The Wrongs of Starship Design (TOS Version)

[Herkimer Jitty]

In TOS, the biggest fault was the Constitution class' neck. It was so thin that GOD forbid the shields went down because you could fire a torpedo or two and it would sever it. What is that? It should've been thicker. And in TMP, the pencil thin neck housed the warp core! It should've been as thick as the torpedo launcher housing so it wasn't such an obvious target

Photon torpedoes are immensley, insanley over-the-top in terms of explosive power. You can't seriously believe that thickening the neck would have any difference in unshielded combat.

Submitted for your consideration: You are building a house in a warzone. Will building the house wider and taller protect it against being bombed?

 

[Praetor]

From a Treknological standpoint, you could argue that the refit-style phasers onward had more sophisticated targeting systems that had a good chance of actually hitting the mark when a specific smaller target or subsystem was desired.

But I agree with the point that it does seem a bit silly from a combat viewpoint.

 

[Timo]

It might be a doctrinal choice: captains could be trained to fly optimally close to the enemy to deliver maximally deadly precision blows, even at risk of exposing themselves to enemy fire - just as they were trained in the age of sail. Staying well clear of the enemy and firing from maximum range is the invention of the age of steam, and of rifled cannon, and it's largely a coincidence that the age of missiles follows the same rules and not e.g. the sail rules or yet another set.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tigger]

I suppose it depends on the adversary. United States Naval doctrine since WWII has been to use carrier-based aircraft to engage targets at long distances away from the fleets themselves. To counter that threat, adversaries had to develop long-range anti-ship missiles to be able to engage prior to coming under attack from the air wings themselves (often who had their own standoff weapons, increasing the distance they could engage an aggressor away from their own fleet).

The alternative was to create stealthy submersible platforms (diesel-electric) to get within close enough range to engage with "point blank" weapons like torpedoes, though at the risk of being easily detected post-firing and being engaged and destroyed.

 

[kent]

In TOS, the biggest fault was the Constitution class' neck. It was so thin that GOD forbid the shields went down because you could fire a torpedo or two and it would sever it. What is that? It should've been thicker. And in TMP, the pencil thin neck housed the warp core! It should've been as thick as the torpedo launcher housing so it wasn't such an obvious target

Photon torpedoes are immensley, insanley over-the-top in terms of explosive power. You can't seriously believe that thickening the neck would have any difference in unshielded combat.

Submitted for your consideration: You are building a house in a warzone. Will building the house wider and taller protect it against being bombed?

I agree that the photon torpedo's are extremely powerful. This said though, the defense AGAINST photon torpedo's logically have the ability to protect against a photon torpedo strike. Example: In the Undiscovered Country the Enterprise gets a torpedo through its hull. Taking into account the immense power of a photon torpedo, the damage was fairly localized. Instead of a GIANT portion of the hull being ripped apart, there was a generally small puncture through the primary hull.

That said, leaving the neck so thin is STILL a bad idea. Granted the damage would be localized, but the warp core is INSIDE the neck, and would probably be breached. A few more torpedo's, assuming the warp core is now moved to a safer locality, and you could sever the neck entirely.

The neck should be thicker to accomodate that possibility. And the warp core shouldn't be INSIDE the neck. DUMB DUMB DUMB.

 

[Praetor]

In TOS, the biggest fault was the Constitution class' neck. It was so thin that GOD forbid the shields went down because you could fire a torpedo or two and it would sever it. What is that? It should've been thicker. And in TMP, the pencil thin neck housed the warp core! It should've been as thick as the torpedo launcher housing so it wasn't such an obvious target

Photon torpedoes are immensley, insanley over-the-top in terms of explosive power. You can't seriously believe that thickening the neck would have any difference in unshielded combat.

Submitted for your consideration: You are building a house in a warzone. Will building the house wider and taller protect it against being bombed?

I agree that the photon torpedo's are extremely powerful. This said though, the defense AGAINST photon torpedo's logically have the ability to protect against a photon torpedo strike. Example: In the Undiscovered Country the Enterprise gets a torpedo through its hull. Taking into account the immense power of a photon torpedo, the damage was fairly localized. Instead of a GIANT portion of the hull being ripped apart, there was a generally small puncture through the primary hull.

