Weaponized Warp Drive

[Timo]

Umm. Sorry about the earlier outburst. A couple of things I'd like to argue about, while acknowledging that there's a dogmatic schism between our approaches here.

No. Sound isn't energy, sound is an application of energy, as air/water/solids are a medium through which that energy passes.

That doesn't make any sense. Sound certainly is energy in the sense that it carries the ability to do work from A to B. In this, it is in no way different from EM radiation. The fact that sound works through a medium and EM radiation travels through vacuum is completely unrelated to this basic issue.

Again, "energy beam" is mumbo jumbo. It's not a well-defined concept of physics, it's a generic expression that can perfectly well be applied to coherent sonic beams, or to soliton-type EM waves (which require a limiting medium), or to EM waves permeating through a medium, or to a Tesla-style death ray that merely sends electric current or charged particles through a medium.

Not all waves are composed of energy.

This is 100% wrong, of course. Remove the "not" and you have a true sentence.

Confused, timo? Neither of us have ever "seen" a phaser beam, because phasers aren't real.

So why are you arguing about this? This is a forum for arguing about Trek as if it were real.

All your arguments become invalid here if they only apply to a universe that isn't the Trek one. You lose all credibility if you claim that raised plywood platforms lit from below cannot make hybrids of two humanoid species teleport from a FTL-capable starship to an amazingly Earth-like planet in a matter of seconds. It's absurd to start claiming, then, that some teeny weeny detail like the visual effect for phaser beams should conform to different rules of "realism" than the above mundane occurrence.

When has Star Trek ever ACTUALLY depicted the kind of distance that would make such a thing visible?

"Demons"/"Terra Prime" is a good example. Or TNG "The Emissary". The latter deals with distances that are merely stated to be that long, while the former deals with distances that in the real world are established to be that long. But of course, all of Star Trek is just one big plot hole for you, so pointing to clear evidence is futile.

Irrelevant, since ENTERPRISE was not traveling at warp.

You're fighting the wrong fight here. The incident perfectly establishes that phaserlike beams travel at warp, so you either have to back off from your contrary claim, or cry "plot hole" once again. Either way, you've lost that fight.

The incident incidentally also establishes that said FTL beams can be perfectly aimed at a stationary target.

What it doesn't establish is whether said FTL beams could hit a FTL target. But that's a whole different fight. And save for TNG, each of the spinoffs so far has featured a warp chase where fire is accurately exchanged, so the only teeny weeny uncertainty here is the degree of speed differential across which these FTL beams still accurately hit their targets.

It makes very little sense that a beam that nicely hits a stationary target from high warp would be unable to hit a target at low warp from high warp. What changes?

You still have to deal with the question of whether FTL sensors are even relevant in a universe where starships don't fight at relativistic speeds or relativistic velocities.

They are relevant and frequently and verifiably used in noncombat situations, such as getting realtime info on distant planets and stars. It would be pretty weird if they didn't get used in combat as well, then - even if other factors lead to point-blank combat being the preferred method of fighting.

Oh, and a couple of older points:

BOMBERS do. Fighters that can't dogfight aren't fighters, they're just targets.

You've watched too much Top Gun, probably. Taking an F-14 to dogfight like that would in reality be a court martial offense. It's the third world fighters without BVR weapons that still do some degree of dogfighting. Those, and the fighters from richer nations that operate under limiting rules of engagement, in what the nations insist on defining as peacetime, even though it costs them soldier lives.

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?

Ignoring? How? I perfectly well acknowledge that Trek starships fight at distances of a few ship-lengths. I just don't pick and choose - so I also acknowledge that they fight at high warp, or across astronomical units, or sometimes within atmospheres or even underwater. None of that has any persuading power against the observed fact that phasers travel at all sorts of speeds.

Remember, your argument of lightspeed phasers hinges on assumptions about the nature of phasers. Which is the same thing you accuse me of doing: taking the described fictional universe too seriously or literally. The only piece of evidence that you have for lightspeed phasers is a piece of dialogue that establishes them as "coherent energy beams". Never mind that you are mistaken about the idea that in the real world this would dictate lightspeed beams - the point is that you are trusting the fictional universe, basing a (rather pretty) house of cards on it, on something that is leading you to deep, deep trouble as regards both the real world and the burden of fictional evidence on the issue. Why not stop digging that pit? Why not accept that this piece of dialogue in a work of fiction doesn't dictate your life choices, or override a pile of other pieces from the same work of fiction?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

So why are you arguing about this? This is a forum for arguing about Trek as if it were real.

That's sort of my point. IF Trek were real, a lot of things about the show would be different. It's not just the technical inconsistencies (the less-than-two-second delay between "Hail them" and "no response") it's the fact that the way alot of this technology is claimed to work--or even the way it probably WOULD work if such a thing were ever invented--would look nothing like the VFX we have seen on the show. This is so even for relatively mundane devices; even LASERS have perfectly visible beams in Trek (even in the vacuum of space, as in "Conundrum" and "Suddenly Human").

Maybe because I'm disinclined to discuss the issue as a matter of simple fandom and it seems to me more of a serious hypothetical question (Science of Star Trek style, only I'm not so droll as to try and envision treknology as slightly more advanced versions of experimental 20th century tech).

"Demons"/"Terra Prime" is a good example.

