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Tired of Enterprise D not using their firepower

Riker was suffering from acute impotency of shields, one he could not explain, so should he risk firing torpedoes at point-blank ranges? The shields would probably have held just fine against Riker's own weapons, but he couldn't know that.

My Gosh! I find myself agreeing with Timo! Riker couldn't fire torpedo's because in his mind his shields weren't working and the "splash back" could have hurt him as much as the Klingon ship.
 
At the end of Yesterday's Enterprise (in an actual war) I always felt they were too lackadaisical/deliberate about how they were using weapons.

"Adjust heading" or "new course" instead of "fire every damn thing we've got".

The upgraded E-D in AGT made a better showing for itself.

Yeah, they seemed a little hesitant even thought they had *3* Klingon ships attacking them.

It's funny, but I was just thinking the other day (I'm in the middle of watching Season 6), how little space battles we've seen.

I mean, I get it, this is the 24th century. But it still would've been nice to see the Enterprise vanquish a villain.

Has there been a space battle by this point in this series since Best of Both Worlds? (Aside from the odd, singular phaser blast here and there.)

In fact, now that I think about it, I was always disappointed that the E-D and the badass Romulan warbird never went mano-a-mano, at least that I recall.

I remember thinking that the Romulan warbird looked ultra menacing and may even kick the Enterprise's ass, so I'm disappointed we never got to see a full on, drag out battle between the two. All we got were ominous decloakings and the occasional blowing up of a freighter.
 
Hmm. There was lots of firing in "Arsenal of Freedom", showing that targeting is everything, and firepower without targeting is wasted effort.

Then there was "Yesterday's Enterprise", and "Survivors", but that's pretty much it.

Doesn't mean the E-D didn't get to strut her stuff. A single phaser beam is often all it takes to vanquish the enemy. And why split your firepower between several weapons when you apparently can pump it all through that single beam?

Timo Saloniemi
 
Would you get good performance with your Chief Engineer constantly staring at your vital stats? (And telling about them to two ugly Klingon broads?)

Timo Saloniemi
 
Riker was suffering from acute impotency of shields, one he could not explain

He swore this had never happened to him before.

Well, performance issues, it's not uncommon. One out of five...

Would you get good performance with your Chief Engineer constantly staring at your vital stats? (And telling about them to two ugly Klingon broads?)

He was just having a bad night. On the other hand, that 'coolant leak' sounds like a very convenient excuse for his inability to perform when it would've counted the most...
 
In fact, now that I think about it, I was always disappointed that the E-D and the badass Romulan warbird never went mano-a-mano, at least that I recall.

I remember thinking that the Romulan warbird looked ultra menacing and may even kick the Enterprise's ass, so I'm disappointed we never got to see a full on, drag out battle between the two. All we got were ominous decloakings and the occasional blowing up of a freighter.

We finally would have gotten that in Generations until they dumped the scene for a high-seas officer promotion instead. We didn't get to see Galaxies in pitched battle until DS9 unfortunately.
 
I honestly never liked the design of the Galaxy Class, but it would have been nice to see it open up some hurt on a bad guy.
 
It's sort of like the Worf Syndrome. Take your toughest, meanest character, and let him get his butt kicked to show how strong he is.
 
In fact, now that I think about it, I was always disappointed that the E-D and the badass Romulan warbird never went mano-a-mano, at least that I recall.

I remember thinking that the Romulan warbird looked ultra menacing and may even kick the Enterprise's ass, so I'm disappointed we never got to see a full on, drag out battle between the two. All we got were ominous decloakings and the occasional blowing up of a freighter.

We finally would have gotten that in Generations until they dumped the scene for a high-seas officer promotion instead. We didn't get to see Galaxies in pitched battle until DS9 unfortunately.

Absolutely. Early story break-downs had the Enterprise arriving to rescue the Armagosa observatory from an attack, flying heroically into battle and scaring off the Romulan ships. Maybe it's just as well that this scene got cut, though, as it would've made the 1701-D being taken down later by some lame-ass century-old Klingon P-O-S seem like even more of a kick in the gut. :lol:
 
The worst example was in Generations. The Enterprise was getting its ass handed to it by a rundown Bird of Prey, and their only return fire was a single phaser shot. They were too busy talking about plasma coils.

This of course was the height of ridiculousness. Riker fires one shot at an obsolete BOP whose shields probably aren't operating at maximum efficiency. Then Riker, after 7 seasons of being brilliant and strong, does pretty much everything else he can wrong and is only saved by a combo of Worf's obscure knowledge and Data's ability on how to use it.

