Combat at Warp Speed

[Robert Bruce Scott]

Okay - science-fiction writers all know, especially when writing space operas about human-like aliens with similar technology to our own - like Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Babylon 5... We all know we're actually writing fantasy much more than science fiction. Klingons are no more likely to exist than Orcs. Vulcans are no more likely than Elves.

That said, let's at least try to not egregiously violate the laws of physics... So how do you have space ship battles when traveling faster than the speed of light?

I'm going to stick to Star Trek, but this discussion could easily apply to other franchises or to your original space-opera story. And I'm going to make a ton of assumptions about Trek tech - based, you must understand, on a lifetime of viewing the various series, starting with watching reruns of the original series with my parents in the early 1970's. Family of nerds - it runs in my blood.

Okay - so when traveling at warp, the ship is at rest. It's not moving. It's stationary within its warp bubble. Space is the thing that is moving, which is how they get around relativity. There are all kinds of problems with this idea (starting with deceleration, which would destroy any solar system as soon as the ship arrives) but let's set that aside. Anything too problematic that makes the format impossible, we'll just take for granted there's a technobabble explanation that we don't really need to get into.

So phasers and disruptors are light energy. What happens when you fire them while traveling at, let's say, using the example in the screen capture above, warp 5? Well, Einstein actually thought about this (in the form of the light from a car's headlamps assuming the car is traveling close to the speed of light) so let's extrapolate. The phaser energy works normally within the warp bubble. But the moment it exits the warp bubble it enters relative space.

So if you fire your forward phaser cannon you would immediately pass through your own phaser's discharge. Sounds like a job for a failsafe feature. No shooting forward phasers while traveling at warp. But what about lateral phasers? Or rear guns? No safety issues there, but if you're shooting at another ship traveling at warp, you're into a skeet shooting problem. You have to calculate the light energy from your gun to shoot at where the enemy ship is GOING to be by the time your exceptionally slow phaser discharge gets there.

This means that the best place to be is in front of your enemy. Fire your rear facing phaser cannon and before they can even think - WHAM - they run right through the discharge. To realistically portray lateral combat, it would require curving lines of light energy (because our POV is within the warp bubble). Your enemy is next to you. You shoot at where they're going to be. That means you're shooting almost forward so that the energy, traveling outside the warp bubble, arrives at the enemy ship - well - actually - the enemy ship runs into that energy.

Okay - but what about photon torpedoes? I think the common error is to think that the "photon" in photon torpedoes has something to do with the payload. It makes more sense to me (again from watching the series) to assume that the "photon" (or in STV, "quantum") refers to the torpedo's propulsion system, allowing it to move at warp. Can it borrow warp energy from the ship firing it?

No. Once the torpedo exits the warp shell, it is no longer traveling at warp. Unless its propulsion system can get it to warp. Well, why not? We've seen small probes traveling at very high warp speeds (in STNG, think Ambassador K'Ehleyr.) So it makes more sense, when traveling at warp speed, to use a weapon that can also travel at warp speed.

But this now causes a problem for relative space combat (when NOT traveling at warp.) How do you defend your ship, in relative space, while fighting another ship, in relative space, from a weapon that moves at warp? (And there's the power of the torpedo - it doesn't need an explosive device. If it's traveling near light speed (not to mention faster than light) its mass alone is sufficient to deliver a whollup that would give a hydrogen bomb penis envy.)

Which now causes a problem for all out warfare. If someone wants to end all life on your planet, a few of those babies would definitely do the trick. Now you have to consider the danger of having enough of those extremely energetic weapons under the command of enough ship captains, all of them subject to the PTSD that universe-ending space-opera delivers every week. Doesn't even take a captain. A jilted quartermaster could probably figure out how to deliver civilization-ending payloads to their own planet over a love-affair gone horribly wrong.

And that's where planetary defense grids come in... Set to shoot down anything like a photon torpedo or a big fat old phaser beam before it gets anywhere near your homeworld. That's going to take a MAJOR investment in heavily armed satellites. Which creates a new problem... Who do you put in charge of THAT kind of firepower? SKYNET???

 

[Timo]

A couple of possibly relevant distinctions:

No, phasers are not "light energy" as far as we can tell. Nobody in Trek says they would be, and phaser beams sure don't behave much like light in any of their appearances. At the very least, we know for certain that they do not travel at the speed of light, since we see the contrary happen every time - the beam moves across the picture frame at varying speeds, all discernible by the eye, the constant being the time it takes for the beam to cross the frame (quite independently of how many centimeters of ligthseconds the frame putatively covers).

