Do phaser arrays amplify energy, or merely direct it?

[blssdwlf]

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).

Whoa. You're right. I just pulled up some pics of the E-D's phaser array locations and there are none that correspond to those two spots.

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.

Then maybe those two plus the Darmok location count as "secondary phasers"...

...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)?

Wouldn't something explode back there if those were Borg weapons hitting the pylons?

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...

That's a distinct possibility. I think in my mind that three or so phaser hits would've done the BOP in but it looked like it wasn't even shaken - which leads me to conclude only one shot was fired at it.

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...

Only if the shields were down on the firing ship are they a no-no at point-blank ranges

 

[Timo]

Then maybe those two plus the Darmok location count as "secondary phasers"...

The ship could be teeming with those: like you have argued before, it shouldn't be much of an issue to rig a hundred hand phasers on the exterior. The one next to the torpedo launcher might have been chosen in "Darmok" because our heroes needed to take out the ventrally mounted transporter jammer of the Children of Tama with their first shot, without tipping off the Tamarians by maneuvering at first; the saucer arrays would have been positioned too high up to achieve that, and the ventral stardrive array wouldn't be able to aim that high.

On the other hand, LaForge could simply have built his special phaser at a workshop and then deployed it on the exterior of the ship through the most suitable opening, which (considering the firing angles and the ban on maneuvering) happened to be the torpedo tube...

Wouldn't something explode back there if those were Borg weapons hitting the pylons?

Perhaps. But the Borg laser never exploded anything much - it just drilled a neat cut into the hull, when left to dwell long enough.

I'm more worried that the VFX would show the beams originating from the pylons and slowly traversing to screen right towards the Cube. But if we blink, that doesn't happen.

I think in my mind that three or so phaser hits would've done the BOP in but it looked like it wasn't even shaken - which leads me to conclude only one shot was fired at it.

Everybody seemed to agree that the shields holding was a major anomaly - the Klingons themselves appeared visibly and vocally astounded that they were still alive after several minutes of battle. Quite probably, Soran worked another piece of El-Aurian magic on the shields! Sixty beams might not have made a difference there.

Good for our heroes that these Romulan sympathizers had rigged their ship's shields in a particularly non-Klingon way, so that they would drop when the cloak was raised in exaggeratedly stealth-minded, "Face of the Enemy" style.

Only if the shields were down on the firing ship are they a no-no at point-blank ranges

Have torps ever been used against a proximal target in the TNG era?

Kirk fired his torps at completely abandon in the TOS movie era (more often than not with shields down), but had a healthy respect for their firepower in TOS. It's probably closely related to the torpedo yield: if you set it at a level that will do damage to a shielded target, it will do damage to you as well, so proximity fighting is only possible when both sides are shieldless.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Matt4511]

In Contagion, when the Iconian probe is closing on the Enterprise and LaForge shouts that it must be destroyed, that's accomplished with a phaser hit.

That could suggest that by the TNG era, phasers were the preferred weapon for rapid reaction scenarios. Or, since the ship was not in battle, it could imply that when the tactical systems are not activated, the phasers can go from "cold" to "firing" faster than photon torpedoes. It's still possible that when the ship is expecting trouble and all weapons are armed and ready, photorps might be faster.

 

[blssdwlf]

Wouldn't something explode back there if those were Borg weapons hitting the pylons?

Perhaps. But the Borg laser never exploded anything much - it just drilled a neat cut into the hull, when left to dwell long enough.

I'm more worried that the VFX would show the beams originating from the pylons and slowly traversing to screen right towards the Cube. But if we blink, that doesn't happen.

I seem to remember stuff blowing up at the battle at Wolf-359. I guess I'll go check...

I think in my mind that three or so phaser hits would've done the BOP in but it looked like it wasn't even shaken - which leads me to conclude only one shot was fired at it.

Everybody seemed to agree that the shields holding was a major anomaly - the Klingons themselves appeared visibly and vocally astounded that they were still alive after several minutes of battle. Quite probably, Soran worked another piece of El-Aurian magic on the shields! Sixty beams might not have made a difference there.

Good for our heroes that these Romulan sympathizers had rigged their ship's shields in a particularly non-Klingon way, so that they would drop when the cloak was raised in exaggeratedly stealth-minded, "Face of the Enemy" style.

LOL

Only if the shields were down on the firing ship are they a no-no at point-blank ranges

Have torps ever been used against a proximal target in the TNG era?

From "Q Who?" they were going to risk it with their shields down.

DATA: Without our shields, at this range there is a high degree of probability that a photon detonation could destroy the Enterprise.

But IIRC, their shields were still up at the end of "Arsenal of Freedom".

Kirk fired his torps at completely abandon in the TOS movie era (more often than not with shields down), but had a healthy respect for their firepower in TOS. It's probably closely related to the torpedo yield: if you set it at a level that will do damage to a shielded target, it will do damage to you as well, so proximity fighting is only possible when both sides are shieldless.

I would agree that the torpedoes were probably adjusted to lower yields based on the firing ship's shield strength and distance to target. Kirk fired practically un-powered photons at the end of "TWOK" at the Reliant based on the settings they showed (and threw in a phaser burst as well.) The photons fired in TSFS didn't leave a scratch on the hull of Kruge's BOP. Only in ST6 is where we see the photons fired up a notch but even then, they were fairly low powered hits compared to previous large explosions (see TMP and asteroid hit.)

In Contagion, when the Iconian probe is closing on the Enterprise and LaForge shouts that it must be destroyed, that's accomplished with a phaser hit.

That could suggest that by the TNG era, phasers were the preferred weapon for rapid reaction scenarios. Or, since the ship was not in battle, it could imply that when the tactical systems are not activated, the phasers can go from "cold" to "firing" faster than photon torpedoes. It's still possible that when the ship is expecting trouble and all weapons are armed and ready, photorps might be faster.

I think phasers will always be the preferred weapon for rapid reaction scenarios. The times we see photons used are when they've had time to think about loading the tubes and usually when phasers have failed or the power is needed elsewhere, IMHO. Plus phasers will usually impact the target faster than photon torpedoes assuming they were fired at the same time.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

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

We know that secondary phasers exist, though, so if you have a better explanation for where they are or what makes them "secondary," now's the time.

And "nothing" is one of them since we're not sure what the difference is

We know there IS a difference, though, hence the designation "main." Again, it's your turn to provide a plausible explanation for what that difference might be.

Huh? There are no Cardassians in "Who Watches the Watchers".

I'm talking about the type-8 phasers mentioned in "preemptive strike" which were apparently mounted on shuttlecraft and were powerful enough to cause serious damage to a galor class warship.

