How Exactly Were The Narada's Torpedoes "Powerful"?

[Timo]

You can go all the way back to TOS for this. Nomad hit the Enterprise with a bolt equal to "90 photon torpedoes." It is simply nonsense to have any vessel survive a hit 90 times more powerful than one of its primary weapon systems.

Why would it be nonsense? Some ships have always been built with the philosophy that they can dish out far more than they can take, and others so that they can receive far more punishment than they can give. Large ships typically fall in the latter category, small ones in the former, certain exotic things like British battle cruisers excepted.

And we're talking about dissimilar combat here anyway. A ship of the line from the 18th century would certainly expect to survive ninety of her own cannonballs, but would still expect a single one of them to make short work of a raft one meter on the side - a pretty good analogy for the situation in "The Changeling".

Anyone else think NARADA seemed a lot like the scimitar ("shes a predator") from STN?

I rather thought of her as a rig largely unsuited for combat of any kind, least of all predating - yet surviving in that role through sheer stubbornness and robustness, much like Nero himself. Take a drilling rig of, say, the 1980s, bolt all sorts of makeshift 20th century weapons on it, add a few pieces of state of the art weaponry from the black markets, and pit it against a late 19th century battlefleet. The bulk of the drilling rig would keep her in combat a long time, while a sufficient number of light weapons would eventually reduce the 1880s armored battleships and cruisers to scrap.

Now make that analogy even better by giving the drilling rig a cache of tactical nukes pilfered from some well-meaning geologist who tried to stop a volcano from erupting. The 1880s ships would stand no chance at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hartzilla2007]

...the explosion is pathetic. I've seen better from an RPG.

As others have already stated, this is an assumption - your assuming you can correlate destructive power from visible light release.

I, on the other hand, think that the lack of a "explosion" is proof of advanced technology - the key is to destroy the other ship, not create the biggest fireworks display.

I don't mind actual debate, but the number of people disputing the effectiveness of fictional 23rd century weaponry....

Not only visible light release, but amount of damage done to the ship.

And Anticitizen is right - even with 23rd-century weapons, an unshielded Kelvin should've been obliterated in one hit. The only thing that makes sense so far is that they're 24th century mining explosives upgraded with Borg tech to let them pass through shields.

Actuallythe Kelvin still had shields at least untill a little bit before it rammed the Narada. Robau was telling engineering to devert all power to the foward sheilds after someone was steadily saying how the sheilds were weakening.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Ahh, but why? Why would special effects guys intentionally make a shot look less impressive?

Because if those weapons worked in movies the way they worked in reality, the first hit against Kelvin would have vaporized the entire ship.

Think back to old submarine movies where you see depth charges going off within a few feet of a submarine. This is just good drama, so the audience knows the sub is being blasted. In reality, a submarine would have to be at least a hundred yards from any one of those things just to have a CHANCE of surviving it.

As with the relative distances in TNG/DS9, it's a simple matter of "Explosions in visual are bigger than they appear."

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you might assume that the detonations produced some kind of intense electromagnetic waves that knocked out electronic systems all over the ships and that the explosive was just a "primary" for the real effect.

 

[trevanian]

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you might assume that the detonations produced some kind of intense electromagnetic waves that knocked out electronic systems all over the ships and that the explosive was just a "primary" for the real effect.

man, do you use that to justify the terrible BOP torpedo hit on Ent in SFS? It hits like a rock and makes some lightning crawl on the hull. Less memorable than a fart in close quarters, thank god, but stinks about as much.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You know, it also occurs to me all of a sudden that those torpedoes might not even have warheads. Considering their tendency to split into a SHOWER of smaller projectiles before impact, the Narada's torpedoes might just be extremely fast moving relativistic kill vehicles. It is a mining vessel after all, and if Nero and his people were making the torpedoes from scratch, the easiest way to do it is to fit a set of plasma thrusters into a slug of chistled neutronium and accelerate it to half the speed of light. That would explain why there's no visible reaction from the shields, after all; if the deflectors absorb alot of that kinetic energy, the torpedo might still slam into the hull at something like Mach 4, and THAT's the explosion you see as it impacts. Having to dissipate that much energy at one time would definitely overload the deflectors in much the same manner as V'ger's glowpedos.

It obviously wouldn't work against people like 24th century Starfleet or Romulan cruisers with more robust deflectors (the slugs would just bounce right off) but it might be sufficient to ward off pirates, Ferengi, the occasional Borg sphere.

 

[trevanian]

How exactly are these things so formidable? Can we explain this?

Simple. Sci-Fi and movies in general always get yields wrong. Movie powerful and actual powerful are two very different powerfuls.

And yet there are different ways to portray this that have gone unexplored. If you read the description of a space battle in MOTE IN GOD'S EYE, it sounds beautiful, with shield colors changing as the hits intensify, as the shields creep up the spectrum of visible light. In the trek universe, I'd guess a really big hit would carry a huge spectral shift and a lot of moire patterns, and that is before the bomb hits the hull.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you might assume that the detonations produced some kind of intense electromagnetic waves that knocked out electronic systems all over the ships and that the explosive was just a "primary" for the real effect.

man, do you use that to justify the terrible BOP torpedo hit on Ent in SFS?

