torpedo vs missile.
- Thread starter Albertese
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It's speculation in the sense that I don't think the phrase "torpedo shields" or whatever has ever been on television or in a movie, but it's common sense that the torpedo would need something to protect it at high velocities in the same way that the ships do. Combined with the fact that they glow, it's a gimme.
It seems that was specialized equipment for mounting on probes to perform unusually detailed studies of various gaseous anomalies. They gambled that this special equipment, if launched into the vicinity of the clearly-nearby-and-busily-taunting Bird of Prey, would be able to pick up gaseous emissions from it that the Enterprise could not. I'm not particularly surprised that a specialized external piece of science equipment could pick up this trail a bit better than the mothership, considering at that moment Enterprise was at combat readiness and had high-performance shields and deflectors and jamming and all sorts of things hampering her sensor returns. There was also probably a bit of luck involved in terms of the torpedo happening to encounter enough of the "trail" to find its source.
Omega_Glory
Commodore
The glow could be anything; especially SFX for the viewer. 
Most torp shots that I've seen are pretty slow...no high velocity apparent.
If speed is the only req for a shield, then shuttles have them too?
Your'e probably right about the gas sniffing torp.
Most torp shots that I've seen are pretty slow...no high velocity apparent.
If speed is the only req for a shield, then shuttles have them too?
Your'e probably right about the gas sniffing torp.
The glow could be anything; especially SFX for the viewer.
Well of course, but if we start saying that, then where's the point in debating the tech? I'd argue that we only 'ignore' things that we can't find a good explanation for, and here we seem to have a good explanation here.
Torpedoes are explicitly stated as being the warp-capable tactical system of a starship. In 'Q Who' the Enterprise-D unleashes aft torpedoes while fleeing the Borg at high warp. 'But, Praetor,' you say, 'aft torpedoes at warp might not mean they're actually firing them at warp.' A better exaple can be found in 'Equinox' the Voyager fires torpedoes while pursuing the Equinox at high warp, destroying her port nacelle and forcing her to drop from warp. The torpedoes Voyager fires would have to go faster than either ship was going to actually impact the Equinox. There are numerous other examples, but I'd rather not dig to find them.
Phasers aren't supposed to work at warp, yet occasionally they have.
Shuttles do have shields. I remember seeing the 'shield flare' effect in an episode when one was fired on. Presumably they are as proportionally strong as the size of the ship in question allows.
I think JNG is. Presumably, the science sensor that Spock and McCoy installed replaced some basic guidance system, making this a 'smart torpedo' or a 'probepedo' even. Surely there was some tradeoff for installing the equipment, or else Starfleet didn't normally deem torpedoes worthy of 'smart' equipment. Likewise, there must be some reason that the Enterprise could not detect the trail yet the torpedo could.
I'd still argue that the latter, TNG-era torps are much 'smarter' than the TOS/TOS movie counterparts based on what we've seen them do.
No, but it's a logical and almost necessary inference, given how trivially easy it would otherwise be to shoot one down with laser or particle beam weapons.
I always suspected any guidance would have to be internal. Jamming's been inconsistently portrayed on Trek, but it happens frequently enough that I'm sure there's an integral guidance system.
Praetor said:
Yeah, what's the deal with that?
Strangely, you'd think the warp field itself would be a starship's most powerful weapon. A (gravitational? subspace? whatever?) field capable of bending spacetime would probably mess up anything that the field hadn't been specially calibrated to protect. Yet we don't have warp-torps.
I have no idea. Probably the same reason warp factors seem to be different speeds from time to time...
Strangely, you'd think the warp field itself would be a starship's most powerful weapon. A (gravitational? subspace? whatever?) field capable of bending spacetime would probably mess up anything that the field hadn't been specially calibrated to protect. Yet we don't have warp-torps.
[/quote]Yeah, agreed. There do seem to be weapons applications for that. I wonder if the 'subspace weapons ban' discussed in 'Insurrection' that included the warp core chasing bomb used by the Son'a also banned weapons of this type?
Well, the TNG Tech Manual takes a lot of flak for its comments on phasers at warp, but all it really says is that a phaser beam has something like a 25% chance of getting through a bunch of moving and interacting warp fields unimpeded, and that doesn't sound so hard to believe to me.
They may occasionally be deployed at warp when it is vital to disable a target instead of destroying it (as torpedoes would be more likely to do), even if landing the shots is tricky. Data's order to prepare phasers at warp in "Gambit" could be explained this way.
The DS9 TM says something to the effect that there's a recently developed ACB of some kind that allows phasers to be more usefully employed in the warp flight regime.
A lot of phase cannons at warp stuff on Enterprise was criticized; while they aren't the same as later phasers, we would probably not want to ascribe superior capabilities to the earlier phase cannons in this respect. But a lot of the appearances of phase cannons at warp on that show represented very close-range shots, like the Suliban darting in and out of point-blank range, and I have always wondered if this represented that they were essentially touching the warp fields together in quick attack runs and firing through the local disruption this created.
It seems like an interesting idea for a tactic, looks good on TV as the ships maneuver about, and more importantly, it might work to explain some of the "phasers at warp" uses in Trek that otherwise confound tech-minded viewers. Off the top of my head, it seems the Suliban were also usually working to disable or capture NX-01 rather than destroy it outright, so it might explain their use of the technique.
Phasers at warp makes perfect sense. Relativistically, a photon always travels at the speed of light from all reference frames, so if you're shooting at something 2 light seconds away, it doesn't matter whether you're at warp or not, the phaser will hit the target in two light seconds. The only weirdness is the symmetry break where you observe the target being struck by a phaser blast several seconds earlier than he does.
