what the difference is, including if there is a qualitative difference. We don't have any instances where we can compare the short strips to the long ones in TNG to say otherwise.

Because a larger number of shorter strips would accomplish that as well, though probably better since multiple strips could be fired at the same target.

Which seems to be what happens in Voyager.

Input and output are not the same thing. In this case, a generator that is 50% efficient feeding a phaser that is 25% efficient would have an output of about 500MW.

In this context, a "small phaser bank" is probably the Type-8 that the Cardassians were complaining about.

Huh? There are no Cardassians in "Who Watches the Watchers". Plus, that's a stretch for a phaser to be of such low efficiency unless there was battle damage. That episode pretty clearly spelled out that 4 GW was for a small phaser bank and counters the TM's 1 GW Type X long phaser array description.

Or "The Mind's Eye" where a phaser rifle's energy cell was discharging 1MW. 5 of these would be equal in power to a single TM phaser emitter.

I do not immediately see why that would be a problem. Actually, it tells us a lot more about the phaser rifles than it does about the Enterprise' phaser banks.

Well, if you're sticking to only the TM, then the TM describes the Type-3 as having "similar power levels to the Type-2 except for a 50% greater power reserve." However, the TM lists the max power output of the Type-2 as being 0.01 MW which is 100x lower than that of the 1 MW discharging in "The Mind's Eye". Also, then the episode at 1 MW would suggest that the Type-3 is only 5x less powerful than a single Type X emitter. Yeah, right

When all is lost, just have a bunch of guys with phaser rifles strapped to the hull as backup phasers

Sounds like a pitch for Mythbusters: Star Trek edition.

Seriously, though: why not? Get 500 gets on the hull with some phaser rifles and get them to all fire at the same target at maximum power... infeasible for tactical reasons, but I could see them shooting down a Bird of Prey or a Jem'hadar battle bug if they hit it just right.

They just need to open the windows on the E-D, got plenty of those to shoot out of

 

[blssdwlf]

From behind yes, but not below. The saucer's top phaser array could've hit the aft BOP.

It DIDN'T, though, which makes this discussion kind of immaterial.

I'm just point out the lack of sneak attacks from below and aft of the ship

However, if the theory is that phaser array length = phaser strength then "Where are their phasers" becomes mighty important.

Not in the slightest. Again, any attack you have planned has to take into account the possibility of return fire and take that into account. If your chance of success depends in any way on their NOT finding a way to bring their main phasers to bear on you, then you are already in way over your head even if none of his aft phasers are working.

Well, this depends on where you are arguing from.

Are you arguing that the aft phasers are equal in firepower to the forward phasers?

- If this then it doesn't matter which direction you attack from.
​

Or are you arguing that the aft phasers are "secondary" and of lesser firepower than the forward phasers?

- If this then it does matter which direction you attack from, especially if you can control the attack direction. Lower power phaser return fire against you equals less shield power needed and more power to phasers to attack with.
​

It doesn't have to be whether one side is out-gunned or not. Just simple, "attack their weaker side".

Yes it does: because Kruge had no intention of receiving return fire of ANY kind, so he didn't know or care where Enterprise's main phasers were pointing.

Or he knew that the phasers on the Enterprise had equal power output and it didn't matter which direction to attack from.

Minor science quibble: for two co-orbiting vessels closing on a single point, neither of them can really control their approach axis. Kruge probably would have PREFERRED to attack from behind, considering he was targeting Enterprise' engines, but since Enterprise wasn't flying backwards that day, he didn't have a choice.

Yes he did. These ships don't have to follow any orbiting rules. Kruge had plenty of sneaking options, including getting behind the Enterprise.

Yes, that one. His very first shot was a torpedo hit, disabling Reliant's torpedo launcher and removing the other ship's ability to quickly return fire (as Reliant did the FIRST time Enterprise attacked from behind). Then they followed up with phasers and another torpedo hit.

So photon torpedoes are the weapon of choice when you need to fire off a quick shot and can't be sure of a weapons lock.

Yet before the Enterprise's partial main power was taken offline, Sulu fires phasers at the Reliant (and misses.) The reason they used torpedoes on the Reliant was more of a power issue than "quick shot issue". If quick shot is what they needed, they also didn't use torpedoes in that head-on pass where Reliant phasers the Enterprise's torpedo room.

Exactly. Riker says "We have to target them the moment they cloak." You'd think phasers would be more effective in this situation, but apparently torpedoes are better off when there's no visible target.

The E-D only fired one phaser blast in "Generations". Not continuously hammering the BOP. Just one. And they didn't fire their torpedoes at the BOP until they could trick it into dropping her shields. How about firing those torpedoes and keep shooting until the shielded BOP blows up? In this case visibility has nothing to do with it.

True, but two times we see Enterprise falling back on torpedoes when it really needs to be quick: once, when Picard fires blindly with phasers to locate Scimitar and then follows up with torpedoes, and later, when Troi telepathically targets them and fires a spread of quantum torpedoes.

Or their phaser banks were temporarily depleted and they needed to keep hammering the Scimitar so following up with torpedoes would be a good idea. If only Riker could think like Picard the E-D would've been still around ...

There is also "The Arsenal of Freedom" where the first choice for a quick shot was the phaser and then when they were trying to trap the drone they used both phasers and torpedoes. They eventually take it out with a quick phaser shot in the end once they were able to locate it.

Either way, there's got to be some concrete reason why starships PREFER to face their enemies instead of trying to fire broadsides. Granted that forward and aft shields are probably equal, but that again leaves us to wonder about "main" and "secondary" phasers.

I think we'll keep on wondering

 

[Timo]

A few hipshots:

Evidently the only thing in the world scary enough to make them fire their secondary phasers is, in fact, a Borg cube in the middle of a killgasm.

It's funny that this sole example of short strips being fired in TNG is actually an example of short strips not being fired! As has often been pointed out, the beams appear to come either from the leading edges of the engine pylons, or then from the insides of the pylons, and neither location actually features any strips. (The starboard pylon outside strip is blatantly visible in the shot, and quite distant from the starting point of the beam).

It would seem that there are no situations where an E-D phaser really would have been fired from an established emitter other than the dorsal and ventral strips of the saucer (discounting ship separation situations). "Darmok", with the beam coming out of the torpedo tube, and "BoBW" are our two instances of beams emerging from elsewhere.

...Or are the Borg perhaps firing amber beams at the engine pylons of the E-D while the starship "fires all weapons" in the usual manner (that is, by pouring its total firepower out in a single beam, plus torps)?

The E-D only fired one phaser blast in "Generations". Not continuously hammering the BOP. Just one.

We don't really know that, because there were so many cuts in the scene - to the interior (where phaser shots only manifest as small "pings" in the loudspeaker system), and to Picard's surface exploits. With their penetration advantage, the Klingons could have knocked out Riker's phaser arrays one by one, ultimately leading to the stern chase situation where none of Riker's surviving beam weapons could fire aft...

There is also "The Arsenal of Freedom" where the first choice for a quick shot was the phaser

Let's remember that the target appeared right next to the hero ship. Torpedoes are a big no-no at point blank ranges...

Timo Saloniemi