That said, leaving the neck so thin is STILL a bad idea. Granted the damage would be localized, but the warp core is INSIDE the neck, and would probably be breached. A few more torpedo's, assuming the warp core is now moved to a safer locality, and you could sever the neck entirely.

The neck should be thicker to accomodate that possibility. And the warp core shouldn't be INSIDE the neck. DUMB DUMB DUMB.

But via your own example, the Enterprise must have been able to localize the damage done via torpedo by some means, or torpedoes just aren't as powerful as we think.

Either way surely Chang would have shot through the neck next if he wanted to finish them off. Jitty's point that shieldless combat is an entirely different scenario must apply though, given the very design of the Enterprise and other ships with thin pylons that could surely be shot through with a few direct torpedo volleys. Star Trek ships must be in-universe designed the way they are for a reason, even if it doesn't make sense to 21st century minds. It is just a TV show.

 

[Timo]

Example: In the Undiscovered Country the Enterprise gets a torpedo through its hull. Taking into account the immense power of a photon torpedo, the damage was fairly localized. Instead of a GIANT portion of the hull being ripped apart, there was a generally small puncture through the primary hull.

On this specific point, I would argue that Chang's torpedoes were exceptionally weak. After all, they had to be rare custom jobs: designed to imitate Federation torpedoes, and to knock out the artificial gravity of Gorkon's ship without harming Chang himself who supposedly was aboard at that time. Whether Chang himself arranged for those torpedoes to be made, or Cartwright shipped him some Fed hardware, odds are that they couldn't be loaded with enough oomph to do actual deadly damage.

Which suited Chang fine, because he thought that he was hunting for Kirk in an exclusion zone where nobody could come to Kirk's assistance. From the safety of his cloak, he could afford to nibble Kirk's ship do a slow death - an act that would also give him sadistic pleasure, as he was the villain of the piece and they always go for that sort of stuff.

A standard green BoP torpedo would probably have caused a light show of a wholly different sort. If ST3:TSfS, ST5:TFF and ST:GEN are any indication, those torpedoes aren't particularly destructive, either - but they might be ideal for disabling the target ship, and thus very suited for a small raiding vessel, a role that fits the stealthy BoP like a glove.

All that said, we also witnessed low-yield Federation torpedoes in action in ST2 (the ones that Khan uses to tickle Kirk, and the one that destroys Khan's torpedo pod) and ST5 (the one that the ship fires to fry God in His lair). But I'd still like to believe that this was because there was a good tactical reason to use low yields in those cases, and that the torpedoes could be loaded with a much more destructive yield if need be.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

All that said, we also witnessed low-yield Federation torpedoes in action in ST2 (the ones that Khan uses to tickle Kirk, and the one that destroys Khan's torpedo pod) and ST5 (the one that the ship fires to fry God in His lair). But I'd still like to believe that this was because there was a good tactical reason to use low yields in those cases, and that the torpedoes could be loaded with a much more destructive yield if need be.

The tech manuals do say that torpedo yields are variable for the Federation, at least.

Of course, not everyone is going to shoot to disable, so max yield still equals buh-bye.

 

[Timo]

Agreed. But one might argue that antimatter is expensive in a battle. It took some trouble to obtain even small amounts of it in episodes like "Obsession" and "Peak Performance" despite there being a fully fueled starship available. Perhaps moving antimatter from the tanks of the propulsive system to the tanks of the torpedo loaders is very slow, and the tanks of the loaders very small, for safety reasons?

That is, if the enemy hits the main propulsion system, it's kaboom time for the entire ship. But if a hit pierces that far, it's kaboom time anyway. In contrast, a torpedo launcher in the heat of battle might suffer minor damage or malfunction even when shields are still up and the ship is otherwise protected - and if that happens, one wants the damage or malfunction to be survivable. Hence small tanks and a bottleneck in antimatter delivery to the torpedoes.

That in mind, even the bloodlustiest skippers would load their first torpedoes with very little antimatter, in case those torps missed. After sufficiently many hits had been scored on the enemy, he would have been slowed down, and the next volley would be loaded with more oomph as it had better odds of hitting. Only when the enemy was brought to an unshielded standstill would the final torpedo be loaded with a demolition-level warhead yield, similar to the one that vaporized the entire USS Lantree with one shot.