Demons/Terra Prime involved the use of a deflector beam, not a phaser, which--being a subspace weapon--would HAVE to travel faster than light.

Or TNG "The Emissary". The latter deals with distances that are merely stated to be that long

The Emissary doesn't give a stated range, only states "extreme sensor range." Probably he's referring to extreme SHORT RANGE sensor range, which would be the limit to which an EM-based sensor could reliably scan for another non-moving object. That would be a range of about 250 to 500 thousand kilometers.

But again: The Emissary doesn't STATE the what the actual range is. And both ships are traveling at impulse when the exchange of fire takes place.

You're fighting the wrong fight here. The incident perfectly establishes that phaserlike beams travel at warp

It does this how? If you're referring to "The Emissary" then neither vessel was traveling at warp and the distances were short enough that phasers (well, actually disruptors, which may or may no be the same thing) travel either at or trivially close to the speed of light. There's no indication that they travel FASTER than that.

They are relevant and frequently and verifiably used in noncombat situations, such as getting realtime info on distant planets and stars.

Indeed. Except when plot requirements prevent them from doing so.

BOMBERS do. Fighters that can't dogfight aren't fighters, they're just targets.

You've watched too much Top Gun, probably.

No, I've been spending alot of time with my uncle, a retired Navy pilot, who coined that phrase after his second tour in vietnam. Apparently there are ALOT of people who agree with that sentiment, which is the major reason for the development of the F-15 and F-16 as high maneuverability aircraft WITH bvr capability.

The battle record for both craft--if one bothered to check--indicates that while medium-range missiles are quite effective strategically, MANY battles degenerate into turning fights at ranges of 5 to 15km. The Israelis proved this in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, as did the Iraqis/Iranians in their ten year war (and the Iranians were even equipped with F-14s themselves; the Iraqis had to develop tactics to close the distance on Iranian Tomcats, which forced the Iranians to put a greater emphasis on dogfighting anyway).

Taking an F-14 to dogfight like that would in reality be a court martial offense.

If by "like that" you mean in Top Gun, you're half right. OTOH, rules of engagement during peacetime require visual confirmation of targets before shooting them down (which would be consistent with the second battle scene at the end of the movie). On the third hand, I again remind you that Iranian F-14s DID engage in many dogfights with Iraqi Migs after their engagements degenerated into close range combat. Not that the BVR missiles weren't effective (they were terrifyingly so, as the Iraqis discovered) but the Iranians learned very quickly that a glorified missile bus has no place in the modern battlefield and you'd better be ready to box when your bvr missiles don't do the job.

Or put this another way: even the world's best sniper must also carry a side arm.

Ignoring? How? I perfectly well acknowledge that Trek starships fight at distances of a few ship-lengths. I just don't pick and choose - so I also acknowledge that they fight at high warp, or across astronomical units, or sometimes within atmospheres or even underwater.

But see, they DON'T fight across astronomical units. There are few if any examples of this in canon, and those are only HINTED at by the non-specific language of scripts like "The Emissary" The only concrete example is that of the Phoenix vs. Cardassian warship, in which the Phoenix launches photon torpedoes from a distance of 300,000km (about one light second; hardly an astronomical unit).

Suffice to say, we have never seen phasers used at a distance of more than one light second. Your example from Demons/Terra Prime may be the exception that proves the rule, since for some reason all the many phasers in use by Starfleet ships couldn't have been brought to bear on a stationary target on Mars despite that target's ability to hit positions on other planets. Phasers, it seems, just aren't adequate for that kind of job.

Remember, your argument of lightspeed phasers hinges on assumptions about the nature of phasers. Which is the same thing you accuse me of doing: taking the described fictional universe too seriously or literally.

You can take it as seriously or as literally as you like. But BE CONSISTENT about it. If you're going to take the VFX literally enough to sit there and measure the propagation of a phaser beam in freeze-frame, then you also need to measure the actual distances at which starships literally fight. IF 99% of starship combat takes place at point blank range, it makes zero sense to equip starships with weapons that can (but never ARE) used at ranges of multiple light seconds. It would be like mounting antiaircraft missiles on a police car.

Such an FTL weapon would have demonstrable strategic operations that would have saved Our Heroes alot of trouble in many an episode. Not least of which would be The Voyage Home, where a starship could theoretically lock phasers and fire at the whale probe from a distance of one AU (about as close as Kirk's Bird of Prey got to Earth) without being disabled by the probe.

So we have reason to disbelieve in phasers as an FTL weapon. We have circumstantial evidence that they travel at ABOUT the speed of light (close enough to it that the difference is almost irrelevant). And we have a plot hole from Wink of an Eye that suggests phasers travel at half the speed of a pistol bullet. If the simplest explanation is closer to the truth, we can rule out the anomalies as suggesting anything conclusive and stick to the most obvious assumption: phasers travel at (plus or minus a few dozen kps) the speed of light.

 

[Myasishchev]

That's the main problem that continues to annoy me: we know that phasers ignore relativity, and we know that they work just dandy at high warp. We see this happen. Why should we invent harebrained schemes that require this to be untrue?

It would make me and Newtype happy?

 

[Mytran]

Maybe the speed of a phaser beam is dependent on the amount power used to generate it? Hence hand phaser beams travel slower than ship mounted ones. If nothing else, it gets round that pesky scene in "Wink of an Eye!"