Plus, that's a stretch for a phaser to be of such low efficiency unless there was battle damage.

Or unless small phaser banks tend to be less efficient than larger ones. Which was, if you remember, one of the possible explanations I gave for the difference between "main" and "secondary" phasers on starships.

That episode pretty clearly spelled out that 4 GW was for a small phaser bank...

For the INPUT side, yes. We don't know what "small" means for a phaser beam's OUTPUT.

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

Again, I'm not really seeing the problem here. Even in TOS it is implied that a hand phaser on overload is capable of causing serious damage to a starship, and in ENT we see NX-01 being attacked by swarms of Suliban battlepods firing from beam weapons no larger than hand phasers anyway (same again for the plasma cannon on the shuttlepod, which is probably not much larger than a phaser rifle).

It just seems to me that at high enough power-to-weight ratios the concept of "MANPAD" weapons takes on a whole new meaning. If we were talking about, say, suitcase nukes, then you wouldn't be acting so surprised that the same weapon that could be carried in a man's backpack could just as easily be fired out of a cannon. The qualitative difference between those two weapons, however, is in the cannon's superior range and the ability to fire more than once.

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

Are the windows transparent to phaser beams?

Since that's a question that's been nagging at me since I was five years old, I'll ask it again: are the windows of starships transparent to phaser beams?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

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".

I think you need to try doing this a few times FOR REAL and see how well it works. A friend of mine used to talk about it in "Star Trek: Encounters" on PS2, something about how you could exploit the firing angle blind spots on NX-01 if you were smart enough. He could never get it to work, however, and I nearly always obliterated him if he was using anything larger than a bird of prey.

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

Kruge wasn't planning on receiving any return fire. It was an ambush, not a duel.

Yes he did. These ships don't have to follow any orbiting rules.

Until the laws of physics are decisively written out of the Trek universe, yes they do.

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?

Don't ask me, I didn't write the damn thing.

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.

I think the drone being in the atmosphere had more to do with it in the second case. In the first, I seem to recall the torpedoes launched FIRST, followed by the phaser blast.

 

[Timo]

Kruge wasn't planning on receiving any return fire.

...What was he planning on? Glorious suicide, like Kargan in "A Matter of Honor"?

Or were both of the Klingon skippers justified in their belief that a single volley would render the explicitly superior Starfleet opponent incapable of responding? Kruge was even pulling his punches, asking for a disabling shot at the engine again. Did he grossly miscalculate? His engine-disabling shot was a complete success, and nevertheless the Enterprise fired back with her acknowledged 10:1 firepower advantage (and might have been an even greater threat if properly crewed and maintained).

Kruge wasn't dodging or recloaking. Perhaps he was about to? Perhaps the only thing that went wrong was that Sulu had enough of an advance warning to shorten his reaction time by a crucial two seconds. But the reaction was coming no matter what - in which case it does sound like Kruge should have conducted his ambush from an angle that protected him from torpedo fire, and from a state of motion that made targeting more difficult for the opponent.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

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

We know that secondary phasers exist, though, so if you have a better explanation for where they are or what makes them "secondary," now's the time.

Check the follow up reply to Timo who correctly points out that the phasers didn't come from the strips and thus I agree those are likely to be secondary phasers. What makes them "secondary"? They aren't strips and thus not counted as part of the "main" phaser system that are the strips, IMO.

I'm talking about the type-8 phasers mentioned in "preemptive strike" which were apparently mounted on shuttlecraft and were powerful enough to cause serious damage to a galor class warship.

You mean the "Type 8 phasers" and "photon torpedoes" described by Gul Evek and had knocked his ship down to 30% shields? Is that Type-8 from a Cardassian rating or Federation rating?

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

Again, I'm not really seeing the problem here.

So it's okay for a Type-4 to be 2MW, a Type-5 to be 2.5MW and a Type-9 to be 4MW? Are you not seeing the problem so you can cling to the TM's figures which don't adhere to the show? The on-air small phaser banks are in the 4 GW range. And for TNG efficiency from "The Mind's Eye":

DATA: Our most efficient discharge crystal typically fires with eighty six point five percent efficiency.

Even in TOS it is implied that a hand phaser on overload is capable of causing serious damage to a starship,

When detonated from the inside

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".

I think you need to try doing this a few times FOR REAL and see how well it works. A friend of mine used to talk about it in "Star Trek: Encounters" on PS2...

The only "For Real" are the aired episodes and it can be done in if your ship is more maneuverable (and/or the other ship is sabotaged ). I have yet to play any video game that comes remotely close to what is depicted in TOS or the TOS movies or come to think of it, the TNG+ era.

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

Kruge wasn't planning on receiving any return fire. It was an ambush, not a duel.

An ambush that was going for a more difficult disabling shot against a ship that Kruge knew could still respond with phaser and torpedo fire. And as far as ambush goes, Kruge took an excruciatingly long time after decloaking to target the Grissom. To expect the Enterprise under Kirk not to blast them or get his shields up before he got a shot off would be rather optimistic for Kruge.

Until the laws of physics are decisively written out of the Trek universe, yes they do.

No they don't since TOS ships have got the propulsion systems to fly however they want to in orbit or in deep space. The laws of physics only come into play when the ship loses power and that's consistent to the series.

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?

Don't ask me, I didn't write the damn thing.

Doesn't quite support your phaser and torpedo usage theory...

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.

I think the drone being in the atmosphere had more to do with it in the second case. In the first, I seem to recall the torpedoes launched FIRST, followed by the phaser blast.

Nope. The phaser blast preceded the torpedo spread (just checked it.)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You mean the "Type 8 phasers" and "photon torpedoes" described by Gul Evek and had knocked his ship down to 30% shields? Is that Type-8 from a Cardassian rating or Federation rating?

Federation.

So it's okay for a Type-4 to be 2MW, a Type-5 to be 2.5MW and a Type-9 to be 4MW?

Yes. Especially when you consider that the difference between two types is likely to have less to do with firepower and more to do with the type of the weapon itself. Or do you think that the Type-2 phasers of the 24th century have the same power output as their 23rd century counterparts?

Let's consider that by the modern ranking system a "Type-5 phaser" would probably resemble the old NX-01 phase cannons and its modern counterpart is probably the same type of device that was used in "The Cage" to blast through the Talosian elevator. Type-6 and -7 would be different in either size or configuration or both, adding additional elements to the same basic setup to boost power and efficiency. In that case, Type-8, -9 and -10 would be a set of phaser arrays with -10 being the largest and -8 being something small enough to bolt on to the nose of a shuttlecraft.