Timo Saloniem

 

[DaveyNY]

... - and how often do we hear "target their engines", or "target their weapons"? - then you're going to turn the yield down or use a smaller gun....

Actually, I've been thinking about this lately and I can't recall them ever saying that in TOS at all. Sure, this sort of thing WAS said numerously in TNG+ but when in TOS? Can you cite an example?

First time I remember it being said was in TFSF, and that was a fairly unique case where a cloaked ship WAS going out of its way to disable the Grissom, and doing so at nearly point-blank range. (And, of course, utterly failed to do so, blowing it up accidentally in the process.)

Of course, we know full well that Khan did it too, again, under somewhat unusual circumstances since he wanted a surprise attack and deliberately wound the Enterprise so that Kirk would suffer.

But I can't think of a time in TOS at all where you see that. (Largely because TOS writers were war veterans and the absurdity of 'target their bridge!' wouldn't even enter their minds. It's not how ships did battle, and these guys knew it first hand!)

I really love reading all this technical stuff you guys post...

Just one question...

... When did they rename Trek III: ... The Fucking Spock Fiasco..???

 

[kent]

Photon torpedoes are immensley, insanley over-the-top in terms of explosive power. You can't seriously believe that thickening the neck would have any difference in unshielded combat.

Submitted for your consideration: You are building a house in a warzone. Will building the house wider and taller protect it against being bombed?

I agree that the photon torpedo's are extremely powerful. This said though, the defense AGAINST photon torpedo's logically have the ability to protect against a photon torpedo strike. Example: In the Undiscovered Country the Enterprise gets a torpedo through its hull. Taking into account the immense power of a photon torpedo, the damage was fairly localized. Instead of a GIANT portion of the hull being ripped apart, there was a generally small puncture through the primary hull.

That said, leaving the neck so thin is STILL a bad idea. Granted the damage would be localized, but the warp core is INSIDE the neck, and would probably be breached. A few more torpedo's, assuming the warp core is now moved to a safer locality, and you could sever the neck entirely.

The neck should be thicker to accomodate that possibility. And the warp core shouldn't be INSIDE the neck. DUMB DUMB DUMB.

But via your own example, the Enterprise must have been able to localize the damage done via torpedo by some means, or torpedoes just aren't as powerful as we think.

Either way surely Chang would have shot through the neck next if he wanted to finish them off. Jitty's point that shieldless combat is an entirely different scenario must apply though, given the very design of the Enterprise and other ships with thin pylons that could surely be shot through with a few direct torpedo volleys. Star Trek ships must be in-universe designed the way they are for a reason, even if it doesn't make sense to 21st century minds. It is just a TV show.

Well the original idea was to keep the primary hull away from systems that emit high levels of radiation. Presumably TOS had less sheilding technology than TNG times. Also, noting the repeated use of "subspace drag" in the shows, subspace seems to have resistence against starships. If this is the case, a primary hull upwards and fowards of the secondary hull would reduce subspace drag by directing the flow of subspace above the ship, and below the ship where it doesn't hit the secondary hull slowing the ship down. This also supports why ships that are modern with no neck have such long primary hulls like Voyager...to compensate for the fact there is no neck in subspace allowing subapce to miss the secondary hull completely. The deflector shields would form around the shape of the existing hull, so they would be dependent on the shape of the hull.

I still don't completley buy the low yield torped idea. they seemed strong enough to punch through shields and we have no way of knowing how strong the hull of the Constitution was against a direct torpedo attact. BUT, going with the shields of the E-A being brought down by a few torpedo's, i'm gonna say they weren't low yield. I'm still going with the hull was a strong enough countermeasure to localize the damage. That said, the torpedo went througha few decks with relative ease, so a few torpedo stricks on that thin as a rail neck would be devestating. if they had to have one for whatever reason, and they HAD to put the warp core inside it, it should've been as thick as the torpedo cowling and had a little more armor than the rest of the ship did.

 

[trevanian]

The torp that goes up through the ship in TUC doesn't even detonate, it just goes through like a cannonball. That was the shot's design according to ILM art director Bill George, and that is what I see in the movie.