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Despite the (scant) evidence to the contrary, I like to envision a ship's warp field capable of tearing a continental plate off the mantle.

The collision between a planet and an object at warp may be far more devastating than that.

What kind of kinetic energy does the impact impart? What sort of mass does an object at warp have?

Depending on your answers, you could crumple a planet to dust.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If nothing else, it gets round that pesky scene in "Wink of an Eye!"

Which, as I've said, is basically a plot hole. Kirk was implied to have been accelerated to a few hundred times normal speed, at most 200 times of normal, allowing almost an hour to pass in Kirk time for every second of crew time. At the rate of acceleration, the phaser beam from "wink of an eye" would be slightly faster than a baseball.

To get the effect they were going for in that episode, they'd have to slow Kirk down several thousand times, maybe 5000 times faster than normal. In that case, you'd have an incredibly slow (bit still almost excusable) beam speed, but that rate of acceleration wouldn't fit with the episode at all, since at this rate of acceleration Kirk would have been stuck in hyper acceleration nearly a month by the time Spock got to sickbay.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Despite the (scant) evidence to the contrary, I like to envision a ship's warp field capable of tearing a continental plate off the mantle.

The collision between a planet and an object at warp may be far more devastating than that.

What kind of kinetic energy does the impact impart? What sort of mass does an object at warp have?

Depending on your answers, you could crumple a planet to dust.

This is why I believe photon torpedoes might operate on exactly this principle. Ordinary shields are pretty good at blocking gamma rays from conventional nuclear weapons, so a matter/antimatter detonation wouldn't be that much more effective. OTOH, a little capsule of dense metal traveling at warp speed would pack a hell of a punch.

The question is whether or not the kinetic energy of the torpedo would be equivalent to warp speed. I don't think so, because its movement depends entirely on the warp field and there's no REAL kinetic energy. So the warp field itself probably has a propulsive effect which can be transferred to the target; so imagine a photon torpedo hitting the ship and the torpedo's warp field suddenly accelerating a five-meter chunk of the hull to warp one. That might actually do more damage than if it was just the torpedo hitting.

A starship warp drive could be used the same way, but it would require getting dangerously close to the target. Like I said earlier, it'd work better as a terrorist trick, having a shuttlecraft fire up its warp engines while still in the shuttlebay.

 

[Myasishchev]

I can't believe you guys are taking "Wink of an Eye" seriously. I mean, it's a really fun episode, but I don't think it can be validly used for evidence of the speeds of anything.

I like the warp-torp idea, NA. I don't think that's what a pho-torp is, but it seems like a logical weaponization of an existing technology.

I suppose a reason not to use it is that a deflector shield's warp field may find it easier to break apart an object inside its own propulsive warp field than an object maintaining a static deflector shield of its own.

 

[Mytran]

I can't believe you guys are taking "Wink of an Eye" seriously..

I think that the episode (along with several from season 3) needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Variable phaser speeds simply offer a possible answer the phaser-dodge problem.

Which, as I've said, is basically a plot hole...

Kinda my point I think. Actually, Phil Farrand (in his Nitpicker's Guide) does a good analysis of how fast the Scalosians are accelerated and the most practical estimate comes in at just 120 times faster than normal. Of course, this only makes the phaser speed even slower, so I think I'll go along with Myasishchev's suggestion on this one!

Regarding the warp-drive photorps, I think that is a very practical application and can imagine it being quite devestating to the target. Good thinking!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I suppose a reason not to use it is that a deflector shield's warp field may find it easier to break apart an object inside its own propulsive warp field than an object maintaining a static deflector shield of its own.

Actually, I think that may be the only kind of weapon that could ever hope to penetrate a deflector shield. It's one subspace field trying to overpower another; a torpedo with enough fuel on board might have just enough juice to make the push and then enough left over to do some damage. An ordinary missile/torpedo would simply bounce off the deflectors and either detonate at the boundary layer (where the entire force of the detonation is also deflected, doing no damage) or thrown clear just before it detonates. Only a competing subspace/warp field interacting with the deflector shield would have the ability to drain/overload it, especially since such a deflector has got to be running in the terawatt range if it's channeling warp power.

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm not sure I entirely agree. I'll quickly (I hope) run through my notion of shields:

I think of deflector shields as expanding, contracting, bending or otherwise manipulating the fabric of space in a manner similar to warp but in a non-propulsive manner. The point there would be to lens or interfere with offending objects like torpedo casings, gamma photons, hydrogen atoms, or "nadions" () away from the ultimately fragile metal ship.

This helps explain why pho-torps, while theoretically much more powerful per unit of fuel than a neutral particle beam (as I consider phasers), are not always preferred. If the edge of the deflector field is an intense, manipulable gravity well, it could accelerate part of the case much faster than another part, or tear it apart with attractive gravitational forces from two angles. The integrity of the mechanical device of the pho-torp is extremely important to how efficient it reacts its products (kept as perhaps microgram-sized, nearly two-dimensional flakes, coordinated exquisitely by small magnetic fields or micromechanical devices during reaction). If part of the pho-torp is broken, the antimatter will immediately react with whatever it's next to, blowing the device apart and sharply reducing reaction efficiency.

