Human input in Trek spaceship battles

[Crazy Eddie]

Yet this goes against clearly stated dialogue on-screen which indicated photonic torpedoes at maximum yield "could put a three-kilometer crater into an asteroid"

I expect that Malcolm's first attempt to test that boast might be a tad disappointing.

OTOH, a kinetic energy weapon would probably have that capability, IF you gave it enough time to build up velocity. An antimatter warhead would not.

not to mention what we know a matter/antimatter warhead can do, even with a tiny amount of reactants loaded. Granted, in space the output is all shortwave EM radiation, but that's more than enough at even a kilometer or two away to severely mangle and irradiate a starship.

Which is precisely my point: photon torpedoes SHOULD severely irradiate starships/planets/space stations whenever they're used in combat. Photon torpedoes would be little more than glorified flashbulbs that spray hard x-rays at their target whenever they go off; a direct hit wouldn't matter much since you could still do considerable damage from a distance.

But they don't work this way, in fact photon torpedoes are rarely used with a proximity fuse that would allow for near-miss detonations. They either hit the target or they don't. Why is this?

The blame lies solely with the VFX guys, who don't seem to have any real grasp of what these weapons are supposed to do, or if they do are bound by some unwritten Hollywood law that states that screen explosions and space battles MUST look a certain way.

Total agreement. But then, if the VFX isn't going to change (and based on STXI, it isn't about to any time the near future) and if the dialog is going to sometimes reflect the VFX (as it did a number of times in ENT) then what is the point of sticking with the upper-limit estimates when nothing else supports them?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

NX-01 is not a good comparison. The ship is much more primitive than later trek vessels.

Doesn't matter, the hull materials are basically the same.

Besides which, the ship is already equipped with phasers and photon torpedoes and going into battle against enemies with similarly modern armaments. The most you can say is that later series showed somewhat more advanced technology, but NX-01 isn't exactly a flying clipper ship.

In TNG photon torpedoes annihilated an asteroid. But in any case, instead of looking some isolated examples, we should look at the big picture, which is that in dialogue photon torpedoes are consistently referred as massively powerful weapons.

Fine that they're REFERRED to that way, but never USED that way, not even against targets that would demonstrate their being massively powerful weapons. And more to the point: torpedo yields are measured in isotons, not in megatons, and therefore anything we can assume about a torpedo's "massively powerfulness" has to go by the context of what we see.

Let's put it this way: with the "massively powerful" Trek weapons, the Breen attack on San Francisco should have reduced the entire city to a smolering hole in the ground with just the first shot. It didn't; the Breen destroyed a few buildings and blew up the Golden Gate bridge.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Its a shame - I think displaying what advanced high-energy weapons could really do would in fact be pretty damn cool in itself.

As for structural integrity fields preventing a torpedo from destroying and unshielded ship - maybe, maybe not. I think it would depend largely on how close the torpedo was when detonated. A near proximity blast may be survivable (though you'd still have to deal with a shit-ton of radiation), but a direct hit against or possibly even inside the hull? I really don't see how that could be taken in stride, even by an advanced starship.

It don't suppose its worth pointing out that a blast of hard x-rays is not something a "structural integrity field" would be at all useful in defending against. If the radiation flux does any physical damage at all, it'll vaporize the outer skin of the ship and create impulsive shock from the rapid transformation of metal into gas; STI fields could mitigate the effects of THAT, but the outer six-inches of your ship just got blown away and everything under that is now highly radioactive, your crew is glowing in the dark, and anything electronic is no longer useable.

And though I agree with the sentiment that "high energy weapons" would be interesting to see, I again disagree that they would be comparable to modern WMDs in terms of yield. A Star Trek bazooka doesn't have to have enough power to knock down an office building; it might, however, give an away team the ability to shoot down small space craft in orbit.

 

[Myasishchev]

Let's put it this way: with the "massively powerful" Trek weapons, the Breen attack on San Francisco should have reduced the entire city to a smolering hole in the ground with just the first shot. It didn't; the Breen destroyed a few buildings and blew up the Golden Gate bridge.

