Photon Torpedos Free From Assault.

[ticktock]

In all the series nobody ever attacked a photon torpedo on it's way to the target,except that voyager episode in which the torpedeo had an A.I. system and had been specially augmented to destroy a whole planet.

Nobody ever fired a phaser on run of the mill standard photon torpedos fired from ships against other ships or used anti photon torpedoes,with the shields taking the full force and then said shields being rapidly depleted or penetrated.

This seems to be very poor battle tactics as even nowadays the French have deployed a system which destroys incoming Rocket Propelled Grenades against tanks,(see youtube video,the name of which I forget),and ships have either the phalanx close in point defense or anti missiles for incoming projectiles.

In Star Trek they never fired phasers at incoming photon torpedos or had anti-photon photons which makes them looks very inept and very stupid as it seems very careless with the expensive ship and all the lives on board.

 

[cultcross]

It does seem an oversight, although it's possible the photon torpedoes move too fast to be targeted - it's always seemed that the targeting system for Trek phasers is stupidly cumbersome and may be too slow reacting to lock on to a moving torpedo.

 

[Forbin]

Yet another area in which Babylon 5 was ahead of Trek. THEY had point defense weapons.

I've actually used phasers for torpedo defense in my unfinished fanfic, but that doesn't count.

 

[Timo]

It seems that Kirk tried to shoot down a torp in ST2:TWoK. And Worf shot down a Ferengi weapon that didn't seem different from a standard torp in TNG "The Price".

However, both times, the intended target of that torpedo was shieldless. One could very well argue that shields are a much better means of using the available energy than interception-phasers are. For one thing, allocating the power to the phasers risks missing the target, which then gets in scot free. Allocating it to shields means surefire defense.

Today, it's important to shoot down incoming projectiles because no armor can resist them. Also, aboard a naval vessel, the weight of a CIWS cannon is fairly insignificant compared with the weight one would have to carry if one were to armor the ship against incoming missiles. However, aboard smaller things like tanks, a CIWS cannon usually is prohibitively heavy - a possible analogy to the Trek case where power, rather than mass, would be the limiting factor. Moreover, Trek shields are much better than today's armor in stopping the biggest projectiles of the era.

Shooting down incoming torps would be like having a knight chop to pieces the incoming arrows. A tactically poor choice, as the knight would have to dedicate much of his strength and attention to the task and would soon tire out - whereas simply riding into the hail of arrows and trusting one's armor would bring quick victory against the archers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JNG]

In Star Trek they never fired phasers at incoming photon torpedos or had anti-photon photons which makes them looks very inept and very stupid as it seems very careless with the expensive ship and all the lives on board.

Well, you can play "I'm smarter than Trek!" or you can figure there's a reason why this isn't a common tactic in the fictional universe.

-Photon torpedoes are often deployed at warp speeds, which makes it awfully tricky to employ the phasers to stop them (for several reasons)

-For sublight uses of torpedoes, they are still supposedly accelerated to a very significant portion of the speed of light at launch, and we can imagine even FTL computing might have a hard time getting a phaser salvo or "anti-photon photon" out in front of that

-I don't know how a torpedo would stand up to a phaser beam, but a Starfleet photon torpedo is awfully glowy and made of duranium and terminium and whatnot, so maybe such weapons are robust and have a very high-intensity and short-duration force field to protect them (considering similar casings are used as probes in hazardous environments, this doesn't strain credibility)

-"Point phasers" wouldn't be much of an idea, since torpedoes would still be rather dangerous to the ship if detonated at even relatively close range and "anti-photon photons" would only make the energy release worse

If the phasers were used to stop an incoming missile like that, they'd have to get it while it was still pretty far away, requiring a high-powered precision phaser shot at a high-speed moving target with significant consequences for failure and, if the beam destroys the torpedo too late, the energy release still hits the shields quite hard. In this respect Timo makes a good point that the energy is often best allocated to the deflector shields instead of a stunt like that.

It's worth noting that this idea would apply much better to long-range space battles with heavier use of standoff weapons, and we don't see these very often on Trek (many of the battles in episodes are initiated by surprise attacks, the energy weapons are probably more effective at closer ranges, a larger ship versus a smaller would want to bridge the gap, and finally, viewers want the two ships close enough to see both at once =). Maybe some day a Trek will have a different sort of space battle which calls for revisiting this idea.

