phasers - why only short bursts?

[Timo]

"Near-misses" from photon torpedoes might be less effective than one first suspects. We supposedly had one in ST2, where Khan "explains" to Kirk that going to the nebula isn't what he really wants; there was no damage in evidence. Perhaps the only way to cause damage with explosive devices is to "insert them into the shield matrix" by at least a few millimeters, thus causing shockwave-like feedback in the shield similar to how a HESH warhead rips apart metal armor?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS KG5]

Didn't Picard explicitly tell Worf to pool resources between all three ships to the purpose of getting meaningful triangulation from the ranging shots, and then automatically targeting by that? One would assume all of Worf's torpedoes were targeted and fired on the basis of this pooling of combat automation systems.

Not sure whether you are replying to me - what Picard says is "co-ordinate our attacks with the Valdour's tactical officer" which can be interpreted many ways. Triangulation is great for positioning but cannot help much with determining course over and above one ship's attacks.

However a computer link enabling information from every weapons hit from all three ships to be used for targetting the weapons of all three ships with very little delay would help a great deal.

They probably just didn't need to maneuver much even when they could; high-gee corkscrewing would not have improved the results, and thus its absence doesn't establish that midcourse steering was absent.

I agree with this - the torpedo would lose so much momentum in a sharp turn it would stand no chance of a hit.