For example, in "Balance of Terror", after the hair-raising flight from the plasma weapon, Kirk opens up with phasers against an enemy he just fled from for more than a minute at "emergency warp". The phasers are effective at this range that must amount to light-minutes at the very least, and more probably is light-hours or even light-days.
If the Romulan ship were in pursuit that would account for the incident. I believe it was firing from the same range every time, as based on how much time the Enterprise had to react each time, so it would fit.
Yet in the big fight of "Way of the Warrior", a single phaser blast vaporizes a BoP, but four torpedo hits are needed to turn a battle cruiser into shrapnel...
That was a blast from DS9 which should be extremely powerful, there's also an instance where a single volley from a BoP destroys a BoP, but it was caught off guard. I believe that's when Dukat had a BoP as his ship for some reason.
Dominion Bug/Jem'Hadar Fighter
6 Quantum Torpedoes from Defiant - destroyed - First volley broke wing off, second volley causes two small explosions, third volley blew the ship up - "Valiant"
That's a major aberration, and the officers were of decidedly poor quality.
Cardassians
Galor Class Cruiser/Destroyer (Before the Dominion were a full threat, the Galor was called a cruiser. After the Dominion came it was called a destroyer.)
- Secondary Weapon 1 s duration - "Sacrifice of Angels"
- One volley of torpedoes (# of torpedoes unknown) from the U.S.S Phoenix (Nebula Class) - destroyed - "The Wounded"
- 9 shots from five Federation Fighters - disabled - "Sacrifice of Angels"
- 3.8 seconds of continuous fire from 2 Galaxy Class ship, maintaining at most two beams between them for most of the duration - twice only one beam is firing briefly - disabled - "Sacrifice of Angels"
- 12 BoP(?) shots and a Klingon torpedo - destroyed - "Sacrifice of Angels"
- 2 torpedoes from DS9 - survives - "Call to Arms"
- 1 torpedo from DS9 in various instances - survives - "Call to Arms"
- 6 vollies from BoP - had previous damage and before we see these shots Gul Dukat says [Shields are failing] - survives - "The Way of the Warrior"
- 6 vollies from BoP - survives - "The Way of the Warrior"
- 2 unknown from BoP - survives (Dukat: Our engines are gone, our shields are down, and we have no weapons to speak of.) - "The Way of the Warrior"
-- That's 12 to 14 shots take down their remaining shields.
- [Dax: Dukat's ship is under fire, I don't know how much longer they can hold out.] - survives - "The Way of the Warrior"
- 9 volleys from Bird of Prey in roughly 3 seconds - survives - "The Way of the Warrior"
- Last we see the particular Galor in "The Way of the Warrior" it has somewhat large sparking fires and without being fired on blows up just as the Defiant leaves.
Keldon Class Cruiser
- 3 beams from Jem'Hadar Fighter (third hit blows up the small bow saucer) - disabled - "The Die is Cast"
- 18 volleys from Defiant in 3 seconds - only 3 volleys at the very end appear to actually hit - The Keldon being a cruiser is mentioned at least once in the episode. - (Unknown: Direct hit on the Cruiser's port nacelle. Their shields are down by 30%.), there is a significant explosion on the last hit that causes the Keldon to veer out of control. - "Defiant"
-- Each volley did 10% damage to the shields, assuming it was only 3 volleys that hit.
- (Thomas Riker: Quantum Torpedoes, full spread. Fire.) 4 quantum torpedoes fired, the first two explode in proximity, under the ship, knocking it around a bit. The second two hit the tail and knock the ship hard. (Helmswoman: Their defense systems are off line and they lost main power.)
-- If we take it as all equal, then the Quantum torpedoes were 2.5X stronger than the Defiant's phaser volleys. That doesn't even take into account that the first hit was in proximity by several tens of meters, which would greatly reduce its damage, meaning its yield is higher.
- (Gul Dukat: Those are faster than any Keldon Class ships I've ever seen.) In reference to the Obsidian Order ships at warp chasing the Defiant. The Galors were shown to be equal to or slower than the Defiant, since the Galors were never able to catch up to the Defiant in a straight warp chase.