All sorts of energies leave a starship at high FTL speeds, enabling the ship to communicate and to sense her surroundings. That phasers would do the same sounds like a safe default assumption. While the glow of a phaser beam may exist in real space, the destructive energies are likely to travel in some other realm altogether, along with all that other stuff we know travels there.'

So phasers are great for warp speed battles, and indeed used almost exclusively for that purpose in TOS. They also see warp action in ENT, although in the inaugural warp firefight in "Fallen Hero", our heroes get a nasty surprise when their phaser gun doesn't comply - they fully expected it to work fine at warp, and now have to spend a bit of plot time to sort out the problem. It's smooth sailing/firing thereafter.

TOS movies and TNG then confuse the picture somewhat: the movie VFX artists hate drawing phaser beams, and resort exclusively to the prettier torpedoes for all movies but the second one. And in TNG, it's damned expensive still to draw a phaser beam or a warp-streaking starfield - and doing both simultaneously apparently gets the VFX folks a reprimand from Accounting, so Picard never fires his phasers at warp. But every show thereafter shows phasers being very nifty at FTL engagements.

As for kinetic energy, apparently it ceases to be a factor in Star Trek, what with their inertia-negating technology. With a tractor beam, one can lift heavy loads without suffering any Newtonian feedback (Wes Crusher yanking a heavy-looking chair into the air over a long momentum arm with the dubious strength of his thin wrists, small craft bringing speeding larger ones to a grinding halt, etc). Shields are entitled to doing even better, and apparently do. So the payload of the FTL projectile is of paramount importance.

But those payloads can easily vary from Armageddon-level lethal to Alastair Reynolds -level sadistic-lethal. So stopping every single incoming torpedo is a necessary condition for a planetary defense. Yet before PIC, we never hear of weapons-proof shields that would surround an entire planet; local shielding is sometimes mentioned, but seldom seen. So what's stopping an enemy from melting the US mainland to magma so that the forcefield bubble over (under?) San Francisco slowly sinks into that and everybody at SFHQ perishes anyway?

Apparently, shooting back is: it still takes finite time to dish out destruction of that sort with phasers and most types of projectile warheads. But that doesn't work against single-shot-kills warheads like Genesis. So do planets have Olympic-level sharpshooting CIWS in addition to local shielding? Or is the continuing existence of capital planets only due to the same reason cities today continue to exist despite there being no protection against nuclear missiles whatsoever?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Okay - so when traveling at warp, the ship is at rest. It's not moving. It's stationary within its warp bubble. Space is the thing that is moving, which is how they get around relativity. There are all kinds of problems with this idea (starting with deceleration, which would destroy any solar system as soon as the ship arrives) but let's set that aside. Anything too problematic that makes the format impossible, we'll just take for granted there's a technobabble explanation that we don't really need to get into.

Let's just stick with what's shown on screen, decelerating from Warp doesn't do squat in terms of immediate destruction to any Star System, it's been shown countless times and let's go with that since it's on-screen canon. The Warp Bubbles are obviously very local to the immediate volume of space around the vessel and space is incredibly large.

Anything short of dropping out of warp right into a planetary object's position where it's physical mass exists, you should be fine by dropping out into coordinates where empty space is at.

So phasers and disruptors are light energy. What happens when you fire them while traveling at, let's say, using the example in the screen capture above, warp 5? Well, Einstein actually thought about this (in the form of the light from a car's headlamps assuming the car is traveling close to the speed of light) so let's extrapolate. The phaser energy works normally within the warp bubble. But the moment it exits the warp bubble it enters relative space.

Phasers & Disruptors aren't "Light Based Energy", they're a type of particle weapon that happens to emit light so that we can see them traveling. With enough energy outputted by the emitters, I'm talking "StarShip / Shuttle" level of power output, they can travel at the speed of light.

At a small arms level, they're barely better than modern day FireArms in terms of projectile speeds, in some cases they're actually worse in terms of speed given how fast we see them travel on screen (Seriously AirSoft or PaintBall speeds), but the damage output is ALOT higher than your typical bullets, and the beam energy or bolts are pretty flexible in what they can do compared to bullets.

