A few weapon questions.
- Thread starter JoeRalat
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They mentioned different "yields" of photon torpedoes, so clearly they were as powerful as they wanted them to be.
Probably the same with phasers, as powerful as they need to be.
I'm not sure they ever stated the width of the beam though.
Probably the same with phasers, as powerful as they need to be.
I'm not sure they ever stated the width of the beam though.
Various episodes imply that they can vary how powerful a torpedeo load is, so usually they might be used at 100% of power but other times only 40%.
From Redemption, Part II
Reconfigure the photon torpedo warhead yields. Set for a high-energy burst at level six.
As for Phasers don't see why they can't have variable settings just like the hand phasers and in TOS didn't we even see the ships phasers set for stun?
From Redemption, Part II
Reconfigure the photon torpedo warhead yields. Set for a high-energy burst at level six.
As for Phasers don't see why they can't have variable settings just like the hand phasers and in TOS didn't we even see the ships phasers set for stun?
Don't forget that in the TOS Tv Series episode A Piece of the Action the Ships phasers were set to Stun and Stunned a City Block.
We have seen that the angle of the beam coming from a hand phaser can be adjusted from very narrow to very wide. We don't know if "kill" setting phasers mounted on starships can be spread much, though: the stun beam covered the area of a city block, but all the other beams fired from orbit against ground targets (say, Vaal in "The Apple" or Apollo's temple in "Who Mourns") have been very thin, just a few feet across at most.
Then again, there'd have been no point in using wider beams even if those were available and had the same destructive power. Our heroes were lurking nearby in both cases!
We have seen torpedo blast radii from orbit, meaning they can be pretty damn big! Sometimes a single blast covers almost a tenth of the visible disc of the target planet; that's basically dropping a single bomb in Europe and doing away with that subcontinent. Although we don't really know what this visible blast is: a harmless upper atmosphere light show unrelated to the damage wrought at Ground Zero and slowly propagating from there, or a hyperspeed wavefront of utter destruction sweeping entire continents clean of civilization?
Suffice to say, everything points to torpedoes being capable of destroying whole planetary surfaces: the heroes and villains basically say as much, even if we seldom actually see such extensive damage. But simultaneously, a torpedo can deliver a love pat, a precision kaboom that does no harm to people or structures just a few meters away (such as in ST5:TFF or VOY "Alliances"). That's better going than any weapon so far devised in reality, but it sounds quite practicable when one uses the Trek variety of antimatter for the kaboom ingredient.
Timo Saloniemi
Then again, there'd have been no point in using wider beams even if those were available and had the same destructive power. Our heroes were lurking nearby in both cases!
We have seen torpedo blast radii from orbit, meaning they can be pretty damn big! Sometimes a single blast covers almost a tenth of the visible disc of the target planet; that's basically dropping a single bomb in Europe and doing away with that subcontinent. Although we don't really know what this visible blast is: a harmless upper atmosphere light show unrelated to the damage wrought at Ground Zero and slowly propagating from there, or a hyperspeed wavefront of utter destruction sweeping entire continents clean of civilization?
Suffice to say, everything points to torpedoes being capable of destroying whole planetary surfaces: the heroes and villains basically say as much, even if we seldom actually see such extensive damage. But simultaneously, a torpedo can deliver a love pat, a precision kaboom that does no harm to people or structures just a few meters away (such as in ST5:TFF or VOY "Alliances"). That's better going than any weapon so far devised in reality, but it sounds quite practicable when one uses the Trek variety of antimatter for the kaboom ingredient.
Timo Saloniemi
The hand units were capable of "wide angle stun", and as already said above, there is at least one case of some thing similar being done by the ship mounted versions. It seems like the beam can be varied by purpose, from narrow drilling beam to wide angle.
The torpedoes have variable yields. I don't know what the maximum is in terms of kilotons, Megatons or terratons. On the high end, we could imagine an antimatter warhead of at least 100s of megatons.
The torpedoes have variable yields. I don't know what the maximum is in terms of kilotons, Megatons or terratons. On the high end, we could imagine an antimatter warhead of at least 100s of megatons.
No doubt there were all sorts of limitations. One would expect the beam to only stun the people on the streets, with the houses providing protection for the rest. And Kirk was lucky that all his targets were strong and healthy men: doing this at a city where everybody wasn't LARPing "burly gangsters" would probably have resulted in quite a few deaths, as we know that excess stun can kill.
Nevertheless, we have now seen that the capability exists. Or at least existed for that ship. What we haven't seen is widebeam on "kill"...
Timo Saloniemi
Nevertheless, we have now seen that the capability exists. Or at least existed for that ship. What we haven't seen is widebeam on "kill"...
Timo Saloniemi
Wouldn't fanning the beam make it less powerful?
This we don't know. We have little idea of how the phaser delivers its "destructive energies" (very much for a lack of a better term!) to the target. Do they propagate from the emitter like electromagnetic waves, weakening with distance and delivering less energy if spread out? Do they act like cannon shells instead, suffering no loss over distance but still delivering less death per square inch if spread at the target? Or is their mechanism completely different, independent of the above limitations?
