Don't know about better armor, but decidedly faster and undeniably better weapons (given the NX class were the first ships to be fitted out with photonic torpedoes and phase cannons). It's possible that the phase cannons were mainly installed because "normal" starship armaments--say, bomb-pumped x-ray lasers or tactical nukes--would seem too provocative for a mission of exploration, but that the latter weaponry proved more effective in the long run anyway.
In that sense, NX-01's spatial torpedoes would be the Trek equivalent of the torpedo plane; the photonic torpedoes, more like dive bombers.
Spatial and Photonic Torpedoes do not go on combat air patrols or are sent out on a general heading to blindly look for a fleet of ships to attack and then return home.
And phasers do not detonate large sacks of cordite to propel metallic projectiles on ballistic trajectories.
You
do know what an "analogy" is, right?
I'd imagine if the TOS-verse was part of ENT-TNG-verse that the "photonic" torpedo and "phase cannon" were the primitive atomic weapons.
There's no indication that EITHER weapon utilizes atomic energy as part of their operating principles. Photonic torpedoes are explicitly referred to as "antimatter warheads" in "the expanse."
You say VFX errors and I say gun ports
You already conceded the ports aren't VISIBLE, so you're not really counting anything other than weapons emission locations.
Sure. Or 3 phase cannons in the beginning that shuffled around
And what in the history of the show gives any credence to the idea that phase cannons are capable of "shuffling around" inside the ship?
and later all 14 are phase cannons
That has, again, never been established canonically.
Well, the Enterprise was considered a cruiser or heavy cruiser or as the Klingons like to call it a Battlecruiser
Which by YOUR analogy would suggest that larger (at least twice as large) phaser weapons should exist on some vessel or another in the same time period, and also that a number of SMALLER phaser weapons should also exist somewhere on the Enterprise.
I find it frankly baffling that you are suggesting the Battleship Gun analogy for the Enterprise-D despite the fact that the battleships you're comparing it to ALSO had a mix of large and small guns and the one you've mentioned most explicitly--the Iowa class--had six of its main guns forward and only three aft. If we were following your analogy, the smaller arrays would HAVE to be weaker for it to make any sense at all.
Most early BB and a few WW2 BB had torpedo armament.
Actually, a handful (to my knowledge, six to ten) pre-dreadnaught battleships were equipped with a SINGLE torpedo tube in the bow, meant to be fired at other battleships at extremely close range in situations where ramming would normally be called for but wouldn't be effective due to the newer ships' heavier armor.
Torpedoes fell out of favor for BB during WW2 when they couldn't keep up with the BB gun's range...
Actually they fell out of favor in WWI when the Dreadnaught was introduced and it was clear that the battleships were way too large and too bulky to take advantage of torpedoes. Not so for the smaller motor torpedo boats and -- in short order -- attack aircraft that could maneuver past the big battleship guns and get into torpedo range.
However, in Star Trek the phaser guns and photon torpedoes stay pretty much at parity.
Entirely UNLIKE guns and torpedoes, which is what breaks your analogy. In modern times, only guided missiles (anti air/anti-ship missiles) have really maintained that parity while naval gunnery began its decline into irrelevance by the Battle of Jutland. Guns kept getting larger and larger, but the largest naval weapons in the world wound up never being used in anger against another battleship and most of the battleship kills of WW2 wound up being attributed to torpedoes or air-delivered bombs.
In contrast, the very few ship-to-ship kills of the modern age have been attributed to antishipping missiles like the Harpoon or dual-purpose missiles like the Standard.
Like I said, there hasn't been any major change in technology or some kind of game changer that moves away from guns and torpedoes.
While there HAS in the modern age, and that game changer was on its way up before WW-I even started. Which means comparing Enterprise-D's phaser arrays to an Iowa's gun turrets is basically a nonstarter since, unlike the Iowa class, the Enterprise-D actually DOES go into battle against other ships.
The only game changer would really be the conversion from whatever it was that Starfleet originally used to phase/plasma cannons and torpedoes. That would be the NEW paradigm, which would explain why it lasted for hundreds of years and was never superseded by anything new.
What you're describing are improvements not significant changes that alter how ships fight.
Exactly. By the time the Iowa class' guns went into service, they were already part of the OLD paradigm and no other improvements were made for nearly sixty years. Contrast with torpedoes, air power and guided missiles which have been steadily improving for more than a century now and are getting more advanced all the time (the newer ones can shoot down satellites now).
Which still doesn't mean that ships in DS9 can't switch to conformal shields.
If Yesterday's Enterprise took place during DS9's run, that would mean something.
In "Generations" how long did it take for the E-D to return fire on the BOP after the first torpedo hit? I'll give you a hint and it is more than 3 seconds. And what else did the E-D do? Turn its back towards the BOP and the BOP stayed exactly behind the E-D for 2 minutes.
During which time the Enterprise-D never fired back at the Bird of Prey...
That's just a very confusing point if you want to stick with it. Did Riker intentionally feed his blind spot to the Klingons or did he just somehow forget to shoot back for two minutes?