So if you fire your forward phaser cannon you would immediately pass through your own phaser's discharge. Sounds like a job for a failsafe feature. No shooting forward phasers while traveling at warp. But what about lateral phasers? Or rear guns? No safety issues there, but if you're shooting at another ship traveling at warp, you're into a skeet shooting problem. You have to calculate the light energy from your gun to shoot at where the enemy ship is GOING to be by the time your exceptionally slow phaser discharge gets there.

This means that the best place to be is in front of your enemy. Fire your rear facing phaser cannon and before they can even think - WHAM - they run right through the discharge. To realistically portray lateral combat, it would require curving lines of light energy (because our POV is within the warp bubble). Your enemy is next to you. You shoot at where they're going to be. That means you're shooting almost forward so that the energy, traveling outside the warp bubble, arrives at the enemy ship - well - actually - the enemy ship runs into that energy.

IMO, if your vessel is at Warp and is really close to your target, then your Warp Fields are close enough that they can merge with the ship you want to target, then the beams should be largely unaffected as they travel from Warp Bubble to Warp Bubble without crossing the gap into normal space that is moving alot faster.

If you're not touching or merging Warp Bubbles and are "Far Enough" from each other, then you would be correct.
I'd assume dead ahead is a big "No-No" in terms of where you can't shoot, but if you're firing off angle from dead-ahead, I'm sure you can arc your beam shots to collide with your target, just like you said, but with much more complicated math to make sure the arcing beam hits the target.

The same with firing into the wake of the target ship, since you're "Warping Space" with the Warp Drive, there should be certain angles that you don't want to fire into since they're bending space and would distort your Beam's flight path, effectively deflecting your beam shots.

The same applies to the person shooting backwards, their beams will distort and they'll need to know how their Warp Field distorts due to advanced Warp Geometry and use that to arc their shots towards you.

That should require some trial and error until they can refine it to the point that they hit you.

Ergo there would be certain angles that you will always want to fire out of and into, offering layers of strategy in Warp Combat with beam weaponry.

Okay - but what about photon torpedoes? I think the common error is to think that the "photon" in photon torpedoes has something to do with the payload. It makes more sense to me (again from watching the series) to assume that the "photon" (or in STV, "quantum") refers to the torpedo's propulsion system, allowing it to move at warp. Can it borrow warp energy from the ship firing it?

No. Once the torpedo exits the warp shell, it is no longer traveling at warp. Unless its propulsion system can get it to warp. Well, why not? We've seen small probes traveling at very high warp speeds (in STNG, think Ambassador K'Ehleyr.) So it makes more sense, when traveling at warp speed, to use a weapon that can also travel at warp speed.

Photon Torpedos and other Torpedos have "Warp Sustainers" that grab a chunk of the Warp Bubble as they leave it and sustain the Warp Bubbles velocity. That answer has been in the TNG technical manuals and is pretty easy to discover.

And we saw in VOY in the episode WarHead, that with super small and powerful batteries, they can have their own mini WarpDrives that allow it to travel several light years. So it's very much possible to make mini Warp Drives that create tiny Warp Bubbles to move a Torpedo and power it via a ultra compact battery.

But this now causes a problem for relative space combat (when NOT traveling at warp.) How do you defend your ship, in relative space, while fighting another ship, in relative space, from a weapon that moves at warp? (And there's the power of the torpedo - it doesn't need an explosive device. If it's traveling near light speed (not to mention faster than light) its mass alone is sufficient to deliver a whollup that would give a hydrogen bomb penis envy.)

Voyagers shield has been shown to be able to take Atom Bomb levels of damage and shrug it off in that one episode where they get stuck around that planet that spins faster than the regular universes time. The locals developed Atomic Weaponry and was able to slowly chip away at Voyagers shields, so tanking a Hydrogen Bomb's blast is no issue given the standard StarFleet shield for a Intrepid Class. Kinetic Energy or H-Bomb level blast, no problem.

And as far as regular defense, that's what Shields are for along with Ablative Hull Armor and Ablative Hull Generator. They're designed to be able to take beam blasts and keep on ticking.

Which now causes a problem for all out warfare. If someone wants to end all life on your planet, a few of those babies would definitely do the trick. Now you have to consider the danger of having enough of those extremely energetic weapons under the command of enough ship captains, all of them subject to the PTSD that universe-ending space-opera delivers every week. Doesn't even take a captain. A jilted quartermaster could probably figure out how to deliver civilization-ending payloads to their own planet over a love-affair gone horribly wrong.

Each Photon Torpedo can have more Explosive PayLoad than the Tzar Bomba, yet modern StarFleet personnel manage to live normally and not go PTSD and annihilate another species.