If you accelerated a rock up to a certain speed, its kinetic energy would either expend itself vaporizing against a hull or punching through it, and that is what I see happening with the torp, it is basically a fast rock thrown through the E. If a torp of any size went off INSIDE a ship, there wouldn't have been anybody alive in the saucer. Matter/antimatter=big boom, right?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Especially a matter/antimatter explosion inside the hull. First, everyone and everything gets flash-fried, just before the entire ship explodes a few milliseconds later.

 

[Timo]

So, a lucky dud? An easy and neat solution to that one.

BUT, going with the shields of the E-A being brought down by a few torpedo's, I'm gonna say they weren't low yield.

A good argument as such - but "a few shots" has always been enough to create localized trouble with shields, bringing down a specific sector.

We should note that in this case, Chang has fired at least four torps (the ones explicitly seen, but there is charring on the hull in spots these torps wouldn't have reached, and the interior scenes also suggest more hits) when we get our first glimpse at the shield diagram, and overall strength is at 70%. When that strength indicator goes to zero, then, we could assume that Chang has fired dozens of torpedoes already - more than it takes to finish off starships in the usual case.

By that time, the digital clocks on the bridge are blissfully dead, so we can't really judge how long the fight took. "Long enough for the President of the UFP to take the podium after Azetbuhr" is our only good indicator - and you know how long-winded politicians usually are...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

You could explain that the cloaked BOP was unable to accurately detonate its torpedoes on impact or penetration, and hand wave some tech-babble involving the cloak, sensors, and what not. It's also possible that Chang was still trying to cut through the Enterprise's extremely mighty shields first, before delivering a killing blow.

As for the torpedo yield, I had speculated that the anti-matter aboard a torpedo actually also powers the 'warp sustainer' field, allowing the thing to keep at Warp speeds for a little bit after they're shot. The down-side, of course, is that the longer the torp is going out, the more the 'powder' is being used for transit, and the less yield the explosion will be.

 

[Timo]

Agreed on the latter - but this time, we see basically the entire run of the torp, and it's not a particularly long one...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kent]

Torpedo's do use its payload for its fuel. but what doesn't make much sense to me is the torpedo running through the ship like a cannon ball...torpedo's are supposed to detonate on contact per computer. What would be the purpose in puncturing a seemingly unimportant part of the primary hull??

And the photon torpedo wouldn't neccissarily (i can NEVER spell that word right.) destroy the entire saucer or kill everyone on it. If the Photon torpedo has been around as long as they say it's been, then adequate structural defenses have also logically been around as well. Keep in mind that a ship can travel at almost lightspeed with an intact hull and be around natural phenomenon and it's hull remains intact. Structural integrity fields and the metals behind starship frame and hull construction are probably VERY strong. Remember in a TNG episode where Ensign Ro defected to the maquis, she fired a direct phaser shot into a port warp nacelle, but it did absolutely NO damage because the SIF fields were in place on that nacelle, albeit rearranged.

The photon torpedo going through the hull was probably contained VIA SIF fields and hull armor of some sort. Again, it makes no sense that the torpedo would barrel through the hull like a cannon ball. They are designed to detonate on contact. I've seen the movie too, and to me it looks like the torpedo exploded inside the ship, but the movement of the torpedo dragged the explosion through the ship and the resulting hull breach was the ass end of the explosive path. I saw nothing re-entering space from the upper primary hull that resembeled a torpedo.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, if the thing was a dud, and if it didn't come out...

Uh-oh.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jamestyler]

What would be the purpose in puncturing a seemingly unimportant part of the primary hull??

Fun. Enjoying the power you have over your enemy, playing with him knowing you can take him out at any time.

In TUC Chang's not fighting, he's playing a game that he thinks he's already won. Which is exactly why I love the sequence.

 

[Praetor]

What would be the purpose in puncturing a seemingly unimportant part of the primary hull??

Fun. Enjoying the power you have over your enemy, playing with him knowing you can take him out at any time.

In TUC Chang's not fighting, he's playing a game that he thinks he's already won. Which is exactly why I love the sequence.

Bingo.