I still say the rest of California no longer exists, SF and SFHQ just happened to be shield hardened targets.

 

[Deks]

Let's put it this way: with the "massively powerful" Trek weapons, the Breen attack on San Francisco should have reduced the entire city to a smolering hole in the ground with just the first shot. It didn't; the Breen destroyed a few buildings and blew up the Golden Gate bridge.

The Breen attack on Earth was meant more in a psychological manner than it did in in doing actual damage.
It was supposed to instill fear into the Federation, proclaming that they are not safe anywhere.

Furthermore ... do we have evidence the Golden gate bridge or any other structure in San Francisco was not reinforced over time with new materials?

I mean ... we saw in Trek XI for example various new structures that went high into the sky as far as San Francisco is concerned.
Who is to say that the same thing doesn't exist in the regular timeline?
The matte paintings as they were, were simply because of the simplicity and lack of budget really.

Then again, the Breen could have merely used directed energy weapons in their assault instead of torpedoes.
The damage would be consistent with directed energy weapons instead of torpedoes to begin with.

 

[JuanBolio]

And though I agree with the sentiment that "high energy weapons" would be interesting to see, I again disagree that they would be comparable to modern WMDs in terms of yield. A Star Trek bazooka doesn't have to have enough power to knock down an office building; it might, however, give an away team the ability to shoot down small space craft in orbit.

Here's the thing, though - the Federation has the scientific know-how and ample power sources to allow their weapons to vary in power output from "peashooter" to "hammer of God", and are faced with militaristic enemies that would have no compunctions about using the deadlier settings.

Why, o-why, would they intentionally cap themselves off at power levels so drastically low, given their capabilities?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And though I agree with the sentiment that "high energy weapons" would be interesting to see, I again disagree that they would be comparable to modern WMDs in terms of yield. A Star Trek bazooka doesn't have to have enough power to knock down an office building; it might, however, give an away team the ability to shoot down small space craft in orbit.

Here's the thing, though - the Federation has the scientific know-how and ample power sources to allow their weapons to vary in power output from "peashooter" to "hammer of God", and are faced with militaristic enemies that would have no compunctions about using the deadlier settings.

Why, o-why, would they intentionally cap themselves off at power levels so drastically low, given their capabilities?

Because "more powerful" and "more advanced" are not the same thing. You could probably design a main battle tank with a 240mm cannon on it, capable of firing nuclear warheads to a range of up to thirty kilometers... but would that really be a practical weapon system on the battlefield?

"Hammer of God" weapons are only useful when shooting at gods. There's something to be said for having the right sized tool for the job.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

And though I agree with the sentiment that "high energy weapons" would be interesting to see, I again disagree that they would be comparable to modern WMDs in terms of yield. A Star Trek bazooka doesn't have to have enough power to knock down an office building; it might, however, give an away team the ability to shoot down small space craft in orbit.

Here's the thing, though - the Federation has the scientific know-how and ample power sources to allow their weapons to vary in power output from "peashooter" to "hammer of God", and are faced with militaristic enemies that would have no compunctions about using the deadlier settings.

Why, o-why, would they intentionally cap themselves off at power levels so drastically low, given their capabilities?

Because the Breen had no choice.
Earth was deep inside the heart of the Federation. In times of war, no ship could reach Earth orbit without being scanned/inspected several times.
The Breen most likely could only get light weaponry past inspections.

 

[JuanBolio]

Because "more powerful" and "more advanced" are not the same thing. You could probably design a main battle tank with a 240mm cannon on it, capable of firing nuclear warheads to a range of up to thirty kilometers... but would that really be a practical weapon system on the battlefield?

"Hammer of God" weapons are only useful when shooting at gods. There's something to be said for having the right sized tool for the job.

I disagree. Power goes a long way. Why, for example, when you're trying to destroy a Klingon warship, would you peck at it with photons that scorch a small bit of the hull with every hit when you could fire a multi-megaton beast that could destroy them with one shot? The 240mm nuclear warhead cannon isn't a good analogy, because 120mm sabot rounds can kill another tank with one hit, and that's all you need to do. You'd want your phasers and photon torpedoes to be capable of the same.

