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IIRC, the Enterprise-D of the alternative timeline from "Yesterday's Enterprise" http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Yest ... _(episode), where they met the Enterprise-C and were at war with the Klingon Empire could carry 6,000 troops and deliver them to their targets per transporter.

So I think it is more of a question how much of their systems they devote to the transporters (energy, computer-processing) than physical or technological Limits. If they prefer to spend space on biolabs or tanks for sentinent cetacea (Gene Roddenberry wanted those for TNG, IIRC) ... .

In some novels they save on freight-space by keeping the transporter-pattern of the material active within the transporter.

FTeik wrote: In some novels they save on freight-space by keeping the transporter-pattern of the material active within the transporter.

To me that seems energy inefficient, however Scotty stayed alive for 75 years in the active buffer (locked in a diagnostic loop IIRC). And the Jenolan had crashed and had little power left.

Maybe transporters dont use much energy.

Prometheus Unbound wrote:

FTeik wrote: In some novels they save on freight-space by keeping the transporter-pattern of the material active within the transporter.

To me that seems energy inefficient, however Scotty stayed alive for 75 years in the active buffer (locked in a diagnostic loop IIRC). And the Jenolan had crashed and had little power left.

Maybe transporters dont use much energy.

There's also they risk of your cargo's pattern being degraded by the time you reach your destination. Though depending on your cargo that might not matter. Reintegrating a person is a tad more difficult to do correct than say an ingot of space-metal

Prometheus Unbound wrote:

FTeik wrote: In some novels they save on freight-space by keeping the transporter-pattern of the material active within the transporter.

To me that seems energy inefficient, however Scotty stayed alive for 75 years in the active buffer (locked in a diagnostic loop IIRC). And the Jenolan had crashed and had little power left.

Maybe transporters dont use much energy.

Hmmm... even if it is super inefficient and uses much energy, it might be necessity when faced with hard choices... where you have to cram say all the deck chairs of passenger bay X into the buffer-thing to make space for more macro-ampules of Space AIDS vaccines or something that CAN'T be compressed into the transporter buffers.

Crazedwraith wrote:

Prometheus Unbound wrote:

FTeik wrote: In some novels they save on freight-space by keeping the transporter-pattern of the material active within the transporter.

To me that seems energy inefficient, however Scotty stayed alive for 75 years in the active buffer (locked in a diagnostic loop IIRC). And the Jenolan had crashed and had little power left.

Maybe transporters dont use much energy.

There's also they risk of your cargo's pattern being degraded by the time you reach your destination. Though depending on your cargo that might not matter. Reintegrating a person is a tad more difficult to do correct than say an ingot of space-metal

I believe, in the TM at least, the cargo transporters can be programmed to work only on the "molecular level" (like replicators) rather than quantum / subatomic level (normal transporters).

I would therefore assume the patterns and stuff to contain them would be like 10,000x smaller or something than a full quantum scan and brain patterns of a living being.

But that's an assumption.

In the novels it was a point of supplying people like Kirk and "Bones" McCoy with real coffee instead of stuff from the replicator, so what seems to be plus for transporter-technology was a loss at the replicator-front.

If the main energy drain of transporters in in the dematerialization/rematerialization using the pattern buffer for space-saving storage makes sense, especially if you need storage space for untransportable stuff.

Batman wrote:If the main energy drain of transporters in in the dematerialization/rematerialization using the pattern buffer for space-saving storage makes sense, especially if you need storage space for untransportable stuff.

we do know that the patterns in the buffer degrade over time though, how fast I couldn't tell at this point though as I can't remember anytime that was explicitly told.

Lord Revan wrote:we do know that the patterns in the buffer degrade over time though, how fast I couldn't tell at this point though as I can't remember anytime that was explicitly told.

About 4E-5% per year, assuming a bit of clever crosswiring and that everything keeps working, based on Scotty's transporter lifeboat trick.

Indeed. Pattern degradation seems to be a handleable issue even at human levels of required detail (with some tinkering, for decades) so storing cargo that way (which might-or might not-be done with a much smaller resolution) for a few weeks or months seems entirely plausible.

