Rough analysis of Plasma Torpedo vs Phasers performance characteristics (TOS: Balance of Terror)

[publiusr]

This thing may be more real than I imagined
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER

The plasma projectiles would be shot at a speed expected to be 3000 km/s in 1995 and 10,000 km/s (3% of the speed of light) by 2000. A shot has the energy of 5 pounds of TNT[Note 1] exploding. Doughnut-shaped rings of plasma and balls of lightning exploded with devastating thermal and mechanical effects when hitting their target and produced pulse of electromagnetic radiation that could scramble electronics, the energy would shower the interior of the target with high-energy x-rays that would potentially destroy the electronics inside.[5]

 

[Henoch]

Probably can't be used in the atmosphere, so, it must be a space based weapon to take out satellites or for ship to ship battle .

 

[Deks]

I don't know what changed, but on-screen during 24th century the phasers are not used while in warp. Only torpedoes.

Except for in DS9 when a runabout fired phasers on Jem'Hadaar attack ship while at Warp?
Or in Voyager 'Message in a Bottle' when a SF ship (Nebula class) fired phasers during Warp at the USS Prometheus?
Or when the Prometheus fired back with phasers at a Nebula class and disabled it shortly after (also at warp)?

Sparse examples but they are there.

At any rate, I see no issues with Phasers being fired at warp.
Those things should have a range of 300 000 km (and the ability to reach that distance in 1 second), but at warp, I'd imagine they'd need to be fired either while relatively close to another ship at Warp, or the crew would just extend the Warp field around the Phaser beam (which might not be necessary, since visually, the ships are always within a spitting distance of each other while doing that anyway - even though technically, they are supposed to be tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of km away).

The torpedoes are Warp capable (heck even Slipstream capable as Voyager fired them at slipstream while chasing the Dauntless). I suspect that like with most things in Trek, the Federation excels at 'field control'.
This is why technically you can go to full impulse 'backwards', or why in TOS the Enterprise was able to Warp in reverse.
Warp and Impulse engines are nothing but subspace field generators operating at different wavelengths... and therefore, by manipulating the field itself around the ship, it allows you pretty much omni-directional travel... but for the most part, the forward part of the ship is facing forward, whereas any other way of using the engines is usually discouraged unless its absolutely necessary.

Its possible that while technically doable/feasible, SF discourages the use of technology like this in the 24th century as its more health and safety oriented (not saying they weren't in the 23rd, but its possible they simply increased the safety protocols - even Torres had to make a lot of changes to Voyager because they fell outside the 'safety zone' of SF parameters).

So, with torpedoes and phasers, it would be pretty much the same.
Since SF can manipulate subspace fields to such a fine degree, it stands to reason they can extend them around phasers so they could be used at Warp.

 

[publiusr]

Probably can't be used in the atmosphere, so, it must be a space based weapon to take out satellites or for ship to ship battle .

I wonder. Wiki also has, in their “non-lethal weapon” section...a mention of an “electro laser” and “Pulsed Energy Projectile”