In which case, Geordi's "small phaser bank" may actually look something like this, in which case 4GW of input power would make it JUST competitive with the main phasers of 23rd century starships.

And for TNG efficiency from "The Mind's Eye":

DATA: Our most efficient discharge crystal typically fires with eighty six point five percent efficiency.

This for the discharge crystal, not the entire unit.

The only "For Real" are the aired episodes and it can be done in if your ship is more maneuverable (and/or the other ship is sabotaged ). I have yet to play any video game that comes remotely close to what is depicted in TOS or the TOS movies or come to think of it, the TNG+ era.

I dare say, they are much closer to what those episodes depict than your self-consistent imaginings of what SHOULD be possible. Suffice to say you have no real concept of how difficult it would be if actually attempted, and you don't seem interested in finding out.

An ambush that was going for a more difficult disabling shot against a ship that Kruge knew could still respond with phaser and torpedo fire.

DID he know that? Because even if the forward phasers were stronger than the aft ones, he has no excuse for not realizing that the Enterprise didn't have an aft TORPEDO launcher.

And as far as ambush goes, Kruge took an excruciatingly long time after decloaking to target the Grissom. To expect the Enterprise under Kirk not to blast them or get his shields up before he got a shot off would be rather optimistic for Kruge.

Why? Grissom didn't fire back. Why would he expect Enterprise to be different?

No they don't since TOS ships have got the propulsion systems to fly however they want to in orbit or in deep space.

That's not what "orbit" means, by definition. Hence the use of the term "standard orbit" for a starship that wants to enter orbit of a planet and doesn't want to have to worry about maintaining it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Kruge wasn't planning on receiving any return fire.

...What was he planning on? Glorious suicide, like Kargan in "A Matter of Honor"?

No, he was planning to take out the engines with his first shot and thereby disable the Enterprise, allowing him to capture it's commander for later interrogation.

Kruge wasn't dodging or recloaking. Perhaps he was about to? Perhaps the only thing that went wrong was that Sulu had enough of an advance warning to shorten his reaction time by a crucial two seconds.

The only thing that went wrong was that Enterprise already knew an enemy ship was there and was ready to counter attack BEFORE Kruge was ready to fire. If Kruge miscalculated anything, it was the efficacy of his own cloaking device.

But the reaction was coming no matter what - in which case it does sound like Kruge should have conducted his ambush from an angle that protected him from torpedo fire, and from a state of motion that made targeting more difficult for the opponent.

But the reaction NEVER would have come if Kruge had been able to surprise Enterprise when he decloaked. Again, Kruge was hit by two torpedoes almost immediately after becoming visible, he had no time to do anything else except channel emergency power to his torpedoes and pray for a hit. If at that point Enterprise' shields were up, it would have been the last desperate act of a doomed mercenary; in this case, Kruge got lucky.

Now, if Enterprise hadn't seen the bird of prey approaching, they would have tried to raise shields and arm weapons just before the torpedo was launched and would have taken one in the engines without any protection. That means NO power to weapons and shields, and Kruge has nothing to worry about.

 

[blssdwlf]

You mean the "Type 8 phasers" and "photon torpedoes" described by Gul Evek and had knocked his ship down to 30% shields? Is that Type-8 from a Cardassian rating or Federation rating?

Federation.

Even though it's spoken by a Cardassian? Its good to know that enemies standardized on phaser designations

So it's okay for a Type-4 to be 2MW, a Type-5 to be 2.5MW and a Type-9 to be 4MW?

Yes. Especially when you consider that the difference between two types is likely to have less to do with firepower and more to do with the type of the weapon itself. Or do you think that the Type-2 phasers of the 24th century have the same power output as their 23rd century counterparts?

Well, now that you ask that maybe the 24th century type-2s have the same power output as the 23rd century ones. A 1911 .45 hits pretty much as hard as a .45 made in 2011. However, a .45 is quite different than a 16 inch shell. I would imagine that in TOS, there would be Type-10s on the TOS Enterprise.

What you're suggesting with the TM is that the difference between a Type-2 and a Type-10 is a lot smaller, more like a .45 and a 30mm, IMO.

This for the discharge crystal, not the entire unit.

I guess you don't have anything from the series that says phasers are as inefficient as you'd like them to be to support your argument.

I dare say, they are much closer to what those episodes depict than your self-consistent imaginings of what SHOULD be possible. Suffice to say you have no real concept of how difficult it would be if actually attempted, and you don't seem interested in finding out.

Funny enough, I own Encounters for the PS2 and if you call that "closer to what those episodes depict" then you're not interested in screen accuracy and just want to make up whatever floats your boat. It's a fun arcade-style game with ships that perform like crippled ships from Wrath of Khan with beam phasers from TNG. Match what you see on screen and then you'll have a real concept of how combat was fought in TOS and the TOS movies.

DID he know that? Because even if the forward phasers were stronger than the aft ones, he has no excuse for not realizing that the Enterprise didn't have an aft TORPEDO launcher.

Or if the aft phasers were just as strong as the forward ones it wouldn't make any difference which direction to attack from. Still, if it came down to taking phaser fire and taking combined phaser and photon torpedo fire a rear approach would have been safer.

And as far as ambush goes, Kruge took an excruciatingly long time after decloaking to target the Grissom. To expect the Enterprise under Kirk not to blast them or get his shields up before he got a shot off would be rather optimistic for Kruge.

Why? Grissom didn't fire back. Why would he expect Enterprise to be different?

Uh, didn't you notice that Kruge noticed that the Enterprise outguns him by a wide margin? The Grissom isn't in the same league as the Enterprise. A working Enterprise can get her shields up in 3-4 seconds. I don't think Kruge's BOP showed that kind of decloak-and-fire speed.

Edit: It took 22s for Kruge's BOP to fire at Grissom from time of decloaking. It looks like it would've taken at least 9s for Kruge's BOP to fire on the Enterprise from the time of decloaking. That's plenty of time for the Enterprise's shields to automatically raise. There wouldn't have been a chance for Kruge to get a shot off at the Enterprise's engines unshielded.

KRUGE: Why haven't they finished us? ...They outgun me ten to one.

No they don't since TOS ships have got the propulsion systems to fly however they want to in orbit or in deep space.

That's not what "orbit" means, by definition. Hence the use of the term "standard orbit" for a starship that wants to enter orbit of a planet and doesn't want to have to worry about maintaining it.