One way to treat the phaser is to consider it a weaponized transporter. It makes stuff disappear at a distance, after all, just like a transporter turns people and objects into "phased matter". The transporter seems to work in terms of points A and B without the realspace distance between them being a factor. Weaponized phase technologies, going for "brute force", might "leak" along that distance, as evidenced by the glowing beam, and this would suggest reduced power with increased distance. But spreading out the destructive effect might not lessen it, as it wouldn't need to be considered a warload of fixed magnitude, a package of energy.
When used at personnel, the phaser and the transporter alike demonstrate an effect that starts out small, then creeps along the victim until consuming him. This could well be a chain reaction of some sort where the "energy" of destruction does not come from the beam but from the victim or the environment; the phaser just plants the "seed". A widespread beam then wouldn't be any less harmful per square inch, as long as the minimum, threshold level of "seed" was deployed at each square inch.
Timo Saloniemi
I believe the Enterprise D phasers had the term "collimator" associated with them, so those were gathering the energy into a narrower, more powerful beam.
This might suppose that a wider, less focused beam is less powerful.
This might suppose that a wider, less focused beam is less powerful.
Or then collimating takes place in the process that creates the phaser energies or rapid nadions or whatnot and has nothing to do with the focusing of the beam. A bit like a very sharp needlepoint is a vital component in handguns, but the way handguns do harm is utterly unrelated to pricking with needles.
The phaser is basically just a generic death ray, but with so many small eccentricities that it can be argued to behave differently from anything we would expect - i.e. it is not limited by our preconceptions, only by our imaginations. No, it can't be limited by the rules of laser beams, because it travels at the speed of a paintball and glows in vacuum. No, it can't be limited by the rules of jets of metal from machine gun barrels, either, because of how it behaves when steered. So does it weaken across distance or when spread? Well, perhaps. Perhaps not. The key question here is "Which would be more interesting?".
Timo Saloniemi
The phaser is basically just a generic death ray, but with so many small eccentricities that it can be argued to behave differently from anything we would expect - i.e. it is not limited by our preconceptions, only by our imaginations. No, it can't be limited by the rules of laser beams, because it travels at the speed of a paintball and glows in vacuum. No, it can't be limited by the rules of jets of metal from machine gun barrels, either, because of how it behaves when steered. So does it weaken across distance or when spread? Well, perhaps. Perhaps not. The key question here is "Which would be more interesting?".
Timo Saloniemi
With the shields available in the Trek universe, I have to wonder if much of the familiar military hardware was rendered useless.
I imagine cities being protected with shields, rendering useless artillery, tanks, etc. Starships would be large enough to carry effective weapons, and small arms might persist.
I imagine cities being protected with shields, rendering useless artillery, tanks, etc. Starships would be large enough to carry effective weapons, and small arms might persist.
I don't believe there's evidence to support your contention here. ``I suggest you set one of our phaser banks on a strong stun position'' // ``Aye, sir'' doesn't suggest that any special effort has to be made.
Yes - you are lowering the flux.
A collimator/colliminator/Columnator (I think the first spelling is the accepted) doesn't gather energy - but otherwise you are right, it narrows or even polarizes an energy field into a beam. To concentrate or gather energy you need a lens (which doesn't have to be glass).
Since phasers are subatomic particle/energy weapons, you would need the source, focused (likely by a magnetic lens) through an annular, then focused again into a collimator to make a beam. SO yes - you can change the beam size by changing the collimater....BUT the size is limited to the slit size of the collimator - so 1 block? not that way. Something else is involved.
EDIT: Just realized that removing the collimator would possibly do the trick - so maybe you are kinda on to something
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There is a Voyager episode where the Doctor appears in space outside the ship, and Voyager fires a phaser past him. I believe the beam has 4m diameter. In the Voy episode where they arrive in 1996 Earth, the shuttle's phaser has about a 30cm diameter. Hand phaser beams have a roughly 4cm diameter.
However, the diameter is really arbitrary given smaller phasers can do wide beam shots, and TOS:"A Piece of the Action" has the city block diameter shot. As the beam gets wider it should also get shorter, just as with hand phasers, so the limit as to how wide the beam can be is limited by what a safe proximity is to a target. The "Action" shot was from orbit, but that could be anywhere from 100 km to 100,000 km away.
Photon torpedo blast radius depends on yield, and I've seen a yield of over 100 MT derived from an episode. But, there are also statements which require upwards of gigatons.
You can see the blast effects using the link below.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
However, the diameter is really arbitrary given smaller phasers can do wide beam shots, and TOS:"A Piece of the Action" has the city block diameter shot. As the beam gets wider it should also get shorter, just as with hand phasers, so the limit as to how wide the beam can be is limited by what a safe proximity is to a target. The "Action" shot was from orbit, but that could be anywhere from 100 km to 100,000 km away.
Photon torpedo blast radius depends on yield, and I've seen a yield of over 100 MT derived from an episode. But, there are also statements which require upwards of gigatons.
You can see the blast effects using the link below.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
He was said to have wiped out thousands, but he did it by draining at least two power packs. That's still extremely impressive. 2,000 divided 2 or 3 times, that's a low end of 1,000 per pack to 667 per pack, the high end of 19,000 dead would be 9500 to 6334 per pack. I used 2,000 to 19,000 because anything less or more would be, strictly speaking, hundreds or tens of thousands.
Kirk calls for the wide stun shot from the ship, and it just happens within seconds. So stunning and wide beam both cannot be special, they have to be something just waiting to be used.