Because the Breen had no choice.
Earth was deep inside the heart of the Federation. In times of war, no ship could reach Earth orbit without being scanned/inspected several times.
The Breen most likely could only get light weaponry past inspections.

No, I don't think that's it at all, and in any case I wasn't talking just about the Breen. The Federation knew at that point that the Breen had joined the war against the Federation, and even if they hadn't the Breen weren't the nicest of species to begin with. They wouldn't allow a fleet of Breen warships to approach Earth unchallenged no matter what they were armed with. As for the minimal damage to San Francisco, I'd chalk that up to heavy shielding over the city and point-defense weapons that shot down all incoming torpedoes.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because "more powerful" and "more advanced" are not the same thing. You could probably design a main battle tank with a 240mm cannon on it, capable of firing nuclear warheads to a range of up to thirty kilometers... but would that really be a practical weapon system on the battlefield?

"Hammer of God" weapons are only useful when shooting at gods. There's something to be said for having the right sized tool for the job.

I disagree. Power goes a long way. Why, for example, when you're trying to destroy a Klingon warship, would you peck at it with photons that scorch a small bit of the hull with every hit when you could fire a multi-megaton beast that could destroy them with one shot?

Because for one thing I've already explained all the reasons why a multi-megaton nuclear device would do little more than scratch the paint in such a situation unless it goes off INSIDE the warship. Hardness or not, filtering out radiation like hard x-rays and gamma rays is a relatively simple trick in the 23rd century; it'll screw up some of the electronics and injure the crew, but it (evidently) doesn't do alot of actual damage to the ship.

OTOH, "a torpedo that scorches a small section of the hull" is exactly what Trek weapons have been since the beginning of the show, and the likely reason is that for some reason large-scale WMDs just aren't practical ship to ship weapons. It seems likely that massive but unfocussed energy bursts are easily disbursed by even simple shields and hull materials; for that matter even MODERN materials would probably suffice for that.

And yet:

The 240mm nuclear warhead cannon isn't a good analogy, because 120mm sabot rounds can kill another tank with one hit

Yes and no. Depends on the tank, depends on the shell, depends on the range, the angle, the weather, the accuracy of the gunner, etc. A tank that can shrug off two dozen direct hits from one tank could be knocked completely out of action by the first shot from another. And even here the argument against using a small nuclear device as an antitank weapon becomes even stronger in a world where most tanks are designed to survive a nuclear blast (in which case you're forced to resort to good old fashioned HEAT rounds).

You'd want your phasers and photon torpedoes to be capable of the same.

A phaser bank capable of one-shot-kills against a shielded starship would probably be too large and too power intensive to use in combat.

 

[Myasishchev]

What modern materials would easily or at all prevent high concentrations of gamma radiation from damaging internal equipment? I mean, tactical nuclear weapons are still capable of destroying CVTFs; what material known today can withstand a Tsar Bomba-level energy release?

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Because the Breen had no choice.
Earth was deep inside the heart of the Federation. In times of war, no ship could reach Earth orbit without being scanned/inspected several times.
The Breen most likely could only get light weaponry past inspections.

No, I don't think that's it at all, and in any case I wasn't talking just about the Breen. The Federation knew at that point that the Breen had joined the war against the Federation, and even if they hadn't the Breen weren't the nicest of species to begin with. They wouldn't allow a fleet of Breen warships to approach Earth unchallenged no matter what they were armed with. As for the minimal damage to San Francisco, I'd chalk that up to heavy shielding over the city and point-defense weapons that shot down all incoming torpedoes.

Of course Starfleet wouldn't allow a fleet of fully armed breen war ships to get near Earth.
A fleet of breen war ships could not get to Earth that easily (they would have been intercepted, at the latest, a few light-years away from the sol system) - the fact that the Dominion and the Federation failed to do this exact thing to each other for years proves it.
How may times have you heard of a Dominion task force reaching Earth/a Federation task force attacking Cardassia Prime? These worlds were too deep inside enemy territory for something like that.