Phasers, on the other hand, are less easy to interfere with so completely. A collimated neutral particle beam will be more robust, losing less of its power simply due to a gravitationally-induced bloom (and accelerating the beam toward the shield source will just make it more effective!). Hence they'll work better against a shielded ship. The particles should be moving so fast as to make pulling them off target difficult.

However, even in the case of a smashed pho-torp, and certainly in the case of a deflected phaser, something almost always gets through, and that's very much borne out by the damage taken to ships even when shields are apparently functioning optimally. Stuff like ablative (boiling-off?) armor is supposed to help, and I always kind of wonder whether some sort of anti-flash paintjob to reflect potentially damaging gamma, x-ray, visible light would not be a good idea, if the technology is there. My notions about dilithium as a gamma mirror compel me to believe that it is, even if a dilithium coat would be expensive and not necessarily particularly useful against matter beams.

I've never much liked the "shields down to x" from either a scientific or dramatic standpoint, but, like I said, something always seems to come through, rocking the ship, somethings blasting holes in the ship. So I figure the "shields = x" phenomenon is due to damage, however mitigated, to the shield-generating antennae or something. Which are not at all visible, but neither are their subspace antenna, so there's no reason to particularly expect they should be.

As for pho-torps, or any torps, possessing their own deflector gear, I think that is almost certain, if for no other reason than phasers should be able to reliably target and shoot down incoming torpedoes if they are not shielded. A jacked-up deflector shield is also the traditional explanation for their otherwise inexplicable glow.

I can, however, very much get behind the idea that torpedo integrated deflectors assist in the process, capable of reshaping space to the advantage of the torpedo, and making the ship's shields' job (breaking apart the torpedo) much harder.

Here's a weird, but related question: do any predicted properties of gravitons permit them to form an interference pattern with one another, like photons?

 

[Timo]

Demons/Terra Prime involved the use of a deflector beam, not a phaser, which--being a subspace weapon--would HAVE to travel faster than light.

So obviously a phaser, also being a subspace weapon, would then have the demonstrated properties of traveling at an arbitrary speed above or below lightspeed, too.

Why would a phaser not be a subspace weapon? The engineers would have every reason to make it be one. Nobody ever says it ain't, any more than anybody says that the "Demons" beam is. And by being a subspace weapon, it would be free of the chains imposed by the arbitrary claim of it being laserlike - free to demonstrate all the properties it does on screen, without any extra cost.

You can't seriously claim that lasers would be more "realistic" by not being subspace-based, when you already accept that other common things in the Trek universe are subspace-based. You have already accepted the fiction of subspace. There's no point in trying to wriggle out of it at this stage. You win absolutely nothing, and you lose consistency with onscreen evidence.

The Emissary doesn't give a stated range, only states "extreme sensor range." Probably he's referring to extreme SHORT RANGE sensor range, which would be the limit to which an EM-based sensor could reliably scan for another non-moving object. That would be a range of about 250 to 500 thousand kilometers.

Possible - but the T'Prang is not a non-moving object. It's a maneuvering opponent that evades the E-D when the hero ship is doing warp three. And our heroes were trying to guard several star systems against the intruder, so a scanning range of a mere few lightseconds around the ill-defined thaw-out point would be unacceptable.

And both ships are traveling at impulse when the exchange of fire takes place.

Umm, true. Argument withdrawn, point conceded.

So let's return to "Balance of Terror", where the phaser blasts from several emergency-warp-minutes away most definitely do not take hours to arrive at the near-precise location of the invisible Romulan ship.

You can take it as seriously or as literally as you like. But BE CONSISTENT about it. If you're going to take the VFX literally enough to sit there and measure the propagation of a phaser beam in freeze-frame, then you also need to measure the actual distances at which starships literally fight. IF 99% of starship combat takes place at point blank range, it makes zero sense to equip starships with weapons that can (but never ARE) used at ranges of multiple light seconds. It would be like mounting antiaircraft missiles on a police car.

It doesn't work like that - because in addition to the range issue (for which we do have that 1% of evidence, and no good reason to disregard it - although we can claim that both power and accuracy is greatly reduced, then), there's the issue of warp combat, where phasers are standard fare. The squad car would need those SAMs if every third episode of the cop show involved villains in armed helicopters!

Saying that phasers can go from warping ship to warping ship by virtue of those two ships being mere meters apart is possible, yes. But warp is already known to distort visuals - and the plot absolutely requires the ships to be at a greater distance than the visuals sometimes imply, for example because of reaction time issues: one ship may be shot out of high warp, but the other one doesn't overshoot, at least not by much, despite taking a second or three to react.

No, I've been spending alot of time with my uncle, a retired Navy pilot, who coined that phrase after his second tour in vietnam. Apparently there are ALOT of people who agree with that sentiment, which is the major reason for the development of the F-15 and F-16 as high maneuverability aircraft WITH bvr capability.

This doctrine seems to come and go - F-22 and F-23 weren't expected to be capable of dogfighting when competing for the status of the next top air superiority fighter, and the F-22A isn't expected to dogfight now that it is operational.

But the original point of the analogy seems to have been forgotten already... There is no preference for close range fighting in all of today's combat situations and technologies, or even in most of them; and just like you say, a variety of fighting ranges are available even for machines designed primarily for a specific engagement range. So even if starships prefer to fight / are forced to fight at point blank, they are likely to have technologies that allow them to fight at other, less / more desirable ranges.

