Phasers in TOS and then the later generations.

So can you give an example ffs?

Even a single one would help ffs.

Timo Saloniemi ffs

 

That's not what you said. You said they were surprised when the other side didn't use stun settings. That's a different matter altogether.

I mean, how is it a disadvantage to use stun settings against an enemy using kill settings? Unless the battle lasts long enough for the stun to wear off, it should make no difference; an unconscious person can't fight any better than a dead one can. And a phaser stun disables a foe just as instantaneously as a kill shot, unlike a more realistic tranquilizer dart or taser.

Despite the way many tough-guy action movies choose to portray things, in real-world military and police rules of engagement (at least when applied properly), the standard is to use the minimum necessary level of force, and not to escalate to a higher force level until circumstances require it. So that's not a matter of "surprise," it's a matter of doing things the right way.

 

That's what I said
I did not say I was surprised, I said I was intrigued as to why our guys would think aliens would have their weapons on stun just because "we" did
As for giving you just one example ffs, we both know perfectly well there are many examples of a redshirt buying it while our boys are pussyfooting around on "stun"
Using the minimum necessary force should not be an option in a life or death situation
I suppose we're never going to agree

 

You're the expert on all things Trek
See my post above

Delta Vega ffs

 

It was Tuvok. He always keeps his phaser set to "professional"

 

Where did you see "our guys" assuming the opponent was supposedly employing stun?

 

My mistake! But clearly it was the most logical setting.

 

It would be nice, especially with the insistence upon greater lore building and consistency it would be nice for such rules to be established, especially with a stun setting readily available.

 

Anyway ,what might be a stun setting for one species might be a killing blow for another.
As usual when firearms are brought in to play the consequences can be unpredictable and dire.

 

True -- not just between species, but between individuals as well. Fictional stun weapons are unrealistically consistent in their effect. In real life, the same dose might only daze a big, strong, resistant person while killing a smaller, more susceptible person. That's why tasers and the like are referred to as reduced-lethality weapons instead of nonlethal weapons.

I posited in one of my Trek novels or stories that phasers have feedback sensors that calibrate the intensity and duration of the beam for each person struck, helping to explain the consistent stun effect. Although that wouldn't work for wide-field stun, which might be why it's so rarely used after TOS.

 

I like the idea that vaporizing would take far more energy, so they have to conserve their ... ammo in a major firefight, so they just do chest burns.

 

There also might be an element of, vaporizing an enemy would make the kill unidentifiable and destroy anything of value they might be carrying. And the moral element of wanting the families of the victim to have closure. Having thousands of unidentifiable casualties would be emotionally torturous for the family, having that faint possibility open maybe their loved one is still alive.

Also leaving a smoldering wound is all gritty and stuff.

In Frame of Mind, at least in Riker's conception of how powerful a phaser is, a phaser on maximum setting would destroy half a building.

 

The problem with phaser "vaporization" is that in reality, that much mass turning into vapor all at once would mean a huge, instantaneous increase in volume, which is exactly how an explosion works. Instead of glowing and disappearing, a vaporized person would go up in a massive explosion with devastating effect on its surroundings. The TNG Tech Manual tries to handwave this with a throwaway line about disintegrated matter "phase-transitioning out of the continuum," i.e. basically leaving the universe and ending up in some other plane of existence. I actually got a story ("Loved I Not Honor More" in Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change) out of exploring the question of where the vanished matter actually went -- and, since it was a Quark-centric story, whether there was a way to monetize it.

 

As well as a ridiculous amount of energy. One paper calculated approximately 2.99 gigajoules, or roughly 3/4 of a ton of TNT levels of power. So, yeah, explosion, not vanishing.

 

I don't remember red shirts being killed because Starfleet used a stun setting. Since stun uses less energy than vaporize, phasers on stun would disable more enemies before using up their energy, and possibly could fire faster and disable more enemies per unit of time. An example of a redshirt dying because of stun setting would presumably be someone who was killed by a previously stunned enemy who recovered enough to kill the redshirt.

Please provide examples of "phasers on stun" resulting in redshirt deaths.

ON the contrary, the minimum necessary force is the only amount of force to use. Using less than the minimum necessary force leads to failure, while using more than the minimum necessary forces is a crime.

 

Maybe the "vaporization" actually transfers the matter into a pocket dimension. I believe that's Marvel's explanation for everything.

Kor

 

*cut to universe full of every character who's ever been "vaporized"*

"Huh, they got you too?"

 

"Seems so. Just like they said in training... Not too bad, I guess. Although, umm, what's all this stuff we're swimming in?"
"Not everybody uses the whole-body vaporizing setting..."

Whether stun really uses less energy is debatable, though. Might be the bad guys avoid stun exactly because it's such an energy hog? I mean, if single stun shots assuredly drop the target (as they do in all of TOS and DSC, even if the results in TNG era vary), Klingons would love to adopt that - they get the insta-kill effect that their own regular guns provide, plus the chance to torture the victim afterwards!

Timo Saloniemi

 

"Where did they go?"