The breen ships were probably disguised as freighters or other apparently harmless ships (of non-breen origin, most likely) - which limited the weaponry they could carry.

 

[Timo]

Or then the Breen cloaked their ships (a capacity they were attributed with in TNG "Hero Worship"), or used their energy damper to fight their way through the defenses.

The latter would be a particularly appealing choice. The Feds would build their defenses with certain assumptions about the enemy in mind. There'd be layers of defenses: the first ones would inevitably be breached, but only after holding back the enemy long enough that deeper layers could be activated and reinforced. It would never be possible to permanently dedicate resources to an impenetrable defense, because nothing would then be left for offense, or for defending targets other than Earth.

However, such a layered defense dependent on delaying the enemy would collapse if the enemy could not be delayed. Superfast enemies would be just as bad as invincible or invisible ones. This is why the Borg Cube would meet minimal resistance in "BoBW": it would move too fast for the conventional layered defenses of Earth, so that there'd only be time to amass one defensive line of a pitiful four dozen ships. The Breen would probably not have a high travel speed, but they would have a high defense-nullifying speed, thanks to their energy dampers. They could get in and (almost) get out before Starfleet's mobile defenses could react.

The fixed ones would probably be enough to stop total carnage, though. The Breen wouldn't dedicate a decisively strong force for this attack, which was only intended to frighten, so they couldn't get through to Earth any better than the Axis of Good could get through to Chin'toka. But they could get to Earth, and they could take potshots.

Also, random technobabble: if the structural integrity field somehow ties the atoms of a structure together orders of magnitude better than is "natural", then this ability could also act as a radiation shield, increasing the opaqueness of the matter to, say, gamma rays, then preventing the absorbed energy from dislodging the absorbing layers from the bulk of the structure. The pent-up energy might then be released in some fairly exotic manner; we can't even rule out a release mode that looks like a gasoline explosion.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Or then the Breen cloaked their ships (a capacity they were attributed with in TNG "Hero Worship"), or used their energy damper to fight their way through the defenses.[...]

Timo Saloniemi

The breen did not use their energy dampening weapon in their attack on Earth. Just as they did not use this weapon when they retook Chin'toka.
How do I know?
When the allies counterattacked at Chin'toka, they had no ideea that the breen had their energy dampening weapon - they were taken completely by surprise. If the breen had used their weapon previously, the allies would have known about it and acted accordingly (most likely, they would not have counterattacked).

About the breen cloaking their ships (hiding their ships by other means) - in DS9, during the war, they never used this ability (as far as we know), nor were they mentioned as having said very useful ability.
Furthermore - most likely, Federation defense employs sensors powerful enough to see through cloaks/other masking techs - at least when the cloacked/masked enemy is near Earth/another heavily defended federation target:

In DS9, a Dominion sensor facitlity could detect cloacked ships from sectors away;
The Federation was mentioned as having the ability to detect cloaked ships multiple times during star trek;
The fact that the Romulans were kept at bay for decades makes no sense if the Federation could not detect cloaked romulan vessels aka a romulan vessel could destroy any target within the Federation and Starfleet could not do the same thing to the Romulan empire;
The Tomed Accord (during which the Federation agreed not do develop/use cloaks) makes no sense from the Federation's POV if cloaks were so effective/if there is no efficient countermeasure.


The only way the breen could get a fleet of ships in Earth orbit is if they disguised the ships, making them look harmless to sensors/inspections (limiting the type of weapons the ships could carry) - a convoy of trading ships following a scheduled route, for example.
As for the rest - considering Federate technology, orbital defense platforms, city shields and structural integrity fields, point defense systems certainly played their role in minimizing the damage done to Earth.

Consider - if the breen could bring a fleet of fully-armed war ships in Earth orbit, they could very well have a different strategy - target NOT heavily shielded cities, but lightly defended non-inhabited areas.
The weapon of choice for planetary bombardment - matter/antimatter warheads, with a nearly 100% efficiency in the atmosphere (excluding neutrinos, of course).
In minutes, this breen fleet could destroy Earth's entire ecology, transforming the planet in a wasteland, hostile to life/radioactive, if need be (with the exception of inhabited areas).
The population would have to evacuate Earth, in order to survive, and the Federation would have a refugee crisis when it could least afford it.

