A few weapon questions.

[Crazy Eddie]

^ SFB is kind of unique in that specific aspect, but almost ALL Trek Games have two things in common:

1) A "balance" of power between subsystems (typically engines, weapons, propulsion, sometimes including "sensors" or "secondary systems" or "auxiliary power").

2) The performance of those systems being strongly dependent on how much power was budgeted to them, and in many cases (weapons in particular) the available power being temporarily consumed by their use.

STO is the clearest example: with certain weapon setups you can divert 70% of your ship's available power to weapons, and certain weapon configurations plus attack mods can deplete the entire capacity in three to five seconds, draining your available weapon power to almost nothing. Obviously, such a discharge produces a MINDBLOWING amount of damage, but for the next few seconds your weapons are firing at only a fraction of the output they had before until your weapon power levels return back to normal.

Still, this gives us a good working theory about what "divert all power to weapons" actually means in this case. And a similar thing happens when someone orders "divert auxiliary power to weapons," which is literally a cross connect between the auxiliary power bus and the weapon systems so that the "aux" power gets dumped directly into the weapons' supply.

The weird thing is, NO game incarnation of Trek has figured out yet why photon torpedoes work the way they do. They don't require weapon power to fire (although they won't fire if the weapon system is disabled... most of the time) and they don't get any more powerful or reload faster if power levels are high. On the other hand, there's no real way to launch torpedoes more than two or three at a time, it's always one by one per launch tube, like firing off a cannon that has to be reloaded by hand.

That's the reason the broadside torpedo bays in STID really bothered me at the time and still do. Not because it seemed wrong, but because the thought blasted through my brain like "So why the hell would you ever want to launch torpedoes out of the giant neck-mounted spit tube?"

 

[Timo]

It sort of takes us back to the idea that the "primary" launcher accelerates the torpedoes to FTL speeds vital for ship-to-ship action, while "swim-out" tubes are fine for short range bombardment or the delivery of weapons with autonomous propulsion systems.

Would ship-to-ship go better at the sometimes witnessed close ranges and slow relative speeds if multiple, cheap "swim-out" tubes were used in addition to the rare, expensive "primary" launchers? That is, does the fight need more torps than those the primary can comfortably pump out? Torps solve battles for good when shields are down, but they see relatively little use when shields are up. Perhaps more wouldn't be better? In that case, it would make sense to reserve the cheaper chutes for specialist ordnance and not raise costs by installing versatility there.

If the primaries are accelerators (or, say, the only launchers capable of injecting antimatter), then the bottleneck nature of the accelerator (loader) tech would match the game and onscreen behavior pretty well.

OTOH, there'd be no real harm in occasionally delivering swim-out ordnance such as probes from the primaries, as the bottleneck devices could simply swing aside and remain idle for the duration of such a launch. Dedicated swim-out chutes would only be important if the ship's mission called for massive simultaneous delivery of assets suited for those chutes. Or if the ship for other reasons was big enough to trivially embark this sort of gear...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It sort of takes us back to the idea that the "primary" launcher accelerates the torpedoes to FTL speeds vital for ship-to-ship action...

Which is an EXCELLENT idea, because that's exactly the kind of system that would make photon torpedoes really practical with Star Trek technology. You could attack other ships from beyond standoff ranges, even outside of visual range: the Enterprise detects an incoming projectile traveling at warp three, raises deflectors, moves evasive, swings around to fire its own torpedoes at the distant unidentified sensor contact that's painting them with a subspace guidance beam. Phasers don't come into play until they close in to visual range, and then primarily to shoot down the more numerous sublight torpedoes that are now being fired (and Enterprise fires back in kind). That would be an interesting sort of battle to see.

How come we never see that?

Would ship-to-ship go better at the sometimes witnessed close ranges and slow relative speeds if multiple, cheap "swim-out" tubes were used in addition to the rare, expensive "primary" launchers? That is, does the fight need more torps than those the primary can comfortably pump out?