If you watch TSFS, Kirk never orders the Enterprise to be put into any kind of orbit. She's approaching the planet on the lookout for Grissom. When she self-destructs, she veers perpendicular to whatever her "orbit" would have been. There isn't any particular reason why Kruge couldn't have gone around the Enterprise for a stern shot but apparently he's just a ballsy Klingon

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You mean the "Type 8 phasers" and "photon torpedoes" described by Gul Evek and had knocked his ship down to 30% shields? Is that Type-8 from a Cardassian rating or Federation rating?

Federation.

Even though it's spoken by a Cardassian?

Does Gul Evek speak English, or are we hearing his words through a universal translator? If the latter, then whatever the Cardassian designation the translator will probably render the speach as "Type-8 phaser" so that Picard can understand what he's talking about.

Well, now that you ask that maybe the 24th century type-2s have the same power output as the 23rd century ones. A 1911 .45 hits pretty much as hard as a .45 made in 2011. However, a .45 is quite different than a 16 inch shell. I would imagine that in TOS, there would be Type-10s on the TOS Enterprise.

On the other hand, there's a world of difference between the 5-inch guns mounted on WW-II destroyers and their 21st century counterparts. On the one hand, this admittedly has less to do with firepower than it does with firing rate, range, accuracy and efficiency; on the other hand, if nobody told you that the Mk-42 gun mount had the same diameter and caliber as the Mk-45, you might look at me confused if I told you the two guns have basically the same amount of power. The same may be true of the Type-7 and Type-10 phasers, respectively.

What you're suggesting with the TM is that the difference between a Type-2 and a Type-10 is a lot smaller, more like a .45 and a 30mm, IMO.

I don't really need your opinion here, because the kinetic energy of those weapons is eminently quantifiable:

A .45 bullet from an automatic pistol will be fired with a muzzle energy of between 500 and 800 Joules.
A 5.56mm bullet from an M-16 rifle will fly with about 1700 joules, a little over twice the power of the .45.
A 20mm shell from an Oerlikon antiaircraft gun will have about 66,000 joules of kinetic energy...
By the time you dial this up to a 127mm shell, you're packing 10.6 MJ of kinetic energy... which is kind of interesting, because it implies that, pulse for pulse, a single phaser bank is delivering the destructive energy of a field artillery piece.

At the power levels mentioned in dialog, a phaser rifle is actually closer to a bazooka than an assault rifle (some 57mm recoiless rifles had muzzle energies of around 1 or 2MJ). That would stand as an overt contradiction to the TM and would make sense considering how rarely they're used. The power levels of the hand phaser are never given on screen, but if the tech manual's 100KW is correct, then you're talking about a portable weapon with the destructive power of .50 caliber BMG. They may not be VISUALLY that impressive, but if you consider the kind of energy that would be required to incinerate a grown man in two seconds flat, any comparison to those puny little Colt .45s is fleeting at best.

I guess you don't have anything from the series that says phasers are as inefficient as you'd like them to be to support your argument.

None is needed. The exact output of a putative "small phaser array" is never stated in dialog, only that a 4GW generator is powerful enough to operate it. My point is you don't actually know the relationship between generator power and weapon power or what that relationship depends on, so saying that "small phaser banks have outputs of 4GW" is an unwarranted leap.

Funny enough, I own Encounters for the PS2 and if you call that "closer to what those episodes depict" then you're not interested in screen accuracy and just want to make up whatever floats your boat.

Actually, encounters is REMARKABLY similar to what we see on screen, considering
1) Starships only ever fire one phaser bank at a time
2) Starships never approach each other from directly above or directly below, always at or close to each other's horizontal axis
3) Starships never exchange fire at extreme ranges and rarely approach relative velocities greater than a few hundred meters per second.

In fact if you took a battle from Encounters and replayed it at 1/3rd speed, it would look EXACTLY like what we see on screen for most of Trek history.

It's a fun arcade-style game with ships that perform like crippled ships from Wrath of Khan with beam phasers from TNG...

Thus replicating the visuals from TSFS, TFF, TUC, The Battle, The Arsenal of Freedom, Yesterday's Enterprise, Redemption Pt-I and -II, Darmok, The Emissary I and -II, The Jem'hadar, Way of the Warrior Pt-II, Starship Down, A Call to Arms, Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis (just where I can think of discrete examples).

You are expecting maybe ships that zip around like fighter planes at FTL velocities trading phaser and torpedo fire with hyper-accuracy at relativistic distances?

Match what you see on screen and then you'll have a real concept of how combat was fought in TOS and the TOS movies.

Funny you mention that, we actually see more maneuvering in wrath of Khan than in any of the other TOS movies. As for TOS itself... well, I'm not sure how matching constant reuses of the same 15 seconds of stock footage is going to be all that illuminating, UNLESS you include TOS-R.

Or if the aft phasers were just as strong as the forward ones it wouldn't make any difference which direction to attack from. Still, if it came down to taking phaser fire and taking combined phaser and photon torpedo fire a rear approach would have been safer.

IOW, even when the aft approach is undeniably safer, attackers still refrain from using it for whatever reason. In that case, you have only speculation to assert that any approach becomes more desirable based on the ship's weapon placement alone, when here we already have hard evidence that the approach angle is vastly less important than the circumstances of the first attack.

Uh, didn't you notice that Kruge noticed that the Enterprise outguns him by a wide margin?

A fact that didn't matter to him one iota until AFTER his shields had been knocked out and his ship was disabled and without power.

Point of fact: Klingons--and anyone else--don't care about their enemy's guns, only their enemy's SHIELDS. You will notice, for instance, that Kirk intentionally left his shields down to avoid tipping his hand.

A working Enterprise can get her shields up in 3-4 seconds. I don't think Kruge's BOP showed that kind of decloak-and-fire speed.

When you factor in the reaction time of the crew (i.e. the amount of time it takes for an officer to yell "Klingon bird of prey decloaking!" and a surprised captain to order "Shields up!" and then another officer to push the buttons to raise those shields, PLUS the 3-4 seconds it takes for the shields to activate) then you have that crucial "element of surprise" that Kruge was depending on. WITHOUT that element, it wouldn't have mattered if Enterprise fired first or raised her shields first, he would have been just as screwed.

If you're suggesting that Kruge was stupid for trying to take on the Enterprise at all... well, that's a debate for another time and place. All we know for sure is that HE thought it was going to work, and this was based on his assumption that he would not be detected before he decloaked and fired. Kruge is probably a more experienced combat officer than you are, so I must take it as a given that he knows something you don't.