Your example from Demons/Terra Prime may be the exception that proves the rule, since for some reason all the many phasers in use by Starfleet ships couldn't have been brought to bear on a stationary target on Mars despite that target's ability to hit positions on other planets. Phasers, it seems, just aren't adequate for that kind of job.

It does seem that starship phasers aren't the way to go beyond an AU or so, even if fixed installations are, even if Kirk does manage potshots at Romulans at apparent greater ranges than that. Or it could be that 22nd century starship phasers don't perform as well as 23rd century ones in this respect.

Not least of which would be The Voyage Home, where a starship could theoretically lock phasers and fire at the whale probe from a distance of one AU (about as close as Kirk's Bird of Prey got to Earth) without being disabled by the probe.

That assumes that a) starships didn't do that and that b) the probe suffered that sort of range limitations for its jamming effect or other means of self-defense... Not to mention that the UFP President didn't seem inclined to authorize desperate measures even in a desperate jam, thus joining a not so exclusive club of UFP big brass.

Which, as I've said, is basically a plot hole. Kirk was implied to have been accelerated to a few hundred times normal speed, at most 200 times of normal, allowing almost an hour to pass in Kirk time for every second of crew time. At the rate of acceleration, the phaser beam from "wink of an eye" would be slightly faster than a baseball.

Which shouldn't be impossible at all. If speed indeed is a function of power, as suggested, then this stun beam (as the green color and lack of destructive effect at the point of impact would suggest) would have every right to move that slowly. We've actually seen stun or concussion beams slower than that...

While one may argue about plot reasons for having relatively slow (that is, not much higher than c) starship phasers, there are no good plot reasons for desiring fast hand phasers, certainly not lightspeed ones. To the contrary, the heroes, extras and villains are constantly dodging phasers, in the sense that a beam erupts, the actor reacts, and then the beam misses. This hardly ever comes to the extreme case of somebody stepping out of the way of a beam, to be sure, but it is still a situation where the visuals and the plot requirements are in good agreement. Again, nothing would be really won by saying that the speed we see is c, or roughly c.

Now, this might become a plot issue if adversaries really were able to dodge phasers in practice. But even the slow stun beam is still a potent weapon - in most cases, it is a relatively wide cone of fire, one you cannot dodge even if it moves relatively slowly. What we saw Kirk fire in "Wink" should by all rights be an abnormal beam anyway, considering that Kirk only tapped the trigger for a tiny fraction of a second...

I'm still having big problems with the idea that lightspeed phasers would have some desirability, some sort of an upside. What would that upside be? That they would look more like lasers? Why would that be an upside? Lasers are probably the least likely real world technology to ever make it into a practical space warfare weapon anyway.

The real world is rife with weapons that offer more potential and better match the Trek portrayal - weapons whose speed is adjustable and typically dependent on power. Should not the effort be put into establishing how these real technologies may be related to the fictional one, and where the differences, advances and possible tradeoffs may lie?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Quick note:

Actually, sound is more of an effect or even measure of kinetic energy... so you can quite easily argue that 'sonic energy' isn't really energy at all.

 

[Timo]

Why would the latter follow from the former? Surely the former is an argument for the latter.

Switch "electromagnetic" for "kinetic" in the argument and see if it makes any sense... There's nothing fundamentally different about "electromagnetic" and "kinetic" in this context.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Sound isn't the energy, it's the EFFECT.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Demons/Terra Prime involved the use of a deflector beam, not a phaser, which--being a subspace weapon--would HAVE to travel faster than light.

So obviously a phaser, also being a subspace weapon

No, phasers are not subspace weapons.

Why would a phaser not be a subspace weapon?

Because they are not REFERRED to as subspace weapons, nor for that matter are they implied as having anything to do with subspace.

So let's return to "Balance of Terror", where the phaser blasts from several emergency-warp-minutes away most definitely do not take hours to arrive at the near-precise location of the invisible Romulan ship.

I wish that Trek combat continued to work that way throughout its history, but it didn't. We'll probably have to retcon that as "impulse engines, full reverse!" or something, just like we often reinterpret those bursting phasers as photon torpedoes with proximity fuses.

Actually, there are in-universe reasons for this, not least of which is the logic of trying to hide in a comet using warp engines; unless the comet is the size of a small solar system, this could not have happened at anything resembling warp velocities.

It doesn't work like that - because in addition to the range issue (for which we do have that 1% of evidence, and no good reason to disregard it - although we can claim that both power and accuracy is greatly reduced, then), there's the issue of warp combat, where phasers are standard fare. The squad car would need those SAMs if every third episode of the cop show involved villains in armed helicopters!

But see, even in cops shows where the villains HAVE armed helicopters, the cops contend with them with the assault rifles they're already equipped with. Why? Because the villains are not armed with supersonic jets that would necessitate an antiaircraft missile.

99% of warp combat takes place between warp-driven starships traveling parallel to each other at approximately the same speed, and even then at relatively short distances of a few thousand meters. We have seen the famous "warp strafing" only twice in the history of Star Trek, once in Elaan of Troyus and once in Journey to Babel, and in the second case the Orion ship was only slightly faster than the Enterprise.