 

[Timo]

The breen did not use their energy dampening weapon in their attack on Earth. Just as they did not use this weapon when they retook Chin'toka.
How do I know?
When the allies counterattacked at Chin'toka, they had no ideea that the breen had their energy dampening weapon - they were taken completely by surprise.

But surprise would be preserved if the Breen in those two previous fights didn't have a Founder behind their shoulder, telling them to spare the lives of a few eyewitnesses.

Granted, though, that the Breen probably used their weapons in great moderation. And probably not because they were modest about it - but because they didn't have all that many of the guns, not at that stage of the war yet. Which means that they might well have had too few to spare for either the retaking of Chin'toka or the Doolittle Raid on Earth, or even both.

But dedicating what little they did have to striking Earth would probably have been worth it, because spreading of fear was what they were after. Employing a new superweapon for a dastardly deed would maximize the effect, killing the one bird with two ridiculously giant boulders.

It may have been by accident that Starfleet didn't realize what hit them in the Doolittle Raid. Perhaps the Breen wholly expected to lose the element of surprise, but didn't, because Starfleet couldn't really comprehend what had happened. And the attempt to re-retake Chin'toka came too soon afterwards that Starfleet could have been properly prepared and provided with accurate intelligence. Which probably was what the Breen were hoping for, even if they couldn't count on it.

in DS9, during the war, they never used this ability (as far as we know)

We know there were no invisible ships because we didn't see any? That's always a good one...

In DS9, a Dominion sensor facitlity could detect cloacked ships from sectors away

Yes, and this was mentioned as offsetting the balance, as something that the Feds could never do. Their methods of detecting cloakships are haphazard and only work at proximity. Nine times out of ten, cloaked ships evade Starfleet attention, and can barge in completely unannounced on key locations such as DS9. Apparently, the reverse wasn't true as long as that Dominion sensor was working; but the reverse of the reverse never got challenged, and Earth remained as vulnerable as ever to cloaked attack.

The fact that the Romulans were kept at bay for decades makes no sense if the Federation could not detect cloaked romulan vessels aka a romulan vessel could destroy any target within the Federation and Starfleet could not do the same thing to the Romulan empire

But we did see the Romulan ships enjoy free passage through UFP territory whenever they so wished. The tachyon detection net appeared to be a new invention in "Redemption", and its fixed-installation application in "Face of the Enemy" thus is unlikely to have been the factor that held back Romulan invasion in the preceding half a century. No, the Romulans were held back even when they could not be detected - no doubt by means of deterrent, of the risk of retaliation.

Even with the tachyon net in place, Romulan ships still freely broke out of their Neutral Zone and harassed our DS9 heroes in episodes like "Visionary" and "The Die is Cast". Which only makes sense; trying to put a net around an entire star empire is probably completely futile, and the tachyon shadows only protected some key regions rather than totally cordoning off the Romulans.

The Tomed Accord (during which the Federation agreed not do develop/use cloaks) makes no sense from the Federation's POV if cloaks were so effective/if there is no efficient countermeasure.

Why not? If it's a hopeless cause to begin with, surely it can be freely given away in the negotiating tables.

Consider - if the breen could bring a fleet of fully-armed war ships in Earth orbit, they could very well have a different strategy - target NOT heavily shielded cities, but lightly defended non-inhabited areas.

And Hitler could have ordered terror bombings of London, rather than futile strikes against airbases, during the Battle of Britain. Yet he didn't, because he calculated that this would be counterproductive in the political and thus strategic sense. He later changed his mind, of course... As he did with unlimited vs. limited submarine warfare, much like Wilhelm II's submariners had initially been held back in WWI. Maximum destruction isn't always the strategically smart thing to do.