 

[Timo]

-Photon torpedoes are often deployed at warp speeds, which makes it awfully tricky to employ the phasers to stop them (for several reasons)

Yet Worf in ST:GEN was fairly confident he could intercept a warp torp fired from a random, unknown location when the thing wasn't even aimed at him but was going to speed past him along an unknown trajectory.

The problem of hitting torps probably wouldn't be insurmountable. And one doubts the armoring or other protection around a torp would withstand anything but the lightest phaser beams. But the problem of intercepting the thing for sure and at a distance would certainly exist. And if you devoted resources to point-defense phasers, the enemy could then devote his to firing a saturation volley that overwhelms the ability of your defenses to hit all the incomings - even if you have enough power to kill everything you hit.

In that latter case, you'd better run the rat race with shields than with CIWS phasers. It's only when the enemy's saturation attack has enough power to actually challenge your shields that you might consider either going for a combined CIWS/shields, or perhaps devoting most of your effort to evasion, or to firing the first volley.

It's a matter of choices regarding balances. Which is why we don't have tanks that move 180 km/h, or tanks that have two meters of titanium armor, or aircraft that shoot down incoming AA shells with dozens of small machine guns, even though such things could certainly be constructed if they really were key to victory.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

If Trek torpedoes worked as they were said they should work, then no one would get the chance to react really before a torpedo is shot away ... unless we are talking about distances of say a million km (at the least)

If a torpedo travels at warp speed to it's target, then the target would have a second or two to react and destroy the incoming torpedo (if they are at a distance of 1 million km).

A computer would be able to do that more effectively than a human since those are FTL computers to begin with.

At closer ranges such as 300 000 km (maximum phaser range) or less, it would be next to impossible to manually catch torpedoes because they would impact the target immediately after they were launched.
Only computers would be able to react fast enough at close ranges ... but even at a distance of 100 000 km, that would be hard to counteract.

It's also possible that Trek torpedoes utilize a system that prevents phaser locks most of the time.

Realistically though, nothing portrayed on screen that depicts visual representation of a Trek combat should be taken seriously (apart from 'Wounded' maybe and episodes in which actual huge distances between the ships were involved)

 

[-Brett-]

In all the series nobody ever attacked a photon torpedo on it's way to the target,except that voyager episode in which the torpedeo had an A.I. system and had been specially augmented to destroy a whole planet.

Nobody ever fired a phaser on run of the mill standard photon torpedos fired from ships against other ships or used anti photon torpedoes,with the shields taking the full force and then said shields being rapidly depleted or penetrated.

This seems to be very poor battle tactics as even nowadays the French have deployed a system which destroys incoming Rocket Propelled Grenades against tanks,(see youtube video,the name of which I forget),and ships have either the phalanx close in point defense or anti missiles for incoming projectiles.

In Star Trek they never fired phasers at incoming photon torpedos or had anti-photon photons which makes them looks very inept and very stupid as it seems very careless with the expensive ship and all the lives on board.

It might help to think of photon torpedoes as being more like artillery than missiles.

Most of the time they're used at close enough of a range, and they move fast enough that it hits almost before anyone knows it's incoming. Not really enough time to shoot it down in the middle of a fight.

 

[ticktock]

In all the series nobody ever attacked a photon torpedo on it's way to the target,except that voyager episode in which the torpedeo had an A.I. system and had been specially augmented to destroy a whole planet.

Nobody ever fired a phaser on run of the mill standard photon torpedos fired from ships against other ships or used anti photon torpedoes,with the shields taking the full force and then said shields being rapidly depleted or penetrated.

This seems to be very poor battle tactics as even nowadays the French have deployed a system which destroys incoming Rocket Propelled Grenades against tanks,(see youtube video,the name of which I forget),and ships have either the phalanx close in point defense or anti missiles for incoming projectiles.

In Star Trek they never fired phasers at incoming photon torpedos or had anti-photon photons which makes them looks very inept and very stupid as it seems very careless with the expensive ship and all the lives on board.

It might help to think of photon torpedoes as being more like artillery than missiles.

Most of the time they're used at close enough of a range, and they move fast enough that it hits almost before anyone knows it's incoming. Not really enough time to shoot it down in the middle of a fight.

Wit computers thinking in picoseconds already it seems Star Trek is in danger of being surpassed by present day technology.

The Trophy anti artillery and other similar systems coming in to use soon the above argument would seem to be spurious.Computers by that time would think in femto second time frames.