The Vengeance Phasers

[Timo]

...Which means the Vengeance is a bad idea, because if not for her, we could believe that Starfleet indeed builds all its ships to be as tough as technologically possible.

As matters stand, Marcus apparently felt that it would be a good idea to throw away the Enterprise like so much garbage. Apparently, ships like her had no role to play in the upcoming war, beyond the symbolic casus belli one.

Does this mean the Enterprise was markedly weaker than the older types we saw in the first nuMovie? Or does it mean Marcus had several next generation ships already completed and waiting for use, making all the older types and not just the Enterprise useless? Was this because Klingons had for their part done some recent upgunning that outdated the bulk of Starfleet? Or did Marcus simply feel that fifty modern ships was better than fifty modern plus a couple of hundred older ones?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I figured it's some sort of artificial gravity lensing effect.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-mimic-gravitational-lensing.html

If that doesn't work, when in doubt, just BS it by saying "something something something subspace."

See, if you fire these phasers while at warp, they will be attracted to the next closest ship, never to the ship firing them, unless the second ship reverses the polarity of the neutron flow of it's shields, at which point the phasers are then attracted back to the firing ship.

 

[Kemaiku]

It's a wonder no one ever thought to make shields in such a way that they were "coated" with particles that reacted like a repulsion layer to nadions (if you believe the manuals) so that phaser beams or pulses simply dissipated entirely on impact, no real energy loss.

I mean, it's not like they don't bullshit stuff like that every week.

 

[Tarek71]

...Which means the Vengeance is a bad idea, because if not for her, we could believe that Starfleet indeed builds all its ships to be as tough as technologically possible.

As matters stand, Marcus apparently felt that it would be a good idea to throw away the Enterprise like so much garbage. Apparently, ships like her had no role to play in the upcoming war, beyond the symbolic casus belli one.

Does this mean the Enterprise was markedly weaker than the older types we saw in the first nuMovie? Or does it mean Marcus had several next generation ships already completed and waiting for use, making all the older types and not just the Enterprise useless? Was this because Klingons had for their part done some recent upgunning that outdated the bulk of Starfleet? Or did Marcus simply feel that fifty modern ships was better than fifty modern plus a couple of hundred older ones?

Timo Saloniemi

Well I can certainly buy that, being a Heavy Cruiser, the Enterprise could be overwhelmed by a far more heavily armed and armored dreadnaught/battleship. We could regard the Vengeance as something like HMS Dreadnaught was in 1906: a revolutionary vessel that redefines big gun warships.

We just have Khan saying that Marcus dreamed of a militarized Starfleet, and that Vengeance is one of the few ship designed solely for combat. That makes it sound like a ship like Enterprise could have been made alot stronger. Not that it could beat a battleship, but that it could have been a much stronger cruiser than it was, and that this non-militarized Starfleet is somehow holding back on the combat capabilities of their ships. Difficult to believe given the real threats to the Federation that exist.

 

[Timo]

Khan dreaming up new weapons and tactics for Marcus smacks of Hitler approving or even suggesting weird and impractical stuff for his military... The Vengeance might have brought new and cruel weapons to play, but that doesn't necessarily mean she would be a better warship in any practical sense.

Remember, once again we get treated to a plot where the enemy gets the drop on Kirk and beats his ship to submission before any "proper" battle can be begun. Might be that if Kirk had fired the first shots against a similarly unprepared and overconfident Marcus, the Vengeance would have folded like so much cardboard! The supership has the better warp engines to her credit, but the Wunderwaffen might be next to useless in ship-to-ship combat and optimized for terrorizing, demolishing, pillaging and other such goals that Khan would find strategically important.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hartzilla2007]

We just have Khan saying that Marcus dreamed of a militarized Starfleet, and that Vengeance is one of the few ship designed solely for combat. That makes it sound like a ship like Enterprise could have been made alot stronger. Not that it could beat a battleship, but that it could have been a much stronger cruiser than it was, and that this non-militarized Starfleet is somehow holding back on the combat capabilities of their ships.

Thats becuase regular Starfleet ships have science labs, and explorationy things in them which need space which means less room for more guns.

The Vengenace being a purely combat design does not have any of these exploration based things and as such can fit more equipment for combat stuff especially since its twice the size of Starfleet's newest heavy cruiser class.

 

[Timo]

So she's a bigger target.

We really have to wonder about shields in this new timeline. Are they of any significance? Would a bigger ship be able to embark more powerful shield generators that actually made a difference in battle? If not, then there's little point in loading up with extra guns - even a rather barebones armament suffices for reducing a shieldless ship into a wreck in no time flat in the new movies, and if "shields" isn't that much better than "no shields"...

In the Kobayashi Maru simulation, shields made all the difference. And supposedly shields is all that separated the doomed cadet ships and the Enterprise in the first new movie. But shields played no role worth a dialogue mention in the second one...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hartzilla2007]

We really have to wonder about shields in this new timeline. Are they of any significance? Would a bigger ship be able to embark more powerful shield generators that actually made a difference in battle? If not, then there's little point in loading up with extra guns - even a rather barebones armament suffices for reducing a shieldless ship into a wreck in no time flat in the new movies, and if "shields" isn't that much better than "no shields"...

