Technoloigies that could've been used as weapons.

[Vanyel]

I put this in this forum because it deal with Trek technologies, however it also deals with the Dominion War, so if it has to be moved please move it.

What technologies could the Federation have employed as weapons during the Dominion War?

Things like Project Genesis, the Soliton Wave or whatever Dr. Timicin used to try to reignite a star would have made great weapons to use. Granted they all would be WMD's, possibly even genocidal. The Federation was on the losing end of the War for a good while, and only escaped by a form of divine intervention.

Genesis, even as a failure, could have destroyed Dominion and Cardassian plantery bases, possibly even orbital facilities.

The Soliton Wave could have been used in much the same way. In TNG a runaway Soliton Wave would have wrecked plenty of damage to the planet it was headed towards. A Soliton Wave could have been used to destroy fleets or planetary bases.

Timicin's star reigniting could also have been used to destroy plantes and all the bases in a star system.

Again these are all WMD's and if they were used at all, it would only have been used if the Prophets hadn't intervened.

Aside from those, were there any other technologies that could have been used?

 

[Christopher]

Well, in general, any powerful space drive is potentially a weapon of mass destruction. Heck, slam a runabout into a planet at half the speed of light and it can cause an extinction-level event. ST has a tendency to overlook the true destructive potential of transportation technologies.

And that includes transporters, though not on the WMD level. Any mechanism that has the ability to disintegrate anything completely and quickly has obvious weapons applications. We've even seen (on VGR) that transporters can dematerialize entire shuttlecraft, effortlessly overcoming the atomic bonds of even their densest component materials. If transporter beams can do that, wouldn't they be incredibly effective disintegrator rays?

Sure, sure, you'd need to bring down the enemy's shields first, but afterward, watch out. And there have been cases where methods for beaming through shields have been devised, or where a script that mistakenly included beaming through shields (I'm looking at you, "Caretaker") implies the existence of such methods.

Aside from disintegration, it amazes me that we've virtually never seen anyone batter down a ship's shields and then beam its crew into space, or beam away its antimatter containment field generators, or something of the sort. Too many TV writers assume that the only things that can be used as weapons are those that are explicitly established as weapons. And those weapons are only as powerful as the script requires, so that no matter how advanced phasers or torpedoes or whatever allegedly become, they're just about as effective as their predecessors, or as just throwing rocks as the case may be.

 

[Vanyel]

Christopher said:
Aside from disintegration, it amazes me that we've virtually never seen anyone batter down a ship's shields and then beam its crew into space, or beam away its antimatter containment field generators, or something of the sort. Too many TV writers assume that the only things that can be used as weapons are those that are explicitly established as weapons. And those weapons are only as powerful as the script requires, so that no matter how advanced phasers or torpedoes or whatever allegedly become, they're just about as effective as their predecessors, or as just throwing rocks as the case may be.

Well in the Trek-verse, to use transporters, you have to drop your own shields. That'd leave you open to any type of last ditch all or nothing attack. So it might be too much of a risk unless you can transport through shields. If you can transport through shields though, you most likely would have destroyed your enemy by transporting a bomb or other explosive onto the other ship.

 

[Timo]

...Indeed, one could argue that the phaser is merely the transporter sufficiently "dumbed down" so that one doesn't have to drop one's own shields or otherwise engage in finesse. It's a coarser version, optimized for disintegrating the target, but still capable of acting as a fairly conventional transporter when need be (say, in "Macrocosm" where Janeway uses it as a long range hypodermic needle, or in "Siege of AR-558" or "Change of Heart" where the Jem'Hadar transport poisons with their beams).

That was the other project 22nd century Earth scientists worked on, after obtaining the general secret of transporting from Vulcans. Man-rating the thing was of secondary concern...

As for starships being used as hypervelocity bullets, perhaps treknology inherently renders that unworkable. We have seen tractor beams grab onto things with significant speed differential, defying any Newtonian effect on the emitter end. It might be trivially easy to stop a charging starship with tractor beams or their relatives the shields, unless said ship was also doing something active about defeating those defenses.

Also, the very means by which the starships originally defy Newtonian rules might deprive them of kinetic energy. A runabout accelerating to near-lightspeed on impulse drive might have the momentum of a near-lightspeed speck of dust. One would have to use some sort of a more conventional drive system to accelerate the projectile without depriving it of inertial mass, or whatever the impulse engine normally does.

As for flare techniques, both Timicin and Seyetlik seemed to require a very special star in order to play their magic. The flare created by Martok and Worf's ship in "Shadows and Symbols" seemed to be more generic, though...

Genesis would be workable, but one'd think a soliton wave could be dispersed the same way our E-D heroes dispersed it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

Timo said:
As for flare techniques, both Timicin and Seyetlik seemed to require a very special star in order to play their magic. The flare created by Martok and Worf's ship in "Shadows and Symbols" seemed to be more generic, though...

Genesis would be workable, but one'd think a soliton wave could be dispersed the same way our E-D heroes dispersed it.

Timo Saloniemi

The Soliton wave was stopped before it became to big to disperse. So if it were deployed far enough away that by the time it entered Cardassian space it was to large to disperse, it could have been a tremendous weapon.

Soran's method to destroy a star could have worked as well.

Who is Seyetlik?

 

[Timo]

One wonders if the soliton wave could be stopped at all, past that crucial point. What good is a weapon that destroys half the galaxy?

Soran's secret seems to have died with him. No wonder the Borg were interested in his species: not only can a seemingly random scientist (janitor?) from their species blow up stars, he can render an antiquated Bird of Prey invincible, capable of destroying a Galaxy class vessel... I doubt anybody in the Federation could duplicate his achievements.

While Timicin wanted to prolong the life of his homestar, Seyetlik was an ambitious terraformer from DS9 "Second Sight" who wanted to reignite dead stars. He managed to make a cold, dead lump of, uh, something shine brightly with fusion again, by suicidally flying his ignition device into that lump in a shuttlepod. Neither method would be likely to have the same effect on a random star, say, our Sol.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

Timo said:
One wonders if the soliton wave could be stopped at all, past that crucial point. What good is a weapon that destroys half the galaxy?

Timo Saloniemi

Good point.

Timo said:
While Timicin wanted to prolong the life of his homestar, Seyetlik was an ambitious terraformer from DS9 "Second Sight" who wanted to reignite dead stars. He managed to make a cold, dead lump of, uh, something shine brightly with fusion again, by suicidally flying his ignition device into that lump in a shuttlepod. Neither method would be likely to have the same effect on a random star, say, our Sol.

Timo Saloniemi

I just don't remember that episode. I'll have to dig out my DS9 DVD's.