In many cases, yes. The battle against the Klingons in "Yesterday's Enterprise" is exactly the sort of situation where this would have come in handy, as the Klingons had drastic numerical superiority but Enterprise was forced to target and engage them basically one at a time. The fight against the Borg has this feature as well, as do many situations during the Dominion War (Deep Space Nine does essentially this with its defense grid and multiple, swiveling, fast-firing launchers).

TOS example: the fight against the Romulans in "the Deadly Years" with multiple birds of prey attacking the ship. They keep cloaking and decloaking, so it's basically the situation from "Balance of Terror" only there's more than one of them, so the Enterprise will have to blanket ALL of them with saturation fire; a good use for multiple tubes if there ever was one.

The battle in Elaan of Troyus would likewise have been simplified if the Enterprise didn't need to maneuver in such a way as to bring its forward torpedo tubes to bear on a target; with broadside tubes, you can hit the Klingon ship as it approaches, and he's probably moving too fast to avoid them all on his next strafing run.

Reliant vs. Enterprise in the nebula: Khan knows Enterprise is behind him, needs to shoot back. Fires "aft torpedoes." He only has two tubes, however, and only one is loaded; single torpedo fires. Even earlier, when Reliant had taken out their shields and weapons: a bank of "swim out" tubes would allow a ship like the TMP Enterprise to around twelve torpedoes in a single volley, which (if you go by TUC) would be just enough to collapse Reliant's shields and do some serious damage besides. If Kirk thinks to use the prefix code first and then let all twelve of those torpedoes off the chain, he's got Khan dead to rights.

In extreme summary: it is an efficient way of releasing a huge weight of firepower in a very short time for relatively low energy consumption. You can use it to overwhelm an enemy's numerical or defensive advantage with it, saturate a hard-to-hit target, or just plain scare the hell out of your attacker who suddenly thinks "Wow, that's a LOT of torpedoes for a ship that size..."

Torps solve battles for good when shields are down, but they see relatively little use when shields are up.

And yet, if General Chang had not been firing his torpedoes one at a time, the Enterprise would have survived for all of ten seconds in that battle.

Or if the ship for other reasons was big enough to trivially embark this sort of gear...

To which I have only one reply:
Why does the TMP Enterprise have a "botanical garden" right beneath the warp core? In addition to being the most inconvenient place imaginable on the entire ship to put a large public green space, would that not also be the PERFECT location for a half dozen cold-launch photon torpedo tubes, seeing how that location is just a few meters from the antimatter bottles anyway?

 

[Mytran]

I've never really subscribed to that being a botanical garden - I know it was Probert's original intention, but the way of the ship is presented (not to mention subsequent starship designs) those blue glowing squares mean only one thing to me - warp drive systems! Probably the main reactor or something like that.

Sorry, Andrew

 

[Timo]

How come we never see that?

For the same reason more torps isn't better in short range fights? Perhaps torps really are almost completely impotent against shielded targets, and are fired at warp only as a desperation measure when the opponent is beyond phaser range.

However, the warp boost would be necessary for standoff attacks against distant, unshielded targets (possibly one and the same thing if they don't see the torp coming!). It's just that Starfleet doesn't do that sort of nasty evil unfair thing. Klingons do, firing torps at V'Ger from the length of a star system away...

And Starfleet finally does it in ST:ID, after having gone evil. That's with big and complex supertorps, tho, something you wouldn't want to carry to weigh down a standard exploration sortie (See Scotty. See Scotty bitch and moan. Moan moan moan.). And if you take that step, you could just as well take the logical next one and use large interstellar missiles that don't rely on starships for deployment.

The battle against the Klingons in "Yesterday's Enterprise" is exactly the sort of situation where this would have come in handy, as the Klingons had drastic numerical superiority but Enterprise was forced to target and engage them basically one at a time.

Yet the prime launcher there didn't engage the enemy with constant volleys, either. One volley does "moderate damage" and the heroes promptly give up on torps. And not because of dialogue-confirmed malfunctions in torp firing systems. Not because Klingons closed the range, either, I don't think, because Picard deliberately waited to apply the first volley, and then waited some more before starting the phaser battle.

The very poor performance of five perfectly hitting torps is helpfully consistent with the failure to use torps in other fights, or further in this one.

