No, because only the laser beam has the property of coherence. None of the other things you described do.
There's no overwhelming reason why longitudal waves couldn't be made coherent, too, so a sonic gun could easily fit the definition.
Except that sonic guns do not transmit "coherent energy." They transmit coherent sound waves.
Why would you wish to assume that a device that looks, behaves, and is described in ways most similar to an energy beam would be something other than what it obviously appears to be? There's no reason for that; the simplest explanation is that it's a coherent energy beam comparable (though obviously vastly superior to) laser beams. Starfleet apparently thinks they're similar enough that Starfleet officers used to carry lasers as their personal side arms.
And it still doesn't follow that a "coherent beam of energy" would have to travel at lightspeed.
Of course not. Just close enough to it that the difference is irrelevant.
Speed of sound, as clearly observed with hand phasers
Argument by repetition isn't going to work, Timo, as I have already explained at length why this is NOT the case and do not have the patience to do so again.
It makes perfect sense that the beams or projectiles of a given weapon type would travel at different speeds depending on the exact configuration or setting of the weapon.
Projectiles, yes. Not beams, which includes phasers.
OTOH, nothing in our experience can explain how beams or projectiles could travel FTL.
Which is irrelevant, because phaser beams don't.
FTL communications across great ranges are verifiably a feature of Star Trek
Subspace radio, which is a plot device and operates the way it does only because it needs to. FTL sensors are also plot devices, but are necessarily inaccurate both for logical as well as dramatic reasons.
You mean that transporting is a "blind" operation where nothing about the destination needs to be known?
They knew the destination and the exact coordinates for the beam. Beyond that, yes, it was a blind-beam.
Doesn't it ring any bells for you that in both cases, the target ship was employing stealth measures?
And in both cases only effective against EM sensors, particularly radar and other types of active sensors. Long-range/subspace sensors were unaffected, as were passive "naked eye" devices like the ones used for phaser targeting.
Suffice to say, the Enterprise-D had no trouble getting a phaser lock on Baran's ship; targeting sensors, however, cannot be used for tracking. Likewise, TOS Enterprise couldn't get a phaser lock on the bird of prey; tracking sensors can't be used for targeting. Most likely this is because they operate using very different principles at different ranges and resolutions, otherwise they would be interchangeable.
Saying that "visual sensors" would be needed for weapons lock is sidestepping the issue. Those need to be FTL, too, in order to allow for the tracking we observe.
No, because targeting sensors aren't used for tracking. Only... well, targeting.
If they aren't, combat couldn't take place at any distance or speed beyond point blank
Begging the question:
does it? Apart from the use of photon torpedoes, which have their own guidance systems and wouldn't have this problem anyway, we've never seen phasers used at ranges greater than a few thousand kilometers. Probably they have a fairly short practical range, especially if we assume--VFX notwithstanding--that phasers DON'T always hit their target and that the only way to maximize phaser damage is to drop to a range where your weapons score more direct hits than otherwise. In this context you have an explanation about that old question on the Picard Manuever: if Stargazer had enough firepower to destroy the Ferengi vessel, why wouldn't Picard simply open fire from a distance instead of dropping into warp and stopping just off the bow? Answer: his phasers could concentrate fire at the closer distance, scoring multiple direct his in concert with the photon torpedoes, where firing from a greater distance would mean something like 80% of his phaser barrage actually missing the target.
Similar question: why would Khan sidle up to within a few hundred meters of the Enterprise to nail it in the engine room, when he could have done it from ten thousand or twenty or even fifty thousand kilometers? Answer: both phaser beams and their targeting sensors travel at the speed of light, and firing from a longer range would have reduced accuracy.
But I digress: we so rarely see combat at warp anyway, and even when we do, both vessels are traveling close to each other at more or less the same warp factor where any velocity differences are irrelevant. Speed-matching and distance control are probably tactics taught in Starfleet academy, much like energy management and angle of attack are essential to fighter combat.
That is, employ FTL sensors to precision.
No, red and blue shift measurements require reading the spectra of LIGHT, which moves at... well, the speed of light.
Or do you have some reason for believing that "warp factor sensors" aren't the same type of sensor as "visual sensors", or "transporter sensors", or "motion sensors"?
Just plain subspace sensors, something a starship would use to measure the intensity of a subspace field (which is all a warp factor really is). Probably an ordinary gravitic sensor would suffice for that.
It's simply futile to try and argue that sensors don't work perfectly fine at high warp and across vast distances.