But warp is already known to distort visuals

Warp is ASSUMED to distort visuals. It is not KNOWN to do anything of the sort.

and the plot absolutely requires the ships to be at a greater distance than the visuals sometimes imply

Plot requires no such thing, especially if a reduction from high warp is something a decent sensor package can quickly identify and a navigational computer can automatically cut warp engines to maintain pursuit. Modern antiaircraft missiles can already do this to intercept hostile antiship missiles which sometimes avoid defenses by quickly braking and accelerating.

This doctrine seems to come and go

Only in the dim minds of defense industry lobbyists and the publicity materials they distribute to the Discovery Channel three times a year.

But the original point of the analogy seems to have been forgotten already... There is no preference for close range fighting in all of today's combat situations

There has NEVER been a preference for close range fighting. Pilots have been trying to extend the range of combat engagements since Red Barron, with varying degrees of success. Fights boil down to close-range turning battles because that's the way air combat happens, not because anyone PREFERS it that way. When that situation inevitably arises, pilots are forced to fall back on close-combat weapons and tactics which--fortunately--are advanced enough that even "close combat" for fighter planes is much farther than it was in the age of prop-driven aircraft or the early jet age. Thus the Sidewinder/Atoll missiles have largely replaced the Browning/Cannon, though medium range missiles are still hella useful.

A similar case probably exists for starships. Photon torpedoes are strategic weapons that could theoretically engage targets at almost ANY range, but space combat frequently devolves into rolling slugfests between opposing starships using phasers and whatever secondary weapons they have. This does not require phasers to move FTL, in fact at the ranges phasers are typically used they could easily be competitive with railguns.

So even if starships prefer to fight / are forced to fight at point blank, they are likely to have technologies that allow them to fight at other, less / more desirable ranges.

Yep. That's what photon torpedoes are for.

Which shouldn't be impossible at all.

Not impossible. Just absurd.

While one may argue about plot reasons for having relatively slow (that is, not much higher than c) starship phasers, there are no good plot reasons for desiring fast hand phasers, certainly not lightspeed ones. To the contrary, the heroes, extras and villains are constantly dodging phasers

"Duck when they point a weapon at you" is not "dodging phasers." It seems to be the same technique in hollywood dodging of bullets, with similar results.

I'm still having big problems with the idea that lightspeed phasers would have some desirability, some sort of an upside.

Accuracy, for one. Such a slow-moving beam becomes completely useless against a moving target at anything even resembling long ranges. At Wink of an Eye speeds, it becomes possible to casually step out of the path of a phaser beam at less than forty meters; imagine trying to hit a running man with such a weapon at sixty to eighty meters, especially while running yourself.

Lightspeed or close-to-lightspeed phasers, on the other hand, would be simple point-and-shoot devices: the instant you press the trigger, the beam is on target. If you miss, you can walk the beam towards your target like a laser pointer until you make contact. No deflection, no need to lead the target, and--since the particles are moving so very fast--no need to worry about blooming or drop time when using them in gravity.

Lasers are probably the least likely real world technology to ever make it into a practical space warfare weapon anyway.

Ironically, lasers are already coming into their own as a practical GROUND warfare weapon. I don't see this being any worse in space.

Which is, of course, beside the point. The VFX on hand phasers is unreliable in nearly every case, especially since phasers and lasers are sometimes represented by the exact same (slow moving) propagation. You'd literally have to suggest that laser beams travel slower than light in order to make this work.

Of course, real lasers would have an advantage over trek phasers in one major aspect: lasers do not leave visible beams that would give away the shooter's position. Theoretically, neither would real phasers, which would be a huge plus, especially for snipers.

 

[Timo]

Because they are not REFERRED to as subspace weapons, nor for that matter are they implied as having anything to do with subspace.

That is no good reason not to think of them as a subspace technology, though. To begin with, we have to accept that subspace tech exists in Trek, even though it is not real. The natural next step would be to assume a connection between subspace and things that behave in those unreal ways associated with subspace elsewhere - FTL speeds, reduction of inertial mass and so forth.

If a piece of tech can be explained by real-world terms, by all means we could do that. But if it displays even a slight aberration from the real, it is only consistent to examine the possibility that one of Trek's established unreal aspects could explain it with minimum fuss. After all, very little is gained from insisting that a device does not feature unreal Treknology merely because it doesn't blatantly indicate it has that stuff inside.

Today, it's more likely than not that some sort of high tech gadgetry is included in relatively mundane things: it's safe to assume that most things are "electronic" or have "transistors" or "microchips" even if this isn't always evident - and it's smarter to quote this as the reason the lawn mower just rather intelligently shut itself down than to claim that this was a random occurrence, or the doings of wizards.

Phasers have not been stated to be subspace technology. They have demonstrated properties explainable by subspace technology, though, and they come from a universe where such tech is to be expected.

...Although it would be even more consistent to say that they have to do with the equally unreal phasing technology, I guess. But a combination of the known qualities of those two techs would work the best of all.

In reverse, phasers are never said to be lasers, either. Judging by onscreen terminology only, they could be anything from sonic guns (which were used to devastating effect in "A Taste of Armageddon", after all) to jets of macroscopic particles... So the word games aren't limiting us in this, although they aren't exactly helping, either.

I wish that Trek combat continued to work that way throughout its history, but it didn't. We'll probably have to retcon that as "impulse engines, full reverse!" or something, just like we often reinterpret those bursting phasers as photon torpedoes with proximity fuses.