In extreme summary: it is an efficient way of releasing a huge weight of firepower in a very short time for relatively low energy consumption

And the two ways we can attack this summary and excuse the evidence are clear:

1) Torps aren't good weapons overall and for that reason see almost no use in DS9 where there's a real war going on. They add to the means available to exploration ships, but in TNG, they more often see non-combat use (geological or stellar manipulation and the like). And in TOS, their late entry into the game might be taken as a hint, too (even in the inaugural "Arena", torpedo use is something Kirk has to specifically suggest after phasers fail).

And yet, if General Chang had not been firing his torpedoes one at a time, the Enterprise would have survived for all of ten seconds in that battle.

Chang had all sorts of excuses for not carrying more efficient weaponry. But it does seem as if his torps eventually did do damage, which is a rare thing indeed. We could argue that the decisive factor here was Kirk's inability to fire back, allowing for a rare prolonged fight - and in order to preserve that advantage, Chang had to fire his weak torps rather than his more powerful disruptors.

Unless his special ship had left the disruptors ashore altogether. But I don't think we have to assume quite that much.

Why does the TMP Enterprise have a "botanical garden" right beneath the warp core?

Oh, does she now...?

(Oops, Mytran beat me to it!)

The location glows intense blue - an odd thing for a "botanical garden" to do, especially as we have seen such things from the inside and they always glow a warm yellow instead. The very presence of windows on such a facility also appears odd - surely they would be a major hazard for most plants, letting in types and doses of radiation they are extremely unlikely to be adapted to (as the ship is constantly moving and getting different levels of starlight, whereas most plants never move!).

Much better IMHO to assume that all blue-glowing things on starships (see also the E-D and her saucertop glow) are warp engines or other subspace technology... And as such indispensable, that is, unlikely to be displaced even by weapons systems.

Doesn't mean the belly of Kirk's ship wouldn't have had odd allocation of space. The big cargo hold with little capacity for cargo (except for outsize items to be secured in the middle by unknown means) could have been designed better. But TOS-R in turn shows ventral access to a facility capable of spitting out hundreds of probes; for all we know, these relatively small Constitution-prime starships already carry major swim-out resources for their size, and retain those in the refit even if the big ventral hatch is less clearly marked in the E-nil-refit than in the E-nil and the E-A.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

How come we never see that?

For the same reason more torps isn't better in short range fights?

What???

That's almost the only time torpedoes are ever used. They are almost NEVER used beyond phaser range; the very few times we've seen that have used torpedoes as distractions or against targets that aren't starships anyway.

Perhaps torps really are almost completely impotent against shielded targets

They're not, though. Deep Space Nine was able to destroy SEVERAL Klingon warships using torpedoes alone. Even earlier, Sisko threatens a Romulan ship that has been trolling DS9 saying "I have about fifty photon torpedoes locked on it." The Son'a torpedoes did appreciable damage to the Enterprise-E in "Insurrection"

Shields will absorb SOME of the damage of photon torpedoes, but torpedoes DO so much damage it's almost a moot point. They seem to be very effective at BYPASSING shields to do some moderate damage to the ship beneath them (which Data alludes to in "Yesterday's Enterprise") and are therefore a kind of "armor piercing" weapon that doesn't have to mess around with enemy defenses.

You have to consider that if a volley of six torpedoes did moderate damage to that bird of prey in the first attack, six more would have done more damage, twelve more would have done still more. If you spam that bird of prey with enough firepower, it doesn't MATTER if his shields are still up, something is going to give, and it'll usually give with a "boom." (incidentally this is pretty much how the Klingons destroyed the Enterprise; they didn't carefully measure their shots for effectiveness, they just poured disruptor fire into it until they broke something).

However, the warp boost would be necessary for standoff attacks against distant, unshielded targets (possibly one and the same thing if they don't see the torp coming!). It's just that Starfleet doesn't do that sort of nasty evil unfair thing.

Then why would they install that kind of system in their ships?

And Starfleet finally does it in ST:ID, after having gone evil. That's with big and complex supertorps, tho...

Which are the only torpedoes NOT being fired from the main launcher. That sort of negates the "FTL catapult" theory, which is basically dead on arrival anyway.