Of course they do. Just not accross vast SPEED differences. Sensors work just fine at high warp, provided BOTH ships are traveling at high warp. The few instances where this is not the case are all examples of plot holes, not consistent uses of technology.
At the very best, you can hope to dig up a select few special cases where lightspeed phasers would just barely suffice to explain the events.
Back on this issue again: there is NO situation anywhere in the history of trek that would require phaser beams to travel faster than light. Primarily this is because, so far, phaser beams have never been used to attack a vessel traveling faster than light. They are only used when warp factors are mostly matched, at least to the point where the opposing vessels are almost stationary with respect to each other. This isn't "FTL phaser" in any way shape or form.
Ah, so you throw the game?
I'm just tired of repeatedly pointing out what an absurd claim this is. Incase you are confused as to what claim I'm talking about, I'll just flat out say it: "Wink of an Eye" is just bad science; at the speed reduction required even to be consistent with a 300m/s phaser beam, Kirk would have been doing Priceline commercials by the time Uhura even noticed he was missing.
Deluding yourself into dismissing slow hand phaser beams as "VFX errors" (all 100% of them!) won't work
Phaser beams aren't slow enough to produce the effect you describe, only "Wink of an eye" fits the bill. The others are all arbitrarily fast enough to pass for "speed of light" since their velocity is not a plot point.
OTOH, if you wish to take VFX
that literally, this entire discussion is pointless, since starships really DO fight at point blank range at relative velocities of something like five hundred meters per second. Make up your mind whether you want to take the visuals at face value or assume (as you already have) that there is something fundamentally wrong with what we've seen. But don't cherrypick; it's either
all artistic representation (in which case only dialog and plot-relevant events count) or it's all visually literally true, and the maximum range of even starship phasers is about 400 kilometers.
Not that there's precedent against this, since the plasma cannons in ENT had a stated maximum range of nine kilometers.
What do you mean? Fighters want to avoid dogfighting like plague.
BOMBERS do. Fighters that can't dogfight aren't fighters, they're just targets.
They rely extensively on very long range sensors. Why would that be any different for starships?
Because fighters don't usually ENGAGE at those ranges, even in wartime. Close-range engagements are still the norm even in the age of the guided missile, hence the reason air superiority craft still use sidewinders and Atoll missiles at distances of less than 10km.
Which again forces me to ask: if you're taking VFX that literally, why are you conveniently ignoring the ludicrously close ranges starships appear to fight at anyway? Or are you thinking that "long range" for starships is the same as long range for a modern fighter jet?
Except that the "why" is once again irrelevant. We can go and see for ourselves how the combat happens.
Same question: how DOES it happen? The way you describe, involving BVR weapons and FTL sensors, or the way it APPEARS to happen, at ranges so close and velocities so slow that the crews of opposing starships can obscene gestures at each other through their viewport windows?
What would anybody need the android for? The viewscreen would be enough: the position of the enemy ship is constantly being tracked, to good visual precision, and all one has to do is ignore the motion blur.
IF you know what the other ship is about to do. Of course, if just watching the viewscreen was enough, Data's suggestion seems kinda stupid. Riker could just say "Okay, watch for his warp jump and them grab him when he stops!"
The Picard Maneuver as depicted would have fooled nobody, and indeed did not.
It fooled the Ferengi easily enough. And your opinion to the contrary, there was no known defense against it until Data calculated a "possibility." Obviously, the authors of Starfleet academy textbooks know something you don't.
But in a way that you are not smart enough to figure out
It doesn't require that much imagination, Timo. It's MADE UP technology; sharpen up occams razor and eliminate irrelevancies until you get the simplest solution. How these things work, and how they are DEPICTED to work, will never be consistent, because the depictions are inconsistent both with themselves, with dialog, and with the VFX used to describe them. This is how officers can quote distances of tens of thousands of kilometers and yet five seconds later have a VFX shot showing a distance of a couple hundred meters: because the special effects for Trek, stunning and juicy as they have always been, are, scientifically speaking, GARBAGE.
Either way, you're stuck having to decide whether to take the VFX literally or disregard it entirely. If you take it literally, your point is still empty; FTL sensors would make no difference to a couple of starships hammering the snot out of each other at sixty five knots from a range of five and a half kilometers. They
might make sense if the VFX is disregarded in favor of what (probably) is really going on, but in that same modification, phaser beams wouldn't be visible anyway, nor would
every phaser beam actually strike the target.
The sword cuts both ways.
)their own propulsion units.