And that's where planetary defense grids come in... Set to shoot down anything like a photon torpedo or a big fat old phaser beam before it gets anywhere near your homeworld. That's going to take a MAJOR investment in heavily armed satellites. Which creates a new problem... Who do you put in charge of THAT kind of firepower? SKYNET???

I agree, most heavily populated planets need multi-layer Planetary Defense Grids like the one we saw in ST:PICARD.
After Earth got attacked by the Dominion and StarFleet HQ gets damaged, every major UFP planet with a significant population needs some sort of Planetary Defense Grid.

Who's in charge of the Planetary Defense Grid? The Local StarFleet Planetary Base should be in charge of their Defense grid and it should be distributed so that certain bases in certain hemispheres or quarter-spheres will control the access codes for certain parts of the Planetary Defense Grid.

You don't want one facility to control everything, that's unnecessarily putting all your defensive code eggs in one basket.

Distribute that sucker =D.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

Thanks for all the detailed responses! When I wrote the Star Trek Hunter series, I didn't think about any of this stuff and wrote in phasers being used at warp, photonics weapons targeted at planetary facilities and planetary defense grids under the control of either Star Fleet Planetary or the Avradaga Satellite Defense Research Institute (ASDRI, an Andorian corporation that licenses satellite defense - along with teams of Andorians to work the grid for you.)

BTW - the comment about a warp field powerful enough to carry a starship destroying the solar system that ship arrives in comes from an offhand remark by Neil DeGrasse Tyson - a SERIOUS Trek nerd - but also an astrophysicist.

Thanks!! rbs

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

BTW - the comment about a warp field powerful enough to carry a starship destroying the solar system that ship arrives in comes from an offhand remark by Neil DeGrasse Tyson - a SERIOUS Trek nerd - but also an astrophysicist.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be a serious Trek Nerd, but IRL Physics and what's canon and shown on screen are different things.

And since Warp Drive isn't real yet, we don't know the effects of "Warp Drive" on a Solar System.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson may be a serious Trek Nerd, but IRL Physics and what's canon and shown on screen are different things.

And since Warp Drive isn't real yet, we don't know the effects of "Warp Drive" on a Solar System.

As I had initially observed:

Anything too problematic that makes the format impossible, we'll just take for granted there's a technobabble explanation that we don't really need to get into.

 

[publiusr]

Let's just stick with what's shown on screen...if your vessel is at Warp and is really close to your target, then your Warp Fields are close enough that they can merge with the ship you want to target, then the beams should be largely unaffected as they travel from Warp Bubble to Warp Bubble without crossing the gap into normal space that is moving a lot faster.

The only exception was the Romulan Plasma Torpedo....which itself became entangled in Enterprise's retreating warp field....like stepping away from a punch. I think at warp weapon exchanges beyond a conjoined warp bubble were off-screen...

 

[Timo]

...In TOS. But, say, the warp chase phaser battles of "Non Sequitur" and "Message in a Bottle" were unlikely to have involved any bubble merging. Warp bubbles seem to be really compact things, as per the ENT Enterprise/Columbia action if not per the assored graphics from other shows.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The only exception was the Romulan Plasma Torpedo....which itself became entangled in Enterprise's retreating warp field....like stepping away from a punch. I think at warp weapon exchanges beyond a conjoined warp bubble were off-screen...

That was sheer luck of timing by Kirk that the Plasma Torpedo was caught on the very edge of the Warp Field.

It's not something that can happen consistently, it either goes through, or misses.

I wonder, since you can go in Warp in Reverse, like a car; how fast can you go?

I doubt it's the same speed as going forward, given Federation Warp System designs.

Only the Borg's Warp Systems seem to let them go in any direction at all Warp Speeds.

 

[publiusr]

Tessaract all by itself

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Tessaract all by itself

Is that a new Tamarian metaphor?

 

[publiusr]

Another name for hypercubes…but it would do as one. Darmok and Yoda walk into a bar.

For those not in the loop….

I have also heard wormholes and such called tessaracts IIRC. I like “monobloc” better than cosmic egg…collapsars for stellar mass black holes…and contra-terrene for more than anti-matter (dark matter, positive matter, mirror matter, etc)

I still haven’t seen anything done with the cosmological defects known as Domain Walls or Textures.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I have also heard wormholes and such called tessaracts IIRC

That's news to me. I've never heard WormHoles called that, EVER, until you brought it up.