The very poor performance of five perfectly hitting torps is helpfully consistent with the failure to use torps in other fights, or further in this one.

And photon torpedoes from USS Phoenix insta-kill a Cardassian warship just a couple of years later. And later still, two direct hits from Defiant's quantum torpedoes completely disable a Galor class starship during Tom Riker's infamous rampage.

Later, Admiral Leyton, on learning that USS Lakota has fought Defiant to a standstill, authorizes the use of quantum torpedoes to destroy the Defiant.

1) Torps aren't good weapons overall and for that reason see almost no use in DS9 where there's a real war going on.

What are you talking about? Torpedoes are used by the truckload during the Dominion War. They seem to be the most efficient way of taking down a Jem'hadar battlebug short of crawling up on its ass and pounding it with concentrated phaser/disruptor at point blank range.

The real problem is, Star Trek tends to treat phasers and photon torpedoes as if, in terms of damage yield, they're almost interchangeable. The thing is, they're not: even if a single photon torpedo packs the same punch as a single phaser blast, the fact that torpedoes can be launched in volleys of arbitrary size means they can deliver CONSIDERABLY more damage if one chooses to use them that way. Since STID (and really, even "Way of the Warrior") we know that Starfleet CAN use them that way, so their failure to do so is... well, irritating.

Much better IMHO to assume that all blue-glowing things on starships (see also the E-D and her saucertop glow) are warp engines or other subspace technology... And as such indispensable, that is, unlikely to be displaced even by weapons systems.

That's all well and good, except the blue windows on top of the E-D were ALSO supposed to be the upper windows of the arboretum (originally).

Doesn't mean the belly of Kirk's ship wouldn't have had odd allocation of space. The big cargo hold with little capacity for cargo (except for outsize items to be secured in the middle by unknown means) could have been designed better. But TOS-R in turn shows ventral access to a facility capable of spitting out hundreds of probes; for all we know, these relatively small Constitution-prime starships already carry major swim-out resources for their size, and retain those in the refit even if the big ventral hatch is less clearly marked in the E-nil-refit than in the E-nil and the E-A.

Well, considering its proximity to the cargo bay, and considering the presence of satellite launch hatches in TOS-R, and considering the presence of an auxiliary "weapons bay" in STID, don't mind if I quietly imagine those "windows" in the bottom of the engine room are just forcefield curtains for whatever "additional" projectiles/probes/satellites/torpedoes the ship might need today.

And maybe they also carried trees at one point in time for some reason too... I'm not sure why that would be, since the quartermaster never answers my questions except to say "I am groot."

 

[blssdwlf]

The totem pole of power consumption there is interesting, as usual: the ship's life support drops down to "batteries" before propulsion does. Echoes (prechoes?) of all those VOY adventures where skimping on life support power makes a difference for propulsive or weapons power?

It depends. Going back to the weapons aspect in TOS the phasers and shields by themselves could consume all of the ship's full power output. In "Return of the Archons" their shield usage was so great they had no power for warp or impulse. And full simultaneous phaser output in "The Paradise Syndrome" wrecked the warp engines.

In TNG it is different in that their phasers at maximum power output doesn't consume all of the ship's power (The Nth Degree). Although full shields can (as in "Booby Trap"). It would seem that a GCS could fire 3 phaser arrays at full power ("BOBW", "The Survivors") when stopped and 2 arrays while moving slowly while shielded (various DS9 battles).

So even if someone were to use the argument that "nadion" particles lessen the actual energy delivered from a phaser I would argue that the ship is still firing all or a large portion of her warp power output which is still substantial. We've seen phasers deliver just "energy" to a target like in "Encounter at Farpoint" so you could just use the power output of the warp systems and factor in some inefficiencies for a baseline energy delivery.

Of course how much power a warp drive puts out is another problem

For what it's worth to this discussion: In the game Star Fleet Battles, ships have four minds of power systems: Warp Drive Engines, Impulse Drive Engines, Auxiliary Power Reactors or Auxiliary Warp Reactor (an upgrade some ship receive during the late period of the Star Fleet Universe timeline), and Batteries.

Yep, that's a great game.