I just cannot fathom why anybody should want to think like that. You gain absolutely nothing by it! There is no added consistency; writer intent is defeated; onscreen evidence is contradicted; the characters are made to look like asses (why not escape at warp instead?); and you have just needlessly written yourself into a dark corner when the next occasion of long range phaser fights occurs.

Long range phasers don't preclude short range ones. And short range ones don't preclude long range ones, unless some sort of explicit mention is made that they are short-ranged by inviolable necessity.

But see, even in cops shows where the villains HAVE armed helicopters, the cops contend with them with the assault rifles they're already equipped with. Why? Because the villains are not armed with supersonic jets that would necessitate an antiaircraft missile.

Okay, if you want to fine-tune, then give the villains supersonic jets. You can't have Trek starships limited to a specific mode of fighting when they are indeed expected to do other modes of fighting fairly regularly. Warp chases, with FTL exchange of fire from one physics-defying warp bubble to another without degradation of the beam in between, are the bread and butter of Star Trek combat. Quoting special relativity on what already occurs at SR-violating FTL speeds is an unnecessary complication for allowing for this style of combat; beams that inherently move FTL are the more "relaxed" option, the one that doesn't cause problems farther up the pseudouniverse.

"Duck when they point a weapon at you" is not "dodging phasers." It seems to be the same technique in hollywood dodging of bullets, with similar results.

And? You can't dodge a phaser by dodging the barrel, because phasers often fire off-boresight. But a prime facilitator for dodging a phaser is having enough time to do so, and we can see that some of this time is provided by the phaser beams being slow. A stun phaser is a fine weapon for fighting inside a starship - but even a long corridor makes it possible to duck and sidestep, as for example in "Conspiracy". Which takes us to

Accuracy, for one. Such a slow-moving beam becomes completely useless against a moving target at anything even resembling long ranges.

It would be an "upside" to have lightspeed phasers in the sense that lightspeed phasers would be deadlier weapons than soundspeed ones. But that's not what I was speaking about. I meant there is no upside within the Trek universe, within the body of evidence, for interpreting the slow phasers as lightspeed ones. After all, as you say, a lightspeed phaser would be a good weapon against moving targets at long ranges - but hand phasers don't hit moving targets at long ranges, so the lightspeed interpretation would be counterfactual and thus a downside.

Lightspeed or close-to-lightspeed phasers, on the other hand, would be simple point-and-shoot devices: the instant you press the trigger, the beam is on target. If you miss, you can walk the beam towards your target like a laser pointer until you make contact. No deflection, no need to lead the target, and--since the particles are moving so very fast--no need to worry about blooming or drop time when using them in gravity.

Again, good arguments against lightspeed phasers, because the above is not observed hand phaser behavior.

The VFX on hand phasers is unreliable in nearly every case, especially since phasers and lasers are sometimes represented by the exact same (slow moving) propagation. You'd literally have to suggest that laser beams travel slower than light in order to make this work.

Hand lasers have been portrayed once in Star Trek, in "The Cage", and there the VFX was indeed drawn with a one-frame-long propagation time, not the usual three-to-five-frames-long one that looks better and more dramatic.

Sometimes, it is suggested that hand lasers were featured in "Loud as a Whisper", because the war zone was described to have laser activity. But that activity was something that Picard suggested would threaten his ship. The hand weapons were not identified, and had qualities different from both lasers and phasers (but closer to the latter, with the cool evaporate-flesh-then-bones effect that is very similar to the evaporate-the-guy-not-the-walls-unless-you-keep-on-squeezing-the-trigger effect of phasers).

Apart from those, we hear of lasers in "The Outrageous Okona" but don't see them; we hear of (X-ray) lasers but also of particle beams in "Suddenly Human" and then fail to see beam weapon fire; and finally, we hear of mining lasers in "Home Soil" and for once get to see them as well, with slightly STL effects for very short, perhaps two-meter-long propagations at most. Data dodges the mining laser, but by virtue of dodging the easily trackable barrel...

I don't think I'm ignoring evidence if I argue that hand lasers are faster than hand phasers in the visual material, then.

Of course, real lasers would have an advantage over trek phasers in one major aspect: lasers do not leave visible beams that would give away the shooter's position. Theoretically, neither would real phasers, which would be a huge plus, especially for snipers.

See? You're already learning the rules.

Phasers indeed have very evident handicaps, and trying to paint phasers as lasers would remove many of those handicaps, thereby collapsing the plot logic and drama.

Obviously, phasers also have many plus sides, such as their fantastic ability to inflict massive damage on the target but virtually none on the surroundings. No doubt a price worth paying when you fight aboard your own starship!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Simple solution to everyone... phasers (at least the ship version) already ARE weaponized warp-beams, using the same concepts as subspace radio, etc. Wrap a warp field around the blast (explicitly stated in VOY, of all) and call it game.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because they are not REFERRED to as subspace weapons, nor for that matter are they implied as having anything to do with subspace.

That is no good reason not to...

There's no good reason to do it in the first place. Why do you need a reason not to?

In reverse, phasers are never said to be lasers, either.

Obviously not. OTOH, they are similar enough that Starfleet officers have used lasers as their personal side arm at one time or another, in which case they appeared to function exactly like phasers. Kirk and Spock even manufactured a laser by hand using parts from their subcutaneous transponders to crack a lock, producing a slow-moving visible beam little different from a phaser beam.