There isn't any particular reason why Kruge couldn't have gone around the Enterprise for a stern shot but apparently he's just a ballsy Klingon

It's vastly more likely that the location of enemy weapon systems is almost never tactically relevant and the more pressing consideration is to what extent your opponent is able to withstand--let alone respond--to your attack.

Think of it from a gunfighter's point of view. What are you worried about more, how many bullets the other guy has, or how many bullets it will take to kill him?

 

[Timo]

Why? Grissom didn't fire back. Why would he expect Enterprise to be different?

Both Kruge and Maltz are explicitly very worried about the firepower of the "Federation battle cruiser". Clearly, they do expect her to fire back, quite regardless of other concerns.

That's not what "orbit" means, by definition.

It's a valid definition of orbit, and one that more closely matches what we see in Star Trek than freefall orbit does. And it really doesn't make any sense for our heroes to obey orbital mechanics - it would be like a tank commander fighting his battle so that he gets advantage from the wind blowing against the flank of his tank for extra propulsion. (Actually, the relative propulsive advantage would be even less in the starship case!)

he was planning to take out the engines with his first shot and thereby disable the Enterprise

But taking out the engines never did squat to the opponent's ability to fire back in TOS. That it prevented Kirk from firing back in STIII was a total fluke, too, according to Scotty. Kruge could hardly have wielded more firepower against Kirk even in an optimal situation - he only had that one torpedo launcher, which has never been seen firing multiple torps.

OTOH, like him, Klaa in STV seemed confident that a single torpedo should neutralize the "Federation battle cruiser"... And again, it did. Again, though, the unshielded target was undercrewed and in a poor state of repair, and again the Klingon skipper was ignorant of anything beyond his prey being unshielded.

Perhaps those green BoP torps are regularly capable of completely neutralizing an enemy ship provided the prey is unshielded, and neither the previously accumulated damage nor the undercrewing in STIII or STV was actually a factor in the total collapse of defenses. In that case, the fact that the collapse mightily surprised Kirk in STIII is merely evidence that he is inexperienced in this sort of combat - he knows that a cloakable Klingon BoP exists, but he has never faced one for real.

If the ability of the Klingons to defeat their opponents within ten seconds of decloaking is unknown to Starfleet at that point, then routines for quickly firing back with phasers might be undeveloped, too. However, Romulan cloakships at that point already had the ability to wreak total havoc within ten seconds; Kirk is oddly confident that the cloaked ship he (barely) sees is not one of those...

When you factor in the reaction time of the crew

...Or the possibility that things depicted in that particular STIII scene might be taking place simultaneously rather than consecutively.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Federation.

Even though it's spoken by a Cardassian?

Does Gul Evek speak English, or are we hearing his words through a universal translator? If the latter, then whatever the Cardassian designation the translator will probably render the speach as "Type-8 phaser" so that Picard can understand what he's talking about.

Then it's the description of a Cardassian Type-8 phaser that can fit on a shuttle since it's being translated from a Cardassian. It's probably powerful in Gul Evek's perspective but may have no bearing on a Federation Type-8 phaser.

On the other hand, there's a world of difference between the 5-inch guns mounted on WW-II destroyers and their 21st century counterparts. On the one hand, this admittedly has less to do with firepower than it does with firing rate, range, accuracy and efficiency; on the other hand, if nobody told you that the Mk-42 gun mount had the same diameter and caliber as the Mk-45, you might look at me confused if I told you the two guns have basically the same amount of power. The same may be true of the Type-7 and Type-10 phasers, respectively.

Or that a Type-7 in the 23rd century hits with the same strength in the 24th century but could be more accurate or have better range or accuracy...

I don't really need your opinion here, because the kinetic energy of those weapons is eminently quantifiable:

A .45 bullet from an automatic pistol will be fired with a muzzle energy of between 500 and 800 Joules.
A 5.56mm bullet from an M-16 rifle will fly with about 1700 joules, a little over twice the power of the .45.
A 20mm shell from an Oerlikon antiaircraft gun will have about 66,000 joules of kinetic energy...
By the time you dial this up to a 127mm shell, you're packing 10.6 MJ of kinetic energy... which is kind of interesting, because it implies that, pulse for pulse, a single phaser bank is delivering the destructive energy of a field artillery piece.

And from your own numbers it doesn't strike you odd that for a handheld rifle to the largest ship mounted phaser the delivered energy spread is only 3MW?

At the power levels mentioned in dialog, a phaser rifle is actually closer to a bazooka than an assault rifle (some 57mm recoiless rifles had muzzle energies of around 1 or 2MJ). That would stand as an overt contradiction to the TM and would make sense considering how rarely they're used.

Yes.

None is needed. The exact output of a putative "small phaser array" is never stated in dialog, only that a 4GW generator is powerful enough to operate it. My point is you don't actually know the relationship between generator power and weapon power or what that relationship depends on, so saying that "small phaser banks have outputs of 4GW" is an unwarranted leap.

And saying the efficiency of a phaser system at a low 25% just to push it below 1GW so as not to counter the TM is unwarranted as well. I don't need to say it's 4GW output from a small phaser bank, just that it is over 1GW which doesn't jive with the TM's idea that the E-D's biggest phaser array outputs at 1GW.

Actually, encounters is REMARKABLY similar to what we see on screen, considering
1) Starships only ever fire one phaser bank at a time
2) Starships never approach each other from directly above
or directly below, always at or close to each other's horizontal axis

Does Encounters replicate the dual phaser banks of the TOS Enterprise or movie Enterprise? Hmm... No. Or allow me to fly the ship backwards? No. Or allow me to approach directly from above like in "Sacrifice of Angels"? No. Although I don't expect too many from directly above or below scenarios.

3) Starships never exchange fire at extreme ranges

Moderately far in 90,000km in "The Tholian Web" and "The Changeling". 50,000-100,000km in "The Deadly Years". 100,000km in "Elaan of Troyius". 1AU (or 40AU depending on which version) in TMP.

and rarely approach relative velocities greater than a few hundred meters per second.

Unless they're fighting with warp drive to quickly move in and out of range or to gain a shot at a weakened shield.

Hmm...unless it's TNG. Then I suppose Encounters is very accurate to TNG then

In fact if you took a battle from Encounters and replayed it at 1/3rd speed, it would look EXACTLY like what we see on screen for most of Trek history.

EXACTLY like TNG, then YES. For TOS and even TOS movies - NO.

Thus replicating the visuals from TSFS,

Just like my comment about watching crippled ships fighting in Wrath of Khan

TFF,

You can warp away from an incoming torpedo in Encounters?

TUC,

And launch a modified tracking torpedo to hit a cloaked BOP in Encounters?