I just assume those were plasma torpedoes like the thing the Romulans were firing in Balance of Terror.

 

[Silversmok3]

Setting aside countdown, and evaluating the munitions of the Narada as shown, it looks like the weapons were the Romulan equivalent of bunker busters-weapons designed to penetrate the target first before blowing up.

You honestly wouldnt need a great amount of explosives to damage a ship, as once the hull has been breached a frag grenade's worth of explosives will cause much havoc internally...

 

[SonicRanger]

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you might assume that the detonations produced some kind of intense electromagnetic waves that knocked out electronic systems all over the ships and that the explosive was just a "primary" for the real effect.

man, do you use that to justify the terrible BOP torpedo hit on Ent in SFS? It hits like a rock and makes some lightning crawl on the hull. Less memorable than a fart in close quarters, thank god, but stinks about as much.

Kruge and pals were basically pirates who wanted to disable the Starfleet ships, not explode them, as Kruge made quite clear to his first gunner. Of course, their EMP weapon disabled the Enterprise without any risk of actually destroying it because (1) that's what Kruge wanted and ordered and (2) the second gunner wasn't going to make the same mistake as his predecessor.

 

[trevanian]

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you might assume that the detonations produced some kind of intense electromagnetic waves that knocked out electronic systems all over the ships and that the explosive was just a "primary" for the real effect.

man, do you use that to justify the terrible BOP torpedo hit on Ent in SFS? It hits like a rock and makes some lightning crawl on the hull. Less memorable than a fart in close quarters, thank god, but stinks about as much.

Kruge and pals were basically pirates who wanted to disable the Starfleet ships, not explode them, as Kruge made quite clear to his first gunner. Of course, their EMP weapon disabled the Enterprise without any risk of actually destroying it because (1) that's what Kruge wanted and ordered and (2) the second gunner wasn't going to make the same mistake as his predecessor.

Oh, you gotta be kidding. You think anything that was set up beforehand was still working on the BOP after taking a point blank torp hit? Well, I'll let that one go, it is Bennett plotting, anything is possible.

But this EMP weapon thing? It wouldn't have worked at all if the shields were up or if the ship was in working order ... the dialog indicates all it did was knock out Scotty's jerry-rigged automation system. That's not good enough to deal with a functional starship.

Ahh, it's pointless to rationalize anything in that movie, it is all so damned arbitrary. I suppose the Enterprise blew up so small because it was friends with the computer on the DARK STAR and agreed that putting limiters on the explosion would minimize damage.

 

[Anticitizen]

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you might assume that the detonations produced some kind of intense electromagnetic waves that knocked out electronic systems all over the ships and that the explosive was just a "primary" for the real effect.

man, do you use that to justify the terrible BOP torpedo hit on Ent in SFS?

I just assume those were plasma torpedoes like the thing the Romulans were firing in Balance of Terror.

I tend to think the same thing. It makes sense especially when you understand that the antagonists in the movie were originally supposed to be Romulan and that ship was supposed to be a Romulan design.

That's the reason we've always been given as far back as BoT about why they can't fire while cloaked - because that weapon used too much power. I think that Chang's Bird of Prey was able to fire cloaked because it used Federation style torpedoes (to frame the Enterprise for the attack).

Once the 24th century rolled around, Federation ships were faster at responding. Being cloaked meant you couldn't have your shields raised - so a Bird of Prey that tried attacking, say, a Galaxy class ship while cloaked would be toast, because firing would give their position away. She could be phasered before her torpedo hit. So the tactic in the TNG era is to decloak and raise shields, not fire while cloaked. I think this explanation does a good job of explaining why we never see firing-while-cloaked again after STVI.

 

[Timo]

It could all boil down to tactics, though. The BoPs are basically trying to be WWII submarines, and what they do on screen is in perfect support of this identity.

A WWII sub would be a commerce raider or sometimes a covert ops support vessel, very rarely getting into the lucky position of attacking major enemy fighting units. She'd stay underwater/cloaked until in a position to unleash a decisive attack, and this attack would reveal her position and often make diving/cloaking a futile effort, given her inferior underwater speed. She'd carry ordnance intended to function only against nearly defenseless enemies, because a small deck gun with weak ammo would be easier to carry than a massive capital ship gun with armor-piercing ammo.

Kruge and Klaa could certainly be packing EMP weapons, plasma torps or whanot, intended to damage rather than destroy opponents. When facing a "Federation battle cruiser", they'd be up the creek without a paddle, and they'd know it - but being Klingons, they'd still try and make a fight of it. And if they did succeed, thanks to plot complications, they'd be appropriately flabbergastered. ST3 and ST5 work just fine in that respect.

Chang's BoP packed fake Starfleet torpedoes - but those, too, were wounding rather than killing weapons, because Chang wanted to fire those at himself, without lethal results. Hence a prolonged final battle where Chang was desperately trying to kill Kirk with a thousand cuts from an assassin's dagger while dodging Kirk's broadsword... And cleverly masking this by pretending to be a madman who prolongs the fight for sadistic reasons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[buzzknox]

You can go all the way back to TOS for this. Nomad hit the Enterprise with a bolt equal to "90 photon torpedoes." It is simply nonsense to have any vessel survive a hit 90 times more powerful than one of its primary weapon systems.

