Megaphasers
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Thanks for the reply.
Would it be fair to say, in your description, that a megaphaser has a considerably longer recharge than a standard bank relative to its much larger damage potential? In some ways it reminds me of how the main gun works on B5's Excalibur design, due to limitations in combining several technologies, and leaving the ship with a 60-second recharge every time the heavy gun fires (around 1:42 in this clip). 
Thanks for the reply.
This is the kind of thing I always felt some trepidation in tying down. But in my mind, and only in my mind, the ball turrets didn’t usually need a recharge because they drew such a small proportion of the ship’s weapons potential. One bank would need to deliver sustained fire a’la Val or Apollo’s temple, or multiple rapid bursts, to drain the tank. In my cross section of the Enterprise, I showed something like eight total reactors, with one in the primary hull dedicated to everything there -including weapons - except impulse propulsion. Three in the saucer, two in each nacelle, and one in the secondary hull. These reactors were linked so if one went down, others could supply the deficit. Weapons were allotted a proportion of that saucer reactor’s total output, but in an emergency could tap into more. There would always be a limit however, dictated by the size of the turret “spigot”.
Reliant used a totally different setup that had one reactor supplying everything including the nacelles. More fragile but faster and capable of shuffling power allotments with alacrity. The idea behind perimeter action ships was that they took this idea even further, breaking down any remaining barriers to shuffling, so a ship could instantly move its total power output from shields to speed to stealth to weapons, as needed. A lesson learned from encounters with opponents like the Orions.
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That's what we call a "Wave Motion Gun" when it comes to a "Trope" used in writing/modern story telling.Thanks for the reply.
High amounts of damage in the short term with some draw backs after firing.
Personally, I love them, so much damage / power in such a short time.
I should respond to this. Nobody creating those works ever thought Gene Roddenberry was going to bow down and accept them as holy writ. They were written to put down ideas about the Enterprise and Starfleet, in much the same way as you and everyone else here do in your posts on this BBS. The difference is, almost nothing else was being created at that time and we were filling a (more or less) vacuum with material people were hungry to consume. And in order to share our ideas, we had to draw them, typeset them, translate it all into a printable form, print them, and mail it all out. And finance the whole operation. To tens of thousands of people all around the world who were desperate for a community that shared their interest. It must be as incomprehensible to you as monks hand writing a dozen Bible manuscripts is to me. The fact it filled a void and that Paramount and Roddenberry happily let it go on to fan the flames of interest is why old timers still hold them in high regard. Oh, that and the fact they were done with such care, out of respect for the people with whom we were sharing and out of love for the material.
I am not going to apologize because anyone takes those works as canon because that was a result of the circumstances I just recounted. They were never intended to be canon and never pretended to be canon. If people you encounter think they are, instead of frustration, you might accept the whole thing as part of the reason Star Trek stayed alive and had a chance to develop the canon you admire to the exclusion of the broad panoply of material it inspired.
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It would be nice if canon wasn't used as a measuring stick of personal enjoyment.
I'm sure they are quite good. But the lofty status makes them unreachable to me, even as a fan.
I'm sure they are quite good. But the lofty status makes them unreachable to me, even as a fan.
Hellbores similar?
Aridas' shows why TOS ships were winners with separate reactors---a speed bump for FASA/SFB gaming purposes
Basically the navigation deflector weapon the Enterprise-D crew used on the Borg is a "Wave Motion Gun" style weapon.
Though the actual Wave Motion Gun is a planet killer/fleet killer depending on mode used (narrow beam to kill planet, wide to wipe out a fleet of ships...alternately use a preprogramed spread effect point to blast a hole through a moon, than have it spread out to destroy the fleet orbiting the planet beyond the moon, while missing friendlies also in orbit.
Though the actual Wave Motion Gun is a planet killer/fleet killer depending on mode used (narrow beam to kill planet, wide to wipe out a fleet of ships...alternately use a preprogramed spread effect point to blast a hole through a moon, than have it spread out to destroy the fleet orbiting the planet beyond the moon, while missing friendlies also in orbit.
Hellbores similar?
Aridas' shows why TOS ships were winners with separate reactors---a speed bump for FASA/SFB gaming purposes
The TOS Enterprise already had the ability to deliver almost the full power of its output in two beams all at once like a super weapon but it wouldn't be so fun to play as a board game.
In FASA and SFB, both games limited the amount of power (damage) that each beam weapon on a ship could deliver to the target. This helps to balance gameplay as you couldn't outright destroy a ship in one hit.
However in TOS we know that the amount of power that a dual phaser bank can deliver was limited to what all 4 phaser banks could deliver at once (which seems to be tied to the max output of the warp engines). The old Star Trek mainframe game's phaser mechanics got a lot closer to the TV series in that beam output was limited to the power available to the firing ship and whether it was more than the shields of the target ship. So reducing combat to those two numbers can be difficult to balance.
YMMV.
I never played FASA / SFB games (Those were before my time, I was too small to understand / enjoy them).
But having "Multiple Reactors" is going to become a common staple moving forward for many reasons IMO.
In my 26th century Head Cannon, it's already common throughout StarFleet.
In the late 24th and early 25th century, we see the huge advantages to having multiple reactors.
USS ProtoStar has 2x Warp Drives + GPC (Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment) Unit
Shinzons Scimitar having must either have multiple reactors or a really big reactor to power multiple shields + cloak + warp drive simultaneously, that takes a boat load of energy to operate all those simultaneously.