The Battle,

Or pull the "Picard Maneuver" in Encounters?

The Arsenal of Freedom,

Or dive into an atmosphere to pick out a following cloaked drone in Encounters?

Yesterday's Enterprise,

Actually, this one is like Encounters. Slow and micro-managed orders and firing rates until Picard let's lose at the end which is a bit too late for them

Redemption Pt-I and -II,

Or dive into sun's corona and set off an eruption once going into warp? Or fire a long-range torpedo to illuminate a cloaked warship in Encounters?

Darmok,

Aren't they just sitting still there? I guess it could be like Encounters.

The Emissary I and -II,

Emissary from TNG - where they chase at warp a sleeper Klingon ship?

Or Emissary from DS9 - where a runabout tows a disabled Cardassian ship from the wormhole in Encounters?

The Jem'hadar,

Or allow ship rammings in Encounters?

Way of the Warrior Pt-II,

Hmm, they were forced to fight near a disabled cardassian ship. So yeah, they were pretty slow. Ok like Encounters.

Starship Down,

Dive into a planet's atmosphere? With an unexploded torpedo. Was there an Encounters scenario that did this?

A Call to Arms,

Well again, they are taking the station so yeah, ok like Encounters

Generations,

Will Encounters let you trigger the cloaking device of an enemy BOP to drop their shields? Of course you'd be better off holding down the phaser button and blast the BOP outright

First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis (just where I can think of discrete examples).

Ok - that's very Encounters-ish. Or TNG-ish. Kinda hard to tell the difference there.

You are expecting maybe ships that zip around like fighter planes at FTL velocities trading phaser and torpedo fire with hyper-accuracy at relativistic distances?

For TOS, that's what they did. No expectation at all

Funny you mention that, we actually see more maneuvering in wrath of Khan than in any of the other TOS movies. As for TOS itself... well, I'm not sure how matching constant reuses of the same 15 seconds of stock footage is going to be all that illuminating, UNLESS you include TOS-R.

TOS-R is just a re-hash of the slow crippled speed TNG fighting at point-blank ranges you've apparently grown to love.

However, the stock footage from the orignal TOS FX works surprisingly well with the dialogue in TOS. You should give it a try sometime

IOW, even when the aft approach is undeniably safer, attackers still refrain from using it for whatever reason. In that case, you have only speculation to assert that any approach becomes more desirable based on the ship's weapon placement alone, when here we already have hard evidence that the approach angle is vastly less important than the circumstances of the first attack.

Funny enough, that goes against your original statement:

Everyone DOES attack from the lower aft direction, especially in sneak attacks.

Thanks for pointing out that not everyone attacks from the lower aft direction, especially in sneak attacks.

A working Enterprise can get her shields up in 3-4 seconds. I don't think Kruge's BOP showed that kind of decloak-and-fire speed.

When you factor in the reaction time of the crew (i.e. the amount of time it takes for an officer to yell "Klingon bird of prey decloaking!" and a surprised captain to order "Shields up!" and then another officer to push the buttons to raise those shields, PLUS the 3-4 seconds it takes for the shields to activate) then you have that crucial "element of surprise" that Kruge was depending on. WITHOUT that element, it wouldn't have mattered if Enterprise fired first or raised her shields first, he would have been just as screwed.

Except when the TOS Enterprise is in working order the shields automatically raise (unless the crew chooses otherwise) when a ship decloaks to attack. This even happens in "Arsenal of Freedom".

If you're suggesting that Kruge was stupid for trying to take on the Enterprise at all... well, that's a debate for another time and place. All we know for sure is that HE thought it was going to work, and this was based on his assumption that he would not be detected before he decloaked and fired. Kruge is probably a more experienced combat officer than you are, so I must take it as a given that he knows something you don't.

Well obviously his "experience" didn't work well sneaking up on the Enterprise compared to the Grissom.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But taking out the engines never did squat to the opponent's ability to fire back in TOS.

It did in Elaan of Troyus and Wrath of Khan for the most part. But even if this assumption was somehow deeply flawed, remember that Kruge's original intent for Grissom is expressed in his explosive cry of "I wanted prisoners!" One way or the other, taking out Enterprise' engines would have left the ship sufficiently crippled that a Klingon bird of prey would be able to dictate terms of surrender.

Or so Kruge assumed, anyway.

OTOH, like him, Klaa in STV seemed confident that a single torpedo should neutralize the "Federation battle cruiser"... And again, it did. Again, though, the unshielded target was undercrewed and in a poor state of repair, and again the Klingon skipper was ignorant of anything beyond his prey being unshielded.

True, but then, the Klingons didn't seem all that surprised to have scored such a critical strike against their enemies. Both Kruge and Klaa BOTH called Enterprise back and demanded their surrender, neither even suspecting some kind of trick. This sort of tallies with Elaan of Troyus where the Klingons only demand Enterprise' surrender when their sensors show that Enterprise is in no position to fight back.

Perhaps those green BoP torps are regularly capable of completely neutralizing an enemy ship provided the prey is unshielded, and neither the previously accumulated damage nor the undercrewing in STIII or STV was actually a factor in the total collapse of defenses. In that case, the fact that the collapse mightily surprised Kirk in STIII is merely evidence that he is inexperienced in this sort of combat - he knows that a cloakable Klingon BoP exists, but he has never faced one for real.

I hadn't thought of that, but it would make sense. If nothing else it explains why both Kruge and Klaa were so confident that a single torpedo attack would do such a huge amount of damage. And actually, if this is the same type of weapon we see being fired from the Bortas 80 years later, then it explains a general trend in Klingon weaponry: they always carry one large "one-shot-kill" weapon that can knock you silly with a single shot and several smaller disruptors to finish the job.

OTOH, the Romulan weapon from Balance of Terror seemed to have this effect to, and that leads me to wonder if maybe the two ships are using the same type of weapon after all. If so, then in ST-III and ST-V, Enterprise's very SURVIVAL is something of a fluke.

If the ability of the Klingons to defeat their opponents within ten seconds of decloaking is unknown to Starfleet at that point, then routines for quickly firing back with phasers might be undeveloped, too. However, Romulan cloakships at that point already had the ability to wreak total havoc within ten seconds; Kirk is oddly confident that the cloaked ship he (barely) sees is not one of those...

But that's just it, he knows they have to decloak before they can fire, so he knows he has that five to ten second window to target the bird of prey and fire. Kruge knows this as well, but he also believes--correctly--that no Starfleet crew in existence can go from "at rest" to "Red alert! Shields up!" in less than ten seconds. Kruge lost his chance the moment Kirk pointed at the viewscreen and said "There! That distortion, see it?"