I wish that Trek combat continued to work that way throughout its history, but it didn't. We'll probably have to retcon that as "impulse engines, full reverse!" or something, just like we often reinterpret those bursting phasers as photon torpedoes with proximity fuses.

I just cannot fathom why anybody should want to think like that.

Your understanding is not required.

Long range phasers don't preclude short range ones.

Only if one assumes there are two different types of weapons on board the ship. But the second type of weapon is called "photon torpedo," not phaser.

Okay, if you want to fine-tune, then give the villains supersonic jets.

The villains don't have supersonic jets. Actually, they don't even have helicopters. You would have me believe the villains actually have flying cars that, for whatever reason, never actually fly. I don't buy it.

Warp chases, with FTL exchange of fire

Warp chances neither require nor involved FTL exchanges of fire.

And? You can't dodge a phaser by dodging the barrel, because phasers often fire off-boresight.

If you don't know where boresight is, this is irrelevant. Suddenly ducking when you think the other guy is about to shoot is a hollywood way of dodging everything from bows and arrows to sniper bullets.

And note that this doesn't always work; we have often seen redshirts dodge INTO the path of oncoming phaser blasts. Realistically this is the result of VFX artists having to connect beam with chest, but in-universe it would reflect a lack of real knowledge where the beam is going to be and dodging is a kind of wild guess/evasive action thing, sort of like running in a zigzag to avoid being shot.

It would be an "upside" to have lightspeed phasers in the sense that lightspeed phasers would be deadlier weapons than soundspeed ones.

No, they wouldn't be deadlier. They would be MORE ACCURATE. For precisely the same reason a repeating rifle is more accurate than a bow and arrow, for the same reason a bolt action rifle is more accurate than a repeater.

I meant there is no upside within the Trek universe, within the body of evidence, for interpreting the slow phasers as lightspeed ones.

And I mean that there is no body of evidence in the Trek universe that requires "slow phasers" of any kind. The only thing that really does is "Wink of an Eye" which has already been debunked as an absurdity.

After all, as you say, a lightspeed phaser would be a good weapon against moving targets at long ranges - but hand phasers don't hit moving targets at long ranges

We have seen hand phasers used in the Enterprise' shooting range on at least three separate occasions. We saw hand phasers used against Son'a drones in "Insurrection," and against the EP607 in "The Arsenal of Freedom" where three officers used exactly the method I described earlier: two of the phaser beams missed, then moved the beams slightly to put them on target. And then there's that weird game Janeway and Seven played in the holodeck with a hovering disk and a pair of hand phasers...

Re: the Enterprise shooting range: the obvious implication is that phasers ARE meant to hit moving targets at an appreciable distance. Otherwise, the shooting range would consist of a series of stationary targets that never move and your score is based on how fast you identify and hit the one target that turns green.

Again, good arguments against lightspeed phasers, because the above is not observed hand phaser behavior.

You forget The Arsenal of Freedom where a single EP607 module was destroyed using exactly this technique. You are also neglecting numerous instances of moving targets hit during "Way of the Warrior" by Bajoran phasers, and most prominently, the shootout in "Conspiracy" where Riker and Picard both repeatedly score phaser hits on moving targets.

And though I don't recall the episode name, the most glaring example comes from Enterprise, where Archer uses a hand phaser to disable a defective thruster assembly on a tumbling shuttlepod some fifty meters above his head. The phaser beam makes contact nearly instantaneously, and the thruster is disabled in just one shot.



I think it is safe to say you are again cherry-picking the visual evidence to fit your speculation, all to make this consistent with the notion that a futuristic coherent energy weapon would emit particles/energy/whatever at a speed of 200 meters per second. It's your opinion and you're welcome to it, but I feel confident at this point that I've explained to you all the reasons I cannot take your theory seriously.

Hand lasers have been portrayed once in Star Trek, in "The Cage", and there the VFX was indeed drawn with a one-frame-long propagation time, not the usual three-to-five-frames-long one that looks better and more dramatic.

You also forget the laser drill in "Home Soil" with a likewise slothful propagation.

I don't think I'm ignoring evidence if I argue that hand lasers are faster than hand phasers in the visual material, then.

Actually, you are. The one concrete instance we have of hand lasers shows them having almost the same speed as phasers. Basically you're ignoring the only datapoint we DO have in favor of data provided by your own imagination. I am not inclined to accept reasoning based on this.

Phasers indeed have very evident handicaps, and trying to paint phasers as lasers would remove many of those handicaps, thereby collapsing the plot logic and drama.

Except that Trek lasers ALSO have visible beams, so it doesn't matter in either case.

Actually, my point was that the propagation of a phaser beam would be irrelevant in the real world because a phaser beam wouldn't have a visible propagation. Even if it did, the EFFECTS of the beam would be delivered to the target long before the actual beam became apparent via its effect in the air.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Simple solution to everyone... phasers (at least the ship version) already ARE weaponized warp-beams, using the same concepts as subspace radio, etc. Wrap a warp field around the blast (explicitly stated in VOY, of all) and call it game.

This I doubt very much, since the connection between phasers and warp drive technology appears somewhat tenuous.

OTOH, I could see a kind of "warp beam" technology being signifigantly different from phasers, possibly certain types of exotic disruptor weapons whose effects may be both dramatic and devastating.

The Varon-T, for example.