I imagine that another reason it's not done is aside from degradation over time, one good jolt and you lose the pattern. A simple power flicker? You just lost your entire load.

Scotty set up his system to minimize loss... on a ship with everything else turned off stuck in a single unmoving place with nothing disturbing it in the slightest and nothing to cause the slightest fluctuation in it's power grid.

Suddenly drop out of warp too rough, hit something unexpectedly, or take an attack and have a minor flicker while your shields ramp up, and you could be screwed! Structural Integrity Field and Inertial Dampers always trump everything else in power needs, after all...

Q99 wrote:I imagine that another reason it's not done is aside from degradation over time, one good jolt and you lose the pattern. A simple power flicker? You just lost your entire load.

Scotty set up his system to minimize loss... on a ship with everything else turned off stuck in a single unmoving place with nothing disturbing it in the slightest and nothing to cause the slightest fluctuation in it's power grid.

Suddenly drop out of warp too rough, hit something unexpectedly, or take an attack and have a minor flicker while your shields ramp up, and you could be screwed! Structural Integrity Field and Inertial Dampers always trump everything else in power needs, after all...

there also should be "natural" fluctuations in the power grid simply because wear and tear on the components will mostly likely not be even, such a natural "burp" in the powergrid might be why Scotty was the only survivor of the Jenolan. That said I suspect that there's some safe guards in place so that a random power surge wouldn't screw up with the transporters but the components for those systems are still subject wear and tear.

Lord Revan wrote: there also should be "natural" fluctuations in the power grid simply because wear and tear on the components will mostly likely not be even, such a natural "burp" in the powergrid might be why Scotty was the only survivor of the Jenolan. That said I suspect that there's some safe guards in place so that a random power surge wouldn't screw up with the transporters but the components for those systems are still subject wear and tear.

Let's not forget we've seen a number of technobabble phenomena or enemy weapons drain power.

Even with precautions, I wouldn't want to use it on anything I wasn't ok with losing.

Q99 wrote:

Lord Revan wrote: there also should be "natural" fluctuations in the power grid simply because wear and tear on the components will mostly likely not be even, such a natural "burp" in the powergrid might be why Scotty was the only survivor of the Jenolan. That said I suspect that there's some safe guards in place so that a random power surge wouldn't screw up with the transporters but the components for those systems are still subject wear and tear.

Let's not forget we've seen a number of technobabble phenomena or enemy weapons drain power.

Even with precautions, I wouldn't want to use it on anything I wasn't ok with losing.

true enough but I meant that there's probably safe guards so that captain doesn't get his pattern spread across the galaxy because the power relay on deck 12 was a bit flacky and someone plugged in an electric shaver to recharge it.

So standard operations (as we see them now) would probably be just fine, but things like long term storage in pattern buffer would be iffy at the best of times. It might also explain why we rarely see boarding during combat as a typical tactic.

I'm kinda thinking, what's important enough that you want that much more than you can carry in your hold, but not important enough that you're willing to use the method?

Lord Revan wrote:It might also explain why we rarely see boarding during combat as a typical tactic.

Explaining a lack of boarding actions is easier: Transporters typically can't transport through shields. So to board an enemy vessel you need to meet three conditions:
- Their shields must be down.
- You must be willing to drop your own shields. Probably because you've knocked out their weapons.
- There must be enough of the enemy ship left that boarding them would accomplish something useful.

bilateralrope wrote: Explaining a lack of boarding actions is easier: Transporters typically can't transport through shields. So to board an enemy vessel you need to meet three conditions:
- Their shields must be down.
- You must be willing to drop your own shields. Probably because you've knocked out their weapons.
- There must be enough of the enemy ship left that boarding them would accomplish something useful.

I'll toss in, if your ultimate aim is to eliminate the enemy as a threat, continuing to fire is often faster once 1 has been accomplished even if they're reasonably intact otherwise.

DS9 got boarded when it was attacked, but it's in the unusual situation of being big enough to have shields able to partially fail while still being very much in the fight. So there you have a reason to board, space stations, which also have greater reason to keep intact. The rest of the time, it's quite hard to do in a fight.