When you factor in the reaction time of the crew

...Or the possibility that things depicted in that particular STIII scene might be taking place simultaneously rather than consecutively.

But even then, they were only able to happen as quickly as they did because Kirk KNEW there was a cloaked ship stalking him. He was able to snap off a quick shot because he was ready for it and wasn't going to let Kruge sucker-punch him with his torpedoes. If it had been different--if Kirk's first knowledge of the bird of prey was the sight of it decloaking in front of him--he wouldn't have had the time to respond.

Hell, he didn't even have that much time in Wrath of Khan with the ship on yellow alert. "Their shields are going up... they're locking phasers..." and Kirk's "raise shields!" comes just a second too late.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Even though it's spoken by a Cardassian?

Does Gul Evek speak English, or are we hearing his words through a universal translator? If the latter, then whatever the Cardassian designation the translator will probably render the speach as "Type-8 phaser" so that Picard can understand what he's talking about.

Then it's the description of a Cardassian Type-8 phaser that can fit on a shuttle since it's being translated from a Cardassian. It's probably powerful in Gul Evek's perspective but may have no bearing on a Federation Type-8 phaser.

Why would Gul Evek accuse Starfleet of providing Cardassian weapons to the Maquis?

And from your own numbers it doesn't strike you odd that for a handheld rifle to the largest ship mounted phaser the delivered energy spread is only 3MW?

Actually it's 4MW, and no it doesn't strike me as odd, since the spread from a shoulder-mounted recoiless rifle to the largest shipboard artillery weapon is about 6MJ.

You are maybe under-estimating just how much destructive power one megawatt actually IS?

And saying the efficiency of a phaser system at a low 25% just to push it below 1GW...

That's an example, not a theory. Again, the point is the OUTPUT of that phaser is never stated, and since you don't know generator efficiency, transfer efficiency, emitter efficiency, thermodynamic efficiency, nor is it clear whether a phaser bank draws that power DIRECTLY or discharges from a bank of pre-charged power cells (even TNG/DS9 are surprisingly vague on this last issue) then we cannot realistically claim that a small phaser bank would have an OUTPUT of 4GW.

Does Encounters replicate the dual phaser banks of the TOS Enterprise or movie Enterprise? Hmm... No. Or allow me to fly the ship backwards? No. Or allow me to approach directly from above like in "Sacrifice of Angels"? No.

1) Those are stylistic nitpicks that are next to meaningless in the context of what we're talking about
2) Yes it DOES allow you to fly backwards, to the extent that flying backwards is even necessary (as rarely as it was done in TOS/TMP, it usually isn't).
3) The vertical approach from "Sacrifice of Angels" is pretty easily replicated as well. Really, only two scenes in all of Trek history would break the mould: the double hull breach attack from TUC and the Enterprise-D "save the day" maneuver in "All Good Things."

Anyway, you're again skirting the point. Because it presents an objective laboratory for experimentation independent of our own opinions about what should or shouldn't be possible, it would allow you to at least test your theory in something resembling trek-world conditions instead of just tossing around your assumptions as if you were a trained expert in space combat.

Moderately far in 90,000km in "The Tholian Web" and "The Changeling". 50,000-100,000km in "The Deadly Years". 100,000km in "Elaan of Troyius". 1AU (or 40AU depending on which version) in TMP.

Did they even HAVE phaser arrays in TOS? How is that relevant?

Unless they're fighting with warp drive to quickly move in and out of range or to gain a shot at a weakened shield.

Hmm...unless it's TNG. Then I suppose Encounters is very accurate to TNG then

That's what I mean. Except for the Picard Maneuver (which is rarely used anyway) it is EXTREMELY accurate to TNG, which is pretty much what we're talking about when we reference phaser arrays.

You can warp away from an incoming torpedo in Encounters?

In Campaign mode, yes, if you time it just right.

And launch a modified tracking torpedo to hit a cloaked BOP in Encounters?

The torpedoes already track their targets. If was possible to modify the rules of the game to also track cloaked targets, then yes.

Or dive into an atmosphere to pick out a following cloaked drone in Encounters?

Don't know about an atmosphere, but if you're fighting a cloaked enemy you can sometimes trick him into crashing into a planet so you can target him.

Or dive into sun's corona and set off an eruption once going into warp? Or fire a long-range torpedo to illuminate a cloaked warship in Encounters?

Isn't that one of the Campaign levels? It's been a while, but...

Or Emissary from DS9 - where a runabout tows a disabled Cardassian ship from the wormhole in Encounters?

Yep. But mainly referring to the Cardassian bombardment of DS9 and to a lesser extent the Battle of Wolf-359: starships that only maneuver in two axis--if they maneuver at all--and only ever fire one phaser beam at a time.

Or allow ship rammings in Encounters?

Yep.

Dive into a planet's atmosphere? With an unexploded torpedo. Was there an Encounters scenario that did this?

As a matter of fact, there was. Defiant in the badlands, I think. Not the unexploded torpedo part, but the whole "don't have sensors, have to muck around like a submarine" silliness.

For TOS, that's what they did. No expectation at all

But they never did in TNG. Never even tried. If that's something that makes Encounters less like TOS, I kind of agree, but that has more to do with its attempt to imitate TNG than anything else.

If you want to replicate TOS-style combat you should probably download Star Control-II. But even in THAT case, you're going to find that forward-facing weaponry isn't a liability for any starship except at EXTREMELY close range, and then only against the most nimble adversary imaginable (say, Arilou vs. Earthling cruiser).

TOS-R is just a re-hash of the slow crippled speed TNG fighting at point-blank ranges you've apparently grown to love.

I don't love it at all. I don't even LIKE it. But phaser arrays are a product of TNG, so we're stuck with TNG's depiction of space combat.

If you want to talk about how phaser arrays might be used in the TOS universe... well, that's a WHOLE different discussion.

Except when the TOS Enterprise is in working order the shields automatically raise (unless the crew chooses otherwise) when a ship decloaks to attack. This even happens in "Arsenal of Freedom".

I was just thinking that too. It's fucking stupid that they didn't KEEP that concept throughout TOS/TNG/TMP movies, but alas...

Well obviously his "experience" didn't work well sneaking up on the Enterprise compared to the Grissom.

He over-estimated the condition of his cloaking device. Probably a few months overdue on his 3000-ly oil change.

 

[Timo]

It did in Elaan of Troyus and Wrath of Khan for the most part.