Cardassian Defense Station
6 Quantum Torpedoes - destroyed - "Tears of the Prophets
"
Klingons
Neg'Var
- 1 torpedo from DS9 - survived - Way of the Warrior
Vor'Cha Class Attack Cruiser
Three quarters of a second shot with tenth to twentieth of a second delay before next shot. Two shots in a row seen. - Way of the Warrior
- 2 torpedo from DS9 - destroyed - Way of the Warrior
-- It can be assumed off screen damage lead to this event
- Unknown by unknown from Cardassian Defense Station - disabled/destroyed - Tears of the Prophets
- 1 torpedo from DS9 - survived - Way of the Warrior
- 1 torpedo from DS9 - survived - Way of the Warrior
- 5 torpedo from Cardassian Defense Station - survived - Tears of the Prophets
K'Tinga
Half second beam shot with half second delay before next shot. Or tenth second shot with tenth second delay, three in a row. Two half second shots seen in a row. - Way of the Warrior
- 5 torpedo from DS9 - destroyed - Way of the Warrior
- 1 bow, 1 port nacelle, 3 ventral starboard main hull. The first causes an explosion the size of the bow hull, the second causes none, the third and fourth causes explosions as large as the aft hull, and the fifth completely passes through the hull without exploding.
Bird of Prey
- 2 volleys of two bolts each from other Bird of Prey to presumably unshielded hull - destroyed - Apocalypse Rising
- 1 beam from DS9 - destroyed - Way of the Warrior
-- Kira: "Eight Klingon ships destroyed, several heavily damaged."
- 1 torpedoes from Cardassian Defense Station - destroyed - Tears of the Prophets
- 3 torpedoes from Cardassian Defense Station - disabled - Tears of the Prophets
- 4 volleys from Defiant - Destroyed - "The Way of the Warrior"
- 5 volleys from Defiant - Survives - "The Way of the Warrior"
- 1 torpedo from Ds9 - destroyed - Way of the Warrior
- 1 torpedo from Ds9 - destroyed - Way of the Warrior
Generally, a torpedo in flight looks so impressive that it's nice to have several. OTOH, Trek has established the pattern of every ship in the TNG era only ever firing one beam at a time, and generally sticks to that. This biases the combat record somewhat!
DS9 and TNG both have ships firing multiple beams simultaneously. I believe in the battle to reach DS9 before the Dominion fleet cross the wormhole we see a Galaxy or two firing two beams at a time at a Galor in passing. In Voyager the ship has fired two beams at once, rearward, from both top arrays. There's also the scene where the Enterprise-D fires everything it can at the Borg cube in Best of Both Worlds.
https://youtu.be/fAlwQ8XRZTo?t=16s
https://youtu.be/fAlwQ8XRZTo?t=1m14s
https://youtu.be/fAlwQ8XRZTo?t=3m37s
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net...ision/latest?cb=20070722155533&path-prefix=en
I don't think we ever saw a quantum torpedo kill in DS9 (because this time, a pulse phaser burst actually is visually more impressive than a torpedo launch). And a volley of four just slightly dented a Keldon in "Defiant", and was the weapon of choice for Tom Riker when he intended to disable rather than kill. Also interestingly, quantum torpedoes are freely used at close ranges, suffering from none of the angst associated with photon torpedo proximity detonation. It could be argued quantums are either markedly weaker than photons by default, or then at least more easily scaled down to very low yield levels than photons are.
The quantum torpedoes did much more than dent the Keldon class ship, as seen above.
Photon torpedoes are used without minimum range limits throughout the various series. It's only early on that it is any sort of issue, then it is forgotton. In Voyager someone shoots at a shuttle hovering over a city, they use torpedoes which hit the ship's shields and the the building it is closest to takes no damage at all. It is the episode where the Kazon's slave master race is introduced.
But in "The Maquis", those fighters made the biggest impact when using their beam weapons, either the steerable bow phaser emitter or the pulse-firing wingroot cannon. Torpedoes had little effect on Sisko's runabout team. And torpedoes in "Sacrifice of Angels" also had little or no effect: besides producing those gasoline explosions against the hulls of Galors, they created no known damage and were considered a nuisance that only had a psychological effect on the Cardassians. A similar attack by small craft against a Galor in "Preemptive Strike" had more success when the fighters stuck to beam weapons (some of which Gul Evek classified as Type 8 phasers, and apparently considered the most threatening of the lot).
The fighter's phasers are merely the weapon used most often, which makes perfect sense. Being relatively small craft, their torpedo supplies would be limited, and the balances of the weapons would not be apparent in short range combat. Better to reserve such weapons for more appropriate situations which require, range, maneuvers, or to compensate for lack of on board power production.
The reasons the fighters work is because they're used in large numbers. In smaller numbers, or alone, they are far less effective.
Phasers are more threatening in some ways, especially for a small craft, because they can be used endlessly. Even a ship with a low power reactor would be able to output more energy in the long term than a torpedo. The trick is surviving long enough, since the fighters can take only one second of fire from a capital ship before dying.
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