Depending on the power of the weapon firing on it, shield longevity is variable. If it's some podunk ship with low powered weapons, sure the shields can hold all day long. But, as we've seen in many instances, if they are hit enough with strong weapons, they'll eventually collapse.

It's like a WWII battleship with heavy armor. If you fire at it with machine guns and other low caliber weapons, you may cause superficial damage and kill anyone exposed to it, but you can fire for years and you're not going to penetrate the armor around it's most vulnerable parts. But if you're another battleship with 16 inch guns, you may not hit it on the first or second shot in a fatal way, but eventually if you keep firing you're going to pierce it's armor and destroy or sink your opponent.

Riker's first order should to have been to open up with everything possible and keep firing until the shield collapse and then blast those a holes to hell. It may nave taken a minute or so, but it would have happened soon. Plus while the BOP was taking all of these hits with it's shields up the impact of the Enterprise fire would have been shaking the living hell out of the BOP possibly causing systems to fail and making it very difficult to accurately target the Enterprise.

But no Riker became an idiot and turned profile, exposing a much larger target and then showed the warp engines as he ran away and the Enterprise D was lost as a result.
 
While the Klingon weapons could penetrate the Enterprise's shields, I wonder what would have happen if the Enterprise rammed the BOP with it's shields?

:)
 
lol this thread reminds me. I was watching a DS9 battle sequence last night where a Galaxy class ship was involved, and it showed it firing phasers from multiple phaser emitters at the same time. I remember being somewhat stunned, as I can't recall that happening in TNG.
 
Rikers a joke.

That's some deep thinking there...

lol this thread reminds me. I was watching a DS9 battle sequence last night where a Galaxy class ship was involved, and it showed it firing phasers from multiple phaser emitters at the same time. I remember being somewhat stunned, as I can't recall that happening in TNG.

"Best of Both Worlds", the Enterprise fires from multiple emitters while also launching torpedoes. :techman:
 
Well and they really never make it that clear how many beams the linear phasers can fire at a time, with very few exceptions the answer always seems to be: one. (Until Nemesis of course when the Enterprise E, at the end of the TNG series, finally shows they can fire multiple beams from the same phaser strip.

On paper the linear phaser seems great, you can fire in almost any direction and move your shot if the target moves. But the fact it seems like it can only fire one beam actually makes it seems far less advanced than the fixed phasers on the Refit 1701, in terms of quantity of fire (I'm not talking how powerful it is, I'm sure the beam in TNG is much more powerful than TOS).

So the Refit Enterprise has 18 individual phasers in what appear to be 9 banks of 2. There are 3 banks of two on the upper and lower saucer in the front and both sides. There are two banks of two under the stardrive section, although it looks like it could be one bank of four. And there is one bank of two above the shuttle bay. So assuming the banks fire together, like battleship guns where one fires the other fires as well, and if the enemy is obliging enough to attack from all the correct positions, the refit Enterprise can engage up to nine enemy ships at the same time, not counting photon torpedoes and fire 18 phaser beams.

The Enterprise D has 5 strips I think. One on the upper and lower saucer, two under the warp engines and one at the bottom stardrive section. So going by the evidence that they can only fire one beam at a time, although the beam can move, that means the Enterprise-D (again not counting photon torpedoes) can engage 5 enemies at the same time and fire 5 beams at once.

Again in terms of quantity of fire it seems going from 9 banks with 18 total beams to 5 banks with 5 beams is a HUGE decrease.

If the Refit Enterprise were attacked by two ships from the front and both sides of the saucer...It could return fire at all six at once. If the Enterprise-D was it looks like they could only fire back at two ships. In fact I thought one of the coolest things the Enterprise ever did in TOS films was when it let Reliant have it with its portside lower phaser after they almost collided and the Reliant fired and destroyed the torpedo bay.

Until that point it seemed like the only direction the Enterprise could fire was forward, I know budget limitations in TOS made it impossible to show multiple attack angles. I just thought it was cool that when they did the refit the designers (The real ones, not starfleet) thought to include weapons in multiple places in case the enemy wasn't always so obliging to attack head on.

Just seems to me the advantages of the linear phaser strips on the D are negated by the fact that they only fire one beam at a time.....unless Picard just never bothered to unleash 5 or 6 beams from it like the E did in Nemesis.
 
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