I think its safe to say they would have included more shield systems as part of the pure combat package since survival would kind of be important to that, plus extra armor to take hits if the shields went down, lets not forget the Vengeance survived 72 photon torpedoes going off inside of it.

Honestly I have to wonder why people keep trying to play the Enterprise vs Vengeance fight as a possibly even fight, considering its a heavy cruiser fighting a dreadnought.

I'm pretty sure a dreadnought will kick a heavy cruiser's ass in a fight.

 

[Timo]

lets not forget the Vengeance survived 72 photon torpedoes going off inside of it.

...Torpedoes Khan had specifically prepared not to explode. They contained his beloved crew, after all - and their one known property, established in the hands-on and hands-in studies of McCoy and Marcus, was that of not exploding!

And certainly the explosions we saw were feeble for weapons intended to kill "John Harrison": if the idea was to precision-kill this "rogue agent", then one torpedo would be plenty, so supposedly Kirk was told to carpet-bomb much of the Ketha Province, and that wouldn't work with weapons as impotent as 2000 lb HE bombs. So it seems that while Khan lied to the Admiral about the fuel load of those torps, he also lied about their warhead lethality.

So it seems the torps were duds, and the explosions possibly came solely from whatever nasty stuff Spock put in there when removing the frozen supermen. Not quite "photon torpedo standard" by the looks of the ultimate effect...

Honestly I have to wonder why people keep trying to play the Enterprise vs Vengeance fight as a possibly even fight, considering its a heavy cruiser fighting a dreadnought.

Or a "dreadnought class" vessel, at any rate. Might be a heavy cruiser of Dreadnought class for all we know.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kruezerman]

Impotent 2000lber HE?

Torpedoes not meant to explode?

Feeble explosions?

Wut.

 

[Trekkin]

Timo likes to discuss their personal head-canon.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[Tarek71]

We just have Khan saying that Marcus dreamed of a militarized Starfleet, and that Vengeance is one of the few ship designed solely for combat. That makes it sound like a ship like Enterprise could have been made alot stronger. Not that it could beat a battleship, but that it could have been a much stronger cruiser than it was, and that this non-militarized Starfleet is somehow holding back on the combat capabilities of their ships.

Thats becuase regular Starfleet ships have science labs, and explorationy things in them which need space which means less room for more guns.

The Vengenace being a purely combat design does not have any of these exploration based things and as such can fit more equipment for combat stuff especially since its twice the size of Starfleet's newest heavy cruiser class.

Presumably Starfleet would have warships though. Khan makes it sound like only a fanatic militarist and war monger like Marcus would think it useful to have ships designed to fight.

Of course ships can be designed to be multirole. Convertible spaces for different equipment, etc. But the implication is that Starfleet mostly makes ships weaker than they could make them. And have virtually no warships of any kind for self defense. Instead, these weaker science and exploratory ships have to be the ones to fight off invasions and other threats. That's hard to believe.

 

[Ithekro]

Vengenace was reportedly designed to take on Klingon fleets by itself. Ships like Enterprise and the previous designs were likely quite capable of taking on individual Klingon ships or perhaps even small groups of them. But not masses of them.

Basically, Marcus has a "Dreadnought" built in the 1906 sense of the word. A ship that makes all previous ships obsolete in war. The problem with these types of ships (as the British found out) was that while it makes all your enemies ships inferior to your new monster ship, it also makes all your own ships obsolete. This means that if your enemy starts to build "dreadnoughts" of their own, they can now keep pace with you, if prior to that you had superior numbers over them (like the British had over Germany, and everyone else on the planet before 1905).

However, just because one build dreadnoughts, does not mean the cruisers go away. They have theor purposes. While Marcus' Dreadnought can be crewed by a tiny crew, they are likely expensive to operate and resupply. Also if they have few of the more general purpose sensor systems that a heavy cruiser has for exploration work, than the dreadnought is not very useful for patrol work. Also putting that much firepower on the border could spark a war. If not that, than a major arms race.

The heavy cruisers of the world were the ones that did things most of the time. Before the dreadnought, the older battleships and armored cruisers were more or less the same save the battleship had bigger main guns and thicker armor. But both could be used for gunboat diplomacy. USS Maine (circa 1898) was actually an armored cruiser by function rather than a battleship.

For Starfleet, a new ship like Enterprise is designed potentally for long ranged independent operatons. Be than military or exploration. The five year mission seems to be a new thing to be implimented with the new heavy cruiser class as operated by Captain Kirk. Marcus' dreadnought, might not be able to operate that long on a mission, but be designed for short term, brutal operations into Klingon Space. Present a huge target that can devastate large numbers of Klingon warships, and bases, and it will draw the Klingons to it, in order for them to prove their honor in taking it out. Even if the Klingons manage to stop it, they would have diverted a uge amount of assets to stop a few Dreadnoughts while the older and newer Starfleet cruiser slip in and attack now under defended parts of the Empire. Or the fleet hits Q'onoS while the Klingons are chasing the dreadnoughts around the sector.