Taking out the main powerplant crippled the ship, yes. But attacks against the engines played no role in taking out the main powerplant in either adventure.

(Agreed on all the other points, BTW, in case anybody was wondering; it's a bad habit of mine to omit points of agreement.)

It's fucking stupid that they didn't KEEP that concept throughout TOS/TNG/TMP movies, but alas...

In TNG, it's sort of understandable: if you raised shields every time a Romulan Warbird decloaked, you'd launch three interstellar wars per week, all of which would begin with your own annihilation. Exposing your throat is the only way to survive an encounter with those beastly things...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

But taking out the engines never did squat to the opponent's ability to fire back in TOS.

It did in Elaan of Troyus and Wrath of Khan for the most part.

In Elaan of Troyus, key internal damage to the engine system yes. But whether they would've scored the same effect from an external hit - no. Probably not without blowing the Enterprise up with a full powered hit.

In Wrath of Khan, the energizers were taken out but not the actual engines themselves and also at low power with precise hits. Did it prevent the Enterprise from firing back? No (but at greatly diminished power.)

But even if this assumption was somehow deeply flawed, remember that Kruge's original intent for Grissom is expressed in his explosive cry of "I wanted prisoners!" One way or the other, taking out Enterprise' engines would have left the ship sufficiently crippled that a Klingon bird of prey would be able to dictate terms of surrender.

The problem with comparing the Grissom to the Enterprise is that the two ships don't appear to be in the same league. The Grissom had plenty of time to get her shields up and even started to try and get away yet a single hit blew it up. The Enterprise with shields up would've shrugged that hit off.

OTOH, like him, Klaa in STV seemed confident that a single torpedo should neutralize the "Federation battle cruiser"... And again, it did. Again, though, the unshielded target was undercrewed and in a poor state of repair, and again the Klingon skipper was ignorant of anything beyond his prey being unshielded.

True, but then, the Klingons didn't seem all that surprised to have scored such a critical strike against their enemies. Both Kruge and Klaa BOTH called Enterprise back and demanded their surrender, neither even suspecting some kind of trick.

Why would either one suspect a trick when in both cases, the Enterprise still had her shields down? It takes a good 3 seconds for the shields to be fully up and that's plenty of time with disruptors to blast large chunks or outright destroy the Enterprise.

Remember that Kruge is very surprised he's not dead, the Enterprise's shields are still not up and he got a shot off without return fire.

In Klaa's cases, he tried to go for an attack on the unshielded Enterprise during shuttle landing and missed (and didn't immediately pursue... hmm.) In the second attack, everyone on the ship was so wrapped up with the planetary adventure they completely failed to take notice of the ship's warning to activate "defensive measures". There wasn't any sneaking up or surprise on Klaa's part at all.

I hadn't thought of that, but it would make sense. If nothing else it explains why both Kruge and Klaa were so confident that a single torpedo attack would do such a huge amount of damage. And actually, if this is the same type of weapon we see being fired from the Bortas 80 years later, then it explains a general trend in Klingon weaponry: they always carry one large "one-shot-kill" weapon that can knock you silly with a single shot and several smaller disruptors to finish the job.

In both cases (Klaa and Kruge) neither "green torpedo" left any external damage. It's likely then the weapon is geared for disabling attacks given the large amount of internal disruption it causes (similar to a low-powered photon torpedo from Wrath of Khan). The destruction of the Grissom was pure luck (or at least that's how the gunner saw it ).

The green torpedo used in Generations however blew chunks off the E-D. So either it can be set for higher power (further distance = safer use of high power?), or the torpedo is of a different design, or the Galaxy-class hull is weaker than the E-refit.

But that's just it, he knows they have to decloak before they can fire, so he knows he has that five to ten second window to target the bird of prey and fire. Kruge knows this as well, but he also believes--correctly--that no Starfleet crew in existence can go from "at rest" to "Red alert! Shields up!" in less than ten seconds.

That's not true. The automatic deflector system protected the Enterprise in "The Deadly Years" (surprise attack from Romulans) and "Errand of Mercy". In both cases the ship was manned but not at alert. The key point is that the shields go up without user intervention.

In TNG, it's sort of understandable: if you raised shields every time a Romulan Warbird decloaked, you'd launch three interstellar wars per week, all of which would begin with your own annihilation. Exposing your throat is the only way to survive an encounter with those beastly things...

Perhaps they have it set to only auto-raise shields when the decloaking ship isn't a Romulan or Klingon Otherwise, "The Arsenal of Freedom" would've played out very differently...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In both cases (Klaa and Kruge) neither "green torpedo" left any external damage.

Klaa's torpedo leaves a visible scar on the rim of the Enterprise after impact. It's kind of hard to notice (STV special effects sucked and it was pretty much cartooned-on to an external shot) but it's there nonetheless.

It's also unclear exactly what part of the ship was hit by Kruge, and there's ALOT of external damage already on the hull so it's hard to say what was there before and what wasn't.

But that's just it, he knows they have to decloak before they can fire, so he knows he has that five to ten second window to target the bird of prey and fire. Kruge knows this as well, but he also believes--correctly--that no Starfleet crew in existence can go from "at rest" to "Red alert! Shields up!" in less than ten seconds.

That's not true. The automatic deflector system protected the Enterprise in "The Deadly Years" (surprise attack from Romulans) and "Errand of Mercy". In both cases the ship was manned but not at alert. The key point is that the shields go up without user intervention.

Normally, yes. But evidently--probably for the reasons Timo mentioned--the automatic setting has been overridden to avoid provoking potential enemies. Considering how slowly Grissom responded to his arrival, he has good reason to believe the automatic deflector is no longer in use on Federation vessels.

Perhaps they have it set to only auto-raise shields when the decloaking ship isn't a Romulan or Klingon Otherwise, "The Arsenal of Freedom" would've played out very differently...

I kind of think that the automatic deflector is the car alarm of starships: new commanders with new vessels use it alot, but after a few months of your shields going up every time your chief engineer flushes the toilet you shut it off and stop bothering with it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Another thing you might want to consider is that the tech manual's estimate of "200" emitters for the large phaser array (I haven't been able to find it, by the way) is probably inacurate, since even the short strips on Voyager VISIBLY possess 80 to 100 individual emitter sections. For the larger arrays, the number of individual emitters could be as high as 800 to 1000.

At 5MW per emitter, those short strips would have outputs between 400 and 1000MW. The longer strip would be capable of around 5GW, which would explain Worf's alarm when the Husnock ship hits them with "500GW of particle energy!" in "The Survivors" (and that single shot obliterates their shields).