I like “monobloc” better than cosmic egg…collapsars for stellar mass black holes…and contra-terrene for more than anti-matter (dark matter, positive matter, mirror matter, etc)

I still haven’t seen anything done with the cosmological defects known as Domain Walls or Textures.

All new phrases to me.

 

[publiusr]

There used to be CT shock…or was it seetee shock

 

[Henoch]

I wonder, since you can go in Warp in Reverse, like a car; how fast can you go?

I doubt it's the same speed as going forward, given Federation Warp System designs.

From Balance of Terror:
KIRK: Full astern! Emergency warp speed!
(A red plasma blast is heading towards them)
KIRK: Do we have emergency warp?
SULU: Full power, sir. It's still overtaking us. If we can get one phaser working, sir, one shot might detonate it.

Even though not screen defined, emergency warp speed is probably more than warp 6 (some non-canon sources give emergency speed as warp 8). Direction is full astern or backward. Also, if they had a working phaser, they would fire it while at high warp speed. If the phaser beam is not FLT, one could argue the plasma torpedo would fly into the beam because of the directions of flight.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

...If the phaser beam is not FLT, one could argue the plasma torpedo would fly into the beam because of the directions of flight.

Sweet TOS reference! That's one I didn't remember. Thanks!! rbs

 

[Search4]

TOS had full planetary shields that the Enterprise could not penetrate for the prison/asylum plent (sorry, don't recall the name of the episode.) That being said an Expanse like asteroid bombardment is clearly within Trek Tech (hey the "D" tried to move a moon) and its not at all clear there are defenses against that.

 

[Timo]

That was the second asylum episode, "Whom Gods Destroy", with the mad patient in charge for a change, rather than the mad doctor.

But the shield around Elba II wasn't starship-proof. This was Scotty's very problem: if he tried to make a hole for transporters, either to get Kirk out or to send redshirts in, he'd end up killing everybody down below. McCoy thus gets to give his classic lament that they are powerful enough to destroy a planet but helpless nevertheless...

Planetary shields that actually stop starships are available a bit over a century later, in PIC. We don't know exactly when the Feds acquired those, but nobody ever mentioned any in the Dominion War, FWIW. Smaller-scale shields over cities or fortresses were mentioned.

Asteroid bombardment probably fails because Trek folks can play tricks with inertia. In ENT "Demons"/"Terra Prime", there's a tractor beam on Mars that can deflect comets easily enough (or, if ramped up, stir some moondust several AUs away). And if deflection fails, such as in TOS "Paradise Syndrome", there are other options. In VOY "Rise", Janeway considers the pulverizing of asteroids trivial, and is amazed when one rock fails to comply (it turns out the bad guys are flinging special armored rocks at the victims of the week).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

That being said an Expanse like asteroid bombardment is clearly within Trek Tech (hey the "D" tried to move a moon) and its not at all clear there are defenses against that.

Obliterate the Asteroid before it gets anywhere near the shields or turn it into tiny chunks before it hits your planetary shields.

Planetary shields that actually stop starships are available a bit over a century later, in PIC. We don't know exactly when the Feds acquired those, but nobody ever mentioned any in the Dominion War, FWIW. Smaller-scale shields over cities or fortresses were mentioned.

In the TNG episode "When the Bough Breaks", we see the planet Aldea has Planetary Shields / Cloaking / Repulsor Beam|Bolt

That Repulsor Beam|Bolt is interesting tech that I think the UFP / StarFleet would want along with Planetary Shields & Cloaking devices.

Obviously we see StarFleet use Cloaking for their bases in the 32nd century, so will eventually start using it.

Planetary Shields / Cloaking would be nice to have.

Obviously you use the "Cloaking" aspect only when necessary.

Otherwise outside observers who look at your planet / star and notice it disappearing would send vessels / probes to investigate.

So you don't want to cloak your planet constantly unless that is your goal. To become a modern myth where your planet is literally cloaked.

 

[Timo]

Well, an immobile target being briefly invisible is unlikely to work well: the bad guys will simply see a you-sized hole where you used to be, and fire at that.

Indeed, the more cloaking, the better (and the resulting sterility be damned; Starfleeters are awful parents anyway). The Klingons had the right idea in "Rules of Engagement": cloaking of warships in battle may give a slight tactical edge if there are several of them, but cloaking of logistics is vital. You have to decloak in order to fight the defenses of your opponent, but if your troop movements are invisible, you can mount a massive strike where the defenses of the opponent aren't...

Timo Saloniemi