 

[Timo]

On the theme of "feeble explosions", I suggest visualizing. First, see the torps inside the Vengeance go kaboom. Then, see Ketha Province. See "John Harrison" sitting there somewhere in the middle. Now figure out how big each of those 72 explosions has to be in order to get Harrison.

We are talking about strategic nuclear weapons as the lower limit here. Every single blast needs to be big enough to take out the entire Vengeance and the Enterprise all on its own, if a pattern of 72 is to cover the desert in sufficient lethality. That is, unless the torps can actually locate and hit Harrison. but then there would be no need for 72 - one would suffice, two would be making sure, three would be immense overkill, even if their warheads were as feeble as that thing that went bang when McCoy and Marcus fumbled the opening of that one torpedo.

Sure, the torps actually going off inside the dreadnought might still qualify as weapons of war. But they definitely aren't up to the task Admiral Marcus told Kirk they would be up to. The real question about the torpedo capabilities then goes, is Marcus lying, or being lied to..?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[dswynne1]

On the theme of "feeble explosions", I suggest visualizing. First, see the torps inside the Vengeance go kaboom. Then, see Ketha Province. See "John Harrison" sitting there somewhere in the middle. Now figure out how big each of those 72 explosions has to be in order to get Harrison.

We are talking about strategic nuclear weapons as the lower limit here. Every single blast needs to be big enough to take out the entire Vengeance and the Enterprise all on its own, if a pattern of 72 is to cover the desert in sufficient lethality. That is, unless the torps can actually locate and hit Harrison. but then there would be no need for 72 - one would suffice, two would be making sure, three would be immense overkill, even if their warheads were as feeble as that thing that went bang when McCoy and Marcus fumbled the opening of that one torpedo.

Sure, the torps actually going off inside the dreadnought might still qualify as weapons of war. But they definitely aren't up to the task Admiral Marcus told Kirk they would be up to. The real question about the torpedo capabilities then goes, is Marcus lying, or being lied to..?

Timo Saloniemi

Disagree, considering that Marcus insisted that the torpedoes be used on Q'onos, and most likely had them weaponized just enough to a) kill Khan, and, b) cause enough damage on the planet to force the Klingons to war (which is what Marcus wanted). I doubt that the armament itself was anything special (certainly not Quantum Torpedoes), but what have enough explosives integrated in the warheads to do the trick. The Vengeance did indeed take quite a pounding, though not enough to stay space worthy.

 

[Timo]

Marcus insisted that the torpedoes be used on Q'onos, and most likely had them weaponized just enough to a) kill Khan

But that's just it - for this task, he needs strategic nuclear weapons or then a precision-guided firecracker. Those 72 torpedoes, when going off inside the Vengeance, are visibly neither. That is, they aren't even strong enough to blow up each other (each explodes on its own), and the fact that there are 72 speaks loudly against precision.

Marcus wanted the Klingons angry. I'm not sure whether he wanted Khan dead, too, although that would be a nice bonus. Any type of ordnance, including duds, would probably do the Klingon-angering trick, so what we saw would be in line with what Marcus wanted. It wouldn't be what Kirk expected of the torps (i.e. certainly not enough to kill "John Harrison"), but nobody cared what Kirk expected anyway.

Yet crucially, it wasn't what Khan expected, either - and Khan was the one man with the power to decide what the torpedoes would really be like. We can interpret the scene where Khan blows a fuse when seeing the torps go off in two ways:

1) he never expected Spock to have the guts to blow up the torps and kill the 72 supermen, or
2) he never expected the torps to be capable of exploding and killing the 72 supermen.

Somehow, it would be more satisfactory to think that Khan was unprepared for Spock's ability to make the torps explode even though Khan had built them to be duds, rather than to think that Khan never in any way prepared against the fact that the torpedoes he had designed to be capable of exploding might actually explode...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Hard to believe that the missiles are just extremely long range cruise missiles. Though maybe thats all they are. I assume that they could have had antimatter or nuclear warheads instead.

Clearly, Marcus just wanted a war with the Klingons so I suppose even low yields would do the trick . But since he does want to kill Klingons, it would make more sense to have warheads that really would do some damage. Radiation maybe? Chemical or biological? Something more than a few dozen smallish bombs in the middle of nowhere.

 

[F. King Daniel]

According to screen graphics, the torpedoes had a yield of 320 isotons (which I believe is more punch than the DS9 manual says Quantum torpedoes pack) and an explosive range of 300,000 km.
http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Advanced_long-range_torpedo

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

300,000km?

That would devastate half the planet's surface, even assuming Q'onos is a good deal bigger than Earth.
Jupiter has a radius of only 70,000km!

 

[Tarek71]

Maybe that meant 300,000 sq km. A little larger than the state of Arizona.