Now photons at warp don't need to be warp capable in any way shape or form. A "sustainer" engine is, in weapons usage, any propulsion system that "sustains" a projectile's velocity and altitude until it hits the target. In antiship missiles (basically, the analog of photorps) this is usually some kind of turbojet engine; for a torpedo this could be some kind of subspace driver coil like that found on a typical impulse engine, just enough to keep its initial launch velocity up until it hits the target.
Now photons at warp don't need to be warp capable in any way shape or form. A "sustainer" engine is, in weapons usage, any propulsion system that "sustains" a projectile's velocity and altitude until it hits the target. In antiship missiles (basically, the analog of photorps) this is usually some kind of turbojet engine; for a torpedo this could be some kind of subspace driver coil like that found on a typical impulse engine, just enough to keep its initial launch velocity up until it hits the target.
That's more or less what the Technical Manuals describe; it grabs a "handoff" warp field from the launching vessel and powers it with such a coil, drawing on the antimatter charge as a fuel supply. This does mean that torpedoes launched from a ship at sublight cannot get to warp themselves, and that torpedoes launched from a stationary platform like DS9 can't either. There remains the mystery of the high-warp probe that was launched to convey K'Ehleyr from Starbase 153 to the Enterprise-D in "The Emissary," but of course we did not see it launched; it is possible that it was launched from the vicinity of the starbase by some other means and not literally from a building or space station itself.
I had theorized that torpedo launchers functioned something like warp rail guns - accelerating the torpedo to warp speed, and then allowing the sustainer engine to take over after launch. Therefore, you wouldn't have to be at warp to 'siphon' the warp field for the torpedo.
That's possible, but in that case you'd never be able to see the torpedo flying through space; as soon as you fire it, it's already hit the target.
Personally I've always been kind of fond of the idea that torpedo launchers should be mounted in arrays just like phasers so the starship can boost its firepower by ripple-firing salvos of torpedoes like the missile swarms in Macross. Considering the way they're used, it almost makes no sense for phasers to be mounted in arrays anyway since only one emitter at a time ever actually fires.
Well, technically we shouldn't be able to see the ship at warp either. One might argue that photorps are only fired at warp when the ship is at warp, and are fired at subluminal speed otherwise. Or, that seeing them is merely a dramatic conceit.
An intriguing idea. I believe the reason given for phasers being arranged in arrays is that the the separate components can simultaneously build up a charge and follow moving vessels more easily than a rotating turret-style bank.
Not exactly. Jet fighters can actually fire at each other at ranges beyond 100 meters
Not exactly. Jet fighters can actually fire at each other at ranges beyond 100 meters
Your typical jet fighter has a longer effective range than the STATED ranges of most of the weapons in ENT.
Not exactly. Jet fighters can actually fire at each other at ranges beyond 100 meters
Your typical jet fighter has a longer effective range than the STATED ranges of most of the weapons in ENT.
Must be those damned Minovsky particles.
I never got the no phasers at warp thing. I always took it as a misinterpretation of TMP by later Trek Technologists.
Kirk fully intended to phaser the astroid in TMP and was stopped by decker NOT because of being at warp, but because the warp field was out of balance. He is VERY clear in saying that with the field out of balance it took the phasers off line since they shunt some of the power of the warp drive INTO the phaser banks.
So clearly phasers DO work at warp in Kirks time.
Kirk fully intended to phaser the astroid in TMP and was stopped by decker NOT because of being at warp, but because the warp field was out of balance. He is VERY clear in saying that with the field out of balance it took the phasers off line since they shunt some of the power of the warp drive INTO the phaser banks.
So clearly phasers DO work at warp in Kirks time.
Actually, torpedoes (at least current ones used on subs) receive telemetry from the firing vessel, but then home in on the target on their own using their own sonar and other guidance mechanisms. The torpedo may leave the launch tube connected to the sub by a wire, but at some point (could be immediately after launch or sometime before the wire reaches maximum length), the sub cuts the wire and lets the torpedo do its own guidance.
Originally, missiles were not guided by their own onboard systems. Heck, even today I am not certain that is the case. I believe they all receive telemetry updates (sometimes every few miliseconds) from a secondary facility (launch center, etc.). ICBMs only launched high enough to obtain orbit. After that, the warheads were unguided and had no thrusters to change course. They reentered the atmosphere based on mathematical calculations as to the angle the missile entered orbit (angle of attack), speed, etc.
Therefore, in the example cited above (Spock and McCoy during ST VI), the specialized sensor was necessary to send signals to the guidance system to hone in on the BoP.
Phasers aren't supposed to work at warp, yet occasionally they have.
Umm, why wouldn't they be "supposed" to work at warp? Nowhere in any onscreen incarnation of Star Trek has it ever been suggested that phasers wouldn't work at warp. Indeed, when ENT tackles the issue, our heroes are surprised and distraught when their newly installed phasers don't work properly at warp, like they were supposed to ("Fallen Hero"); the problem is corrected, and thereafter in Trek continuity(and both thereafter and before that in Desilu/Paramount/CBS continuity), phasers work just fine at warp, and are expected to.
That's a fine theory for describing the very first, very primitive Earthling phasers. However, Kirk's phasers worked perfectly well at devastating power across extreme ranges in "Balance of Terror"; the only concern that Sulu and Stiles had was that they weren't going to hit anything much at that distance (equal to two minutes of travel at emergency warp).
I wouldn't sweat the theory, then. Phasers could simply have the intrinsic property of possessing a range of speeds, depending on setting or perhaps input power: from low subsonic (as often seen for hand phasers) to high warp (as often seen in TOS). They would certainly not be limited to lightspeed, and indeed would virtually never operate at lightspeed. They aren't light, not by any onscreen description or definition, so they could just as well be a stream of exotic particles capable of warp speeds.
Timo Saloniemi
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