 

[Timo]

That's almost the only time torpedoes are ever used. They are almost NEVER used beyond phaser range

Yeah - but my point was that even there, at short ranges, they are no good, and certainly more is not better. Torps simply suck.

They're not, though. Deep Space Nine was able to destroy SEVERAL Klingon warships using torpedoes alone. Even earlier, Sisko threatens a Romulan ship that has been trolling DS9 saying "I have about fifty photon torpedoes locked on it."

Yet it takes a starbase or a jumbo starship to get fifty torpedoes locked; filling the secondary hull flanks of a prime timeline Constitution with swim-out torpedo chutes the size of the ST:ID things would still fall short of that goal. And more damningly, it probably takes fifty torpedoes actually hitting to deliver the required lethal damage, as we have seen volleys of four to five create no damage against Klingon or Romulan ships in other engagements.

We have no idea how many hits those ancient battle cruisers took before one of them was shown blown to bits by four consecutive hits. Continuity would appear to demand ten times that many... And indeed the death scene is similar to the penetrating hit scene in ST6 where the E-A has lost her shields after a prolonged fight.

The Son'a torpedoes did appreciable damage to the Enterprise-E in "Insurrection"

The Son'a had better tech than the UFP (even if they lied about it a lot), and are allowed to outgun the heroes, be it with torps or phasers or sharp sticks; doesn't mean Starfleet should invest in large numbers of the sort of torpedoes they can create - weapons which did no real harm to the Son'a in return, and even less against the Scimitar in the next big fight.

You have to consider that if a volley of six torpedoes did moderate damage to that bird of prey in the first attack, six more would have done more damage, twelve more would have done still more.

But if this were true, why didn't War Picard fire those volleys? He had the opportunity, and he didn't use it. Instead, he appeared to accept that torpedoes were not the way to go, and waited for phaser range to be closed.

Then why would they install that kind of system in their ships?

For the ship-to-ship fights we so often see in TNG: those involving a warp chase. Even wussies who always flee would need warp launchers for that.

It's just that a non-wussy would make alternate military use of the system. Starfleet doesn't. (It possibly makes alternate scientific use, by launching long range probes, but for some reason we never see this happen. Instead, all probes are launched at low sublight and do their own accelerating.)

Which are the only torpedoes NOT being fired from the main launcher.

What do you mean? Only one type of torp, the standard photon torpedo, is fired by the main launcher AFAWK. Quantum torps (arguably sublight only) get their own special tubes.

And photon torpedoes from USS Phoenix insta-kill a Cardassian warship just a couple of years later.

And? Cardassians are established as the chief weaklings of the galaxy earlier in this very episode. They can't give worth damn, and they can't take worth damn. Should Starfleet up-torp their ships against this particular not-quite-foe? Well, clearly not!

Of course, a warship of the same design shrugs off four torps in "Parallels", just so that we remember that shape matters not - what tech you pack is more important. And Cardassians get their ships shipshape later on, with Dominion help. At that point, nobody is foolish enough to go against them with torpedoes any more...

And later still, two direct hits from Defiant's quantum torpedoes completely disable a Galor class starship during Tom Riker's infamous rampage.

In other words, more would be unnecessary. (In yet other words, we see no structural damage...)

But quantum torps are their own weird little side story. We really don't see them achieve kills against anybody who isn't already mortally wounded, like the Borg Sphere or the Defiant.

What are you talking about? Torpedoes are used by the truckload during the Dominion War. They seem to be the most efficient way of taking down a Jem'hadar battlebug short of crawling up on its ass and pounding it with concentrated phaser/disruptor at point blank range.

What are you talking about? The only thing firing torps in the entire war is the space station. Save for a precious few examples of starships firing at fixed targets in "Tears of the Prophets", that is. The Defiant kills with her phaser cannon; other starships... don't.

The real problem is, Star Trek tends to treat phasers and photon torpedoes as if, in terms of damage yield, they're almost interchangeable. The thing is, they're not: even if a single photon torpedo packs the same punch as a single phaser blast

Why should we think a torp packs anywhere near that sort of punch? Torps see extremely little use in the 24th century, and typically even volleys of them are only good for distraction.