Why would it be nonsense? Some ships have always been built with the philosophy that they can dish out far more than they can take, and others so that they can receive far more punishment than they can give. Large ships typically fall in the latter category, small ones in the former, certain exotic things like British battle cruisers excepted.

And we're talking about dissimilar combat here anyway. A ship of the line from the 18th century would certainly expect to survive ninety of her own cannonballs, but would still expect a single one of them to make short work of a raft one meter on the side - a pretty good analogy for the situation in "The Changeling".

Anyone else think NARADA seemed a lot like the scimitar ("shes a predator") from STN?

I rather thought of her as a rig largely unsuited for combat of any kind, least of all predating - yet surviving in that role through sheer stubbornness and robustness, much like Nero himself. Take a drilling rig of, say, the 1980s, bolt all sorts of makeshift 20th century weapons on it, add a few pieces of state of the art weaponry from the black markets, and pit it against a late 19th century battlefleet. The bulk of the drilling rig would keep her in combat a long time, while a sufficient number of light weapons would eventually reduce the 1880s armored battleships and cruisers to scrap.

Now make that analogy even better by giving the drilling rig a cache of tactical nukes pilfered from some well-meaning geologist who tried to stop a volcano from erupting. The 1880s ships would stand no chance at all.

Timo Saloniemi

The problem is we aren't talking about 90 weapon/torpedo strikes spread over the shields (which would likely destroy the Enterprise anyway, since that has been the observed consequence of hitting ships with far fewere torpedoes. We are talking about a single impact that was equal to 90 photon torpedoes.

Until the modern navies when armor largely became a thing of the past, ships were designed to handle repeated impacts from weapons similar to those the ships themselves carried. That allowed them the ability to withstand limited impacts from significantly greater weapons. They had no ability or design intent to withstand single impacts from weapons with yields several magnitudes greater than their own weapons systems.

The HMS Victory would not survive a hit from a shell 90 times more powerful than the Victory's 32 pounder. An Iowa class would not survive a hit from a weapon 90 times more powerful than 16 inch cannon (you are talking about a round larger than a WWII Grand Slam bomb and moving far faster). A Ticonderoga class wouldn't survive a hit 90 times more powerful than a Standard or Harpoon.

As for the Narada, the fly in the ointment is that Nero intended to destroy the Federation of the 24th Century and he believed he had the ability to do so. Either he was completely insane and his going back to the 23rd Century was the luckiest break of his existence, or the Narada had at least some ability to deal with the ships available to Starfleet. A drilling rig with 5 inch guns, AEGIS, Standards, CIWS, and Tomahawks would last slightly longer against a carrier battle group than a rig without any such add ons, but not by much.

 

[SonicRanger]

... As for the Narada, the fly in the ointment is that Nero intended to destroy the Federation of the 24th Century and he believed he had the ability to do so. Either he was completely insane and his going back to the 23rd Century was the luckiest break of his existence, or the Narada had at least some ability to deal with the ships available to Starfleet...

Luckily that fanwanky comic book can be ignored, especially since the film contradicts it plenty.

 

[Silversmok3]

... As for the Narada, the fly in the ointment is that Nero intended to destroy the Federation of the 24th Century and he believed he had the ability to do so. Either he was completely insane and his going back to the 23rd Century was the luckiest break of his existence, or the Narada had at least some ability to deal with the ships available to Starfleet...

Luckily that fanwanky comic book can be ignored, especially since the film contradicts it plenty.

Hence why I set it aside for consideration.

In any instance, its unlikely Nero would have been sucessful prosecuting a lone war against Starfleet with the Narada.While we are deprived of an on screen duel between the Narada and a vessel of its own time, id imagine a task force composed of the Enterprise E and a pair of Defiant class 'escorts' would make very short work of the Narada,Neros fanatacism aside.

Back to topic of his weaponry,it looks like he's using missiles designed to bypass shielding by physically passing the energy barrier and burrowing into the hull before detonating.

Which when used against 100 year old shield technology, id imagine the results would be appropriately deveastating.

 

[buzzknox]

... As for the Narada, the fly in the ointment is that Nero intended to destroy the Federation of the 24th Century and he believed he had the ability to do so. Either he was completely insane and his going back to the 23rd Century was the luckiest break of his existence, or the Narada had at least some ability to deal with the ships available to Starfleet...

Luckily that fanwanky comic book can be ignored, especially since the film contradicts it plenty.

The comic is irrelevant for this point. Nero wanted to capture Spock and the Jellyfish in the 24th Century. He was going to use the Red Matter for something in the 24th Century. He would have to deal with 24th Century opponents in order to accomplish his goals and he believed he could do it. It's possible that he was "only" going to load it into torpedoes and shoot it in the suns of the Federation. Perhaps a Scimitar style cloak would see him through (assuming the Federation made absolutely no use of the Ent-E's sensor logs and the Federation's intelligence capability) but that begs the question of where a mining ship would get such a cloak.