In my head cannon, the reason that StarFleet went from Ball Turrets to Phaser Arrays is while the individual Ball Turrets can output more energy than a single unit of a Phaser Array, the Phaser Array is networked to each other, so the the particle output is much greater since they can shunt all the energy out of a single Unit or split the firing amongst as many Phaser Array units as there are in each array. The maximum beams that can be fired simultaneously is limited by the array size, but usually that isn't necessary since there is rarely that many targets in the BattleSpace in most encounters.
The Phaser Array feature of splitting the beams into smaller individual but weaker beams would've been a HUGE asset to James T. Kirk of the JJ-Verse when encountering the Altamid Drone swarms.
Too bad that type of tech won't be ready for StarFleet until the 24th century.
Each Drone wasn't particularly powerful or tough, but he was slow to react and his Beam Turrets (While powerful individually, there just wasn't enough Turrets to fight a swarm attack in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands), something that Phaser Arrays can do since it can split the beams into as many as there individual phaser segment units.
The reason I think that the 25th century has both Phaser Arrays & Ball Turrets is that they realize that having both types of weaponry increases tactical flexibility along with targeting and damage distribution in a complicated multiple enemy type & many enemy battle field situation.
We saw that in the final battle of ST:PIC S3 with the USS Titan blasting away at the Borg Assimilated fleet.
If facing a giant swarm of small attack drones / fighters like the Altamid Swarm, you have the flexibility to attack both the swarm or a larger vessel depending on your tactical situation.
Phaser Arrays can originally be used for focusing damage on larger individual HVT (High Value Targets) and the Phaser Ball Turrets can be used to defend against incoming projectiles, fighters, shuttles, drones, etc.
If the amount of targets gets to be too many for the Phaser Ball Turrets to handle, they can reverse roles.
The Phaser Array can split to individual targets per Phaser Array Segment unit and wipe out the small drones / fighters / attack bits. The Phaser Ball Turrets can focus on the larger HVT (High Value Targets).
If the swarms gets large enough, both weapon types can be used to take out large amounts of small swarming vessels / drones / fighters / remote attack drones / bits / projectiles.
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I still have all of my originals from 40 (yikes!) years ago.
It's been a years since I played either, but i distinctly recall the weapons in the FASA game being more powerful - not one shot like we saw "Day of the Dove", but not SFB's death by a million cuts. I always preferred that since it seemed closer to what we saw in the show.
Part of the difference was how the two systems handled "shields". In FASA, the shields didn't hold up as well. In SFB - there were several methods to reinforce them and they generally had more raw strength.
Took less energy to power up - could be given specific reinforcement or general reinforcement etc...
Some of the weapons in SFB were quite capable of stripping the shields off pretty quick. The standard "Type R" Plasma torpedo was rather scary in the early rules.
Took less energy to power up - could be given specific reinforcement or general reinforcement etc...
Some of the weapons in SFB were quite capable of stripping the shields off pretty quick. The standard "Type R" Plasma torpedo was rather scary in the early rules.
There was a long, long time between TOS and TWoK. You don’t encounter a BoP, Orion attacker, Tholians, a Doomsday Machine, Fesarius, etc etc, and not learn something. And that is just one starship. A 2285 Reliant has to be considerably different from a 2265 Enterprise. Maybe not insanely different, but it should be purpose driven and have tools developed from what has been learned to fulfill its purpose.
There are different types of phasers over in the Star Fleet Universe.
Type-I and type-II phasers are "medium-calibre" types seen on ships; a phaser-1 is essentially a phaser -2 with an improved fire control mechanism. Type-III phasers are lighter types seen both on ships and on smaller craft, such as attack shuttles. While type-IV phasers are only seen on bases - or on the occasional extra-galactic "monster ship", such as those of the Juggernaut Empire.
However, there is a species native to the SFU called the Borak, who developed distinct phaser-based heavy weapons. Or rather, they would have done, had they not been reduced to the status of a subject species by the Hydran Kingdom during the Early Years era.
The Borak megaphaser is not quite as powerful as a phaser-4, and has a restricted firing arc. To mitigate against this, the Borak install their megaphasers on turrets.
The Borak phaser cannon is essentially three phaser-2s stuffed into the weapon mount space needed for two; it is somewhat cheaper in terms of energy requirements, however.
The Hydrans, of course, are no strangers to new and exciting phaser types, as they were the ones to deploy the Gatling phaser: no less than four phaser-3 mounts stuffed into a single phaser-1-sized weapon mount!
Type-I and type-II phasers are "medium-calibre" types seen on ships; a phaser-1 is essentially a phaser -2 with an improved fire control mechanism. Type-III phasers are lighter types seen both on ships and on smaller craft, such as attack shuttles. While type-IV phasers are only seen on bases - or on the occasional extra-galactic "monster ship", such as those of the Juggernaut Empire.
However, there is a species native to the SFU called the Borak, who developed distinct phaser-based heavy weapons. Or rather, they would have done, had they not been reduced to the status of a subject species by the Hydran Kingdom during the Early Years era.
The Borak megaphaser is not quite as powerful as a phaser-4, and has a restricted firing arc. To mitigate against this, the Borak install their megaphasers on turrets.
The Borak phaser cannon is essentially three phaser-2s stuffed into the weapon mount space needed for two; it is somewhat cheaper in terms of energy requirements, however.
The Hydrans, of course, are no strangers to new and exciting phaser types, as they were the ones to deploy the Gatling phaser: no less than four phaser-3 mounts stuffed into a single phaser-1-sized weapon mount!
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