And if you live in a universe where seasoned starfleet officers routinely perform this ineptly, how much benefit are you really going to get from a 30 meter blind spot under his nacelle pylons? You'd probably get the same benefit by beaming a strongly-worded note onto their bridge just before you open fire.
Which goes to the phaser strips on the E-D being of equal power as it makes no difference which way the E-D is facing and/or which way the enemy is attacking from.
But it DOES make a difference. We already established that from looking at TSFS, remember? Kruge decloaked directly in front of Enterprise's torpedo launchers when he should have known that the ship wasn't equipped with aft torpedoes. Which means when it DOES make a difference, no one seems to care.
You have suggested that they
ought to care, because avoiding the firing arcs of the ship's most powerful weapons gives a net tactical advantage. Clearly it DOESN'T, as the attacker behavior vis a vis torpedo launchers doesn't bear this out either.
You've already pointed out "The Enemy". Anytime a cloaked ship sneaks up on the E-D (or the Defiant sneaking around). That's controlling the direction of their choosing for the initial attack.
The Romulans DIDN'T attack in "The Enemy," and Defiant, despite its sneaking around, has never been known to
prefer an attack direction when it decloaks and attack. In the latter case, they literally fly directly towards the combat area and decloak when they get there.
And in "Generations" once Troi turned the ship around to try and break orbit the BOP had no trouble in staying in the back.
"Staying behind" and "staying in a 30 meter cone below and aft of the ship" are not the same thing. I can follow a car on a motorcycle for hours, but staying in the blindspot of his mirrors would take some doing, especially if I'm following from a distance.
Why should I prove your argument? All I'm doing is pointing out that no one tries to minimize return phaser fire from allegedly weaker (shorter) phaser strips.
And I'm pointing out that we have no reason to expect they WOULD. They don't seem all that interested in avoiding the torpedo launchers either.
More significantly, Klingons and Jem'hadar don't show a huge interest in avoiding the primary weapon arcs of enemy ships either, even when they know for a fact that those weapons point directly forward. Hence a number of ships are shown flying directly in front of the Defiant and attacking head to head and being blown to smitherines; likewise, the Duras ships that attack Bortas conveniently position themselves within the forward disruptor's firing arc for no particular reason.
Where the E-D (or Galaxy-class) is attempting to blow something up?
Yes. In Yesterday's Enterprise they fire almost exclusively from the dorsal array throughout the episode. They fire from the ventral array only once, followed by a shot from the dorsal array that destroys one of the Klingon ships.
In Q-who they use the ventral strip once, dorsal strip twice. Same again in Best of Both Worlds where they never fire the ventral phaser strip
at any time during the episode. There's also Unification, where Enterprise uses the dorsal phaser array and completely destroys the Ferengi pirate.
Not much love for the ventral array except for "Arsenal of Freedom" and "Conundrum," both times against small highly maneuverable targets.
Odyssey attacking Jem'hedar ships - used saucer ventral phaser strip.
Odyssey didn't have much choice in the matter; the Jem'hadar
literally flew circles around it and attacked from wherever they pleased.
In order to make up the length of the saucer dorsal array you would need to add together the saucer ventral array+engineering hull ventral array+warp pylon lateral arrays and the small strips in the back.
You wouldn't need the small strips on the back; the ventral array is NOT that much shorter (the secondary hull array almost makes up the difference by itself).
If all of those arrays had equal output power then by your own logic most vessels would be safer attacking from the DORSAL axis where only three arrays could be directed at them instead of the six arrays on the ventral side.
Check the ship again. Attack from the top and you face 5 strips...[/quote]
There are two angles where only the main saucer array and the two smaller ones on the neck have clearance. Not so for the ventral axis, where no matter where you attack from if you're below the angle of the upper array you're within range of six other arrays below.
But that again doesn't explain why the Enterprise-D turns its dorsal side to its enemies more often than not (even to the Borg, strangely enough) when by your logic they should turn their belly instead.
But that's just a rhetorical question and let's not forget the fact that your logic is fundamentally flawed. On the one hand, there's this pennywise assumption of yours that anyone should actually CARE where the enemy's weapons are weakest when it doesn't seem to make a difference even when such a weakness clearly exists; even when it DOES exist, no one ever bothers to exploit it. On the other hand, there's your pound-foolish assumption that reaction time isn't a factor in this and that shield coverage is less important than phaser coverage; in the first place you're better off attacking from a SENSOR blind spot (e.g. with the sun to your back or else simply getting into attack position quickly before you get detected) and in the second place, only attacking from a single direction lets him concentrate his shields in a single direction while he leans slightly over and nails you anyway.
And all of THAT ignores the fact that starships don't fight the way you think they do, nor do starship tactics work the way you think they do. Battles are not fought in seconds and moments; apparently the captains of starships have tens of seconds to sit there and chitchat with their engineers and first officers over what to do next in between giving orders, which means even if you decloak right in his blind spot, he'll probably just turn and face you and you get to listen to your tactical officer look at his screen and announce, "He has turned his bow thirty degrees starboard! We are no longer within their blind spot, Captain... and now he's charging weapons!"