The Dominion was a galactic superpower full of its own hubris. The Breen knew they were bit players, previously only worthy of squabbling with the Cardassian Union - and they knew they'd have to live with their decisions afterwards. Pockmarking San Francisco would be tap-dancing on a high wire, but it could carry the Breen through the maximum number of scenarios. For all we know, the Breen walked away scot free from the war... And perhaps even gained a few former Cardassian planets in the deal, since the Feds, Klingons and Romulans probably wouldn't have wanted the lot, and couldn't have grabbed everything in time anyway.

Of course, we may also argue that the Breen did intend genocide, but their attack failed almost completely, long before reaching striking distance. Yet an almost complete failure was also a resounding success if seen in the right light...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JuanBolio]

Because for one thing I've already explained all the reasons why a multi-megaton nuclear device would do little more than scratch the paint in such a situation unless it goes off INSIDE the warship. Hardness or not, filtering out radiation like hard x-rays and gamma rays is a relatively simple trick in the 23rd century; it'll screw up some of the electronics and injure the crew, but it (evidently) doesn't do alot of actual damage to the ship.

No, I'm fairly certain that a multi-megaton antimatter blast going off against the hull or even within one kilometer of it would ruin any starship's day, if its shields were down. Yes, I know how such blasts work in space, but thermal shock and radiation would be quite enough to destroy or cripple any ship caught by a photon torpedo with its shields down. In any case, how are less powerful antimatter blasts supposed to be MORE effective? Scaling your torpedoes down to the yield of modern cruise missiles makes no sense when a kilogram of antimatter could do so much more.

As for hard X and gamma rays being easily filtered out, I kinda doubt that. The "primitive" nuclear warhead deployed against the Enterprise in Balance of Terror was an effective weapon, and they were certainly concerned about nuclear missiles that could be fired by a 1960's jet fighter.

 

[Myasishchev]

If the Breen had used the energy dampener on Earth, Earth would have been a wasteland. There simply wouldn't have been anything capable of stopping the Breen from loitering until the planet's crust was gone. Now, that would've actually been pretty cool, but it's not what we got.

Additionally, I'd make an argument that a crippled Utopia Planitia is worth a dozen dead Earths, but it's not like any superb military force has never misread a situation before (Kido Butai going after battleships instead of the fuel reserves, or waiting for the carriers to be at Pearl; Luftwaffe switching from counter-air to terror bombing as the RAF neared a possible breaking point), so I can see why they would go after Earth instead of the shipyards.

Hey, maybe that's why SF was practically fine--the Breen actually did focus on UP and other militarily significant targets, like McKinley Station and Starbase 1/Spacedock. Indeed, we didn't see the Shroom after "Changing Face of Evil," did we?

At any rate, the Breen almost definitely didn't use their weapon in terror raids or infrastructural damage; like PA said, they were saving it for a decisive battle that would knock three whole fleets of the Allied navies. Their bad luck, it seems, that Klingon ships, unlike Superman, are not susceptible to magic. As well, they probably had a good notion that Starfleet could quickly develop countermeasures (surely they had seen TNG, and knew the awesome power of making shit up), but miscalculated in regards to how quickly (two whole episodes) they would adapt.

 

[Timo]

...Which may actually tie into the subject of this thread, to some degree. Perhaps battles are fought at "human-rated" speeds and with men-in-the-loop because the important thing is not to win the individual fight - but to make sure that the best military secrets of your side are not revealed merely to save your own sorry ass? Perhaps the main purpose of any given battle is to gain intelligence on the capabilities of the opponent, with survival and victory coming as distant second and third?

That's the only way to win fights against the Borg. If you go all-out, you betray your own side and condemn it to a horrible demise in the next fight. But that may also be true of fights against lesser enemies, as it is rather evident that military secrets may be your side's only hope for victory. The Breen would have been careful with their energy damper, and with their cloaks. The Feds could hold back with, say, their superior fire control computers for similar reasons, especially in battles that did not really pose personal danger: Picard would be amiss in his duties if he lashed out with the full capabilities of his ship merely to defeat the puny 200 m piece of space junk floating in front of his supership this week and making its usual ridiculous threats.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What modern materials would easily or at all prevent high concentrations of gamma radiation from damaging internal equipment?