Yet we know for a dialogue fact that the yield is user-selectable. So there's little to complain about torps that split small moons - once we argue that this setting is not preferable overall. Which is an easy argument to make, as big yield means lots of antimatter aboard, meaning less antimatter for better uses, and if the shot misses, that was a lot of antimatter wasted. So the smart commander fires at low yield until scoring, among his many misses, enough hits to slow down the enemy and improve the odds of the big one actually hitting something.

This is a pretty consistent description of the photon torpedo: it may have superior range, but it often misses (while phasers at their optimal range never do), so it's either a spray-and-pray weapon (in which case low yield is selected) or something to deliver mercy/demolition shots with (in which case high yield is selected).

This even covers the inconsistencies of TOS: Kirk often missed with torpedoes, but when he did hit, he expected big results and sometimes got those. So even something as schizophrenic as "The Changeling" can still remain internally consistent: a "volley" worth ninety of "volley torps" is different from a hit with an "aimed torp".

Well, considering its proximity to the cargo bay, and considering the presence of satellite launch hatches in TOS-R, and considering the presence of an auxiliary "weapons bay" in STID, don't mind if I quietly imagine those "windows" in the bottom of the engine room are just forcefield curtains for whatever "additional" projectiles/probes/satellites/torpedoes the ship might need today.

Since the introduction of those "windows" coincides with the introduction of big forcefield doors and almost coincides with the association of blue glow with forcefields, this sounds like an excellent idea!

I'd still put something less volatile than torps behind "new and untested" door tech. Perhaps this is more the equivalent of that side door they used for launching Mudd's ship?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And more damningly, it probably takes fifty torpedoes actually hitting to deliver the required lethal damage,

Canonically, it took a burst of phaser fire an six photon torpedoes to completely destroy the Ferengi ship at the Battle of Maxia. One or two photon torpedoes will completely screw up a Klingon bird of prey. Voyager (cringe) was able to induce critical existence failure with just a few photon torpedoes against opponents that otherwise laughed at phaser fire. And between TOS and DS9 it consistently takes four to six photon torpedoes to cripple or destroy a K'tinga.

We have no idea how many hits those ancient battle cruisers took before one of them was shown blown to bits by four consecutive hits. Continuity would appear to demand ten times that many...

Elaan of Troyus would suggest it requires two, if that.

But if this were true, why didn't War Picard fire those volleys? He had the opportunity, and he didn't use it.

He had the opportunity to do ALOT of things he didn't do, and Enterprise getting its ass kicked was the result.

Of course, this late in the war its entirely possible that those were the Enterprise's very last torpedoes and Picard was trying to take the initiative by softening up the lead ship in the opening volley. That lead ship is likely the same one that was later destroyed by phaser fire.

What do you mean? Only one type of torp, the standard photon torpedo, is fired by the main launcher AFAWK. Quantum torps (arguably sublight only) get their own special tubes.

The torpedoes from STID were not quantum torpedoes. Nor are they described as being capable of FTL, only "long range."

So firing long range torpedoes does not require the main launcher; that obviously isn't its purpose.

In other words, more would be unnecessary.

Unless he wanted to finish it off, in which case two more would have done it. This, again, is consistent with Elaan of Troyus where it takes just a couple of torpedoes to K.O. a Klingon D-7.

What are you talking about? The only thing firing torps in the entire war is the space station.

Also, the Defiant, USS Centaur, the Excelsiors at the Battle of Chin'toka, the attack fighters in "Sacrifice of Angels", the Valiant, just off the top of my head. Torpedoes get quite a bit of action during the war, and Defiant and Valiant both achieve insta-kills against Jem'hadar battlebugs using torpedoes alone

Why should we think a torp packs anywhere near that sort of punch? Torps see extremely little use in the 24th century

Because if they were useless -- or even less powerful than phasers, for that matter -- they wouldn't still be USING them.

I'd still put something less volatile than torps behind "new and untested" door tech.

Why? Photon torpedoes are probably the one thing on the entire ship that wouldn't mind the sudden explosive decompression. Scientific instruments and probes have all that sensitive optics and equipment that might get screwed up otherwise.