A layer of ice two or three feet thick would do the truck nicely. If that doesn't work, an ordinary ablative heat shield with a sheet of parafin underneath it would suffice, although most of this would be vaporized on contact despite deflecting the radiation pulse away from the ship's interior.

The point is, there is no blast damage in space from a multi-megaton blast, only the effect of massive amounts of high-energy photons.

I mean, tactical nuclear weapons are still capable of destroying CVTFs

In an ATMOSPHERE, sure. In this case, because most of the x-rays are absorbed by the surrounding air in the first few feet from the blast, which immediately re-emits those x-rays in the form of lower-energy ones (alot of the energy becomes heat, the rest becomes that characteristic flash of light).

In space, the blast produces no broad-spectrum radiation surge, no over-pressure, and a relatively puny fireball as the detonation vaporizes the bomb casing. It doesn't take alot of technology to harden a target against radiation.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because for one thing I've already explained all the reasons why a multi-megaton nuclear device would do little more than scratch the paint in such a situation unless it goes off INSIDE the warship. Hardness or not, filtering out radiation like hard x-rays and gamma rays is a relatively simple trick in the 23rd century; it'll screw up some of the electronics and injure the crew, but it (evidently) doesn't do alot of actual damage to the ship.

No, I'm fairly certain that a multi-megaton antimatter blast going off against the hull or even within one kilometer of it would ruin any starship's day, if its shields were down.

Well, we only have two examples that support this theory. The first is the detonation of a Romulan nuke less than 100 meters away from Enterprise in "Balance of Terror." There's no physical damage to the ship, just "overloads and circuit burnouts" and some radiation burns to the crew. The second is NX-01 striking what may or may not be a thermonuclear warhead in the Romulan minefield. While this does severely damage NX-01--even with its hull plating deactivated--it does not destroy the ship or even completely immobilize it.

Yes, I know how such blasts work in space, but thermal shock and radiation would be quite enough to destroy or cripple any ship caught by a photon torpedo with its shields down.

Which, to me, indicates that photon torpedoes don't operate using either of those things, since we have REPEATEDLY seen starships hit by these torpedoes with their shields down without being destroyed or crippled.

And there's the other little problem of the weakness of NX-01's weapons in the 22nd century; we're forced to conclude those little pathetic spatial torpedoes were either a) nuclear, which is why they were so weak or b) operated on some other principle, BECAUSE nuclear weapons would have been too weak. I vote the latter case, because there's no indication that spatial torpedoes used anything resembling a fission or fusion device in their warhead package. If they did, the transition to photon(ic) torpedoes would be considerably less dramatic.

In any case, how are less powerful antimatter blasts supposed to be MORE effective?

Because it's not an antimatter blast. It would be a kinetic energy weapon that delivers energy to the target either by physically colliding with it or transferring kinetic energy into the target's hull with a forcefield. Where a flux of high-energy photons could be deflected easily by a specially tuned forcefield, a speeding projectile at some fraction of the speed of light would be somewhat more effective.

As for hard X and gamma rays being easily filtered out, I kinda doubt that. The "primitive" nuclear warhead deployed against the Enterprise in Balance of Terror was an effective weapon, and they were certainly concerned about nuclear missiles that could be fired by a 1960's jet fighter.

The "old style" warhead, as described in the episode, did little more than knock Enterprise off course and dim the lights a bit; no real damage there despite detonating at point blank range.

And in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" it was the threat of being hit with a nuclear warhead whilst still inside of Earth's atmosphere. Radiation flux would be the least of their problems in that case.

I would surmise that kinetic energy is still the number one means of damaging an attacking vessel, where radiation is more indirect (unless tightly focussed and controlled, as in a phaser beam). Of course, it is OBVIOUSLY the case that most of that radiation is easily filtered out, or else all those cases of photon torpedoes hitting unshielded targets would have ended in total destruction for all involved. So either Treknology has mitigated the effects of those weapons so that the amount of energy that gets through is conveniently similar to chemical explosives anyway, OR, treknology has completely mitigated the effects of those weapons and advanced devices like photon torpedoes work on some other principle.