Phaser Turrets vs Strips

[Prometheus Unbound]

My problem with a long strip is that destroying the starboard section may cause the port to be useless. If so, bad design.

nah, you just start the charging sequence at the next available emitter - they're all individual ones, not one long unbroken chain.

We know they can activate just a small part of the array in any direction they want without charging every emitter in the array.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Something else that I wondered- is there any reason they don't route warp power to phasers when travelling at sublight?

Who says they don't? In TMP they say the phasers now are powered by the warp core for more power.

It might go some way towards compensating for what seems to be a serious lack of armaments in Federation starships compared to counterparts in other races' fleets.

I see no 1 on 1 disadvantage on the Federation's part. When have they shown to be under-armed compared to their counterparts' ships?

Perhaps I chose my words poorly- I always found that whole "slow motion wormhole" thing incredibly stupid. If all Fed ships had warp-powered phasers, then firing them at warp should result in either a drop in yield or a drop in speed (or both) since the engines and weapons would be sharing the same energy source.

It bugged me that large Federation ships didn't carry proportionately-sized weapons, instead opting for small phaser strips, apart from a small number of exceptions. Of course, if it was the case that most of the strip was buried inside the ship it would be a different matter. It didn't help that around the early-TNG era most Federation ships were built mainly for exploration (including the Enr-D), its first encounter with the Borg showed how thin its hull actually is- IIRC the Defiant was the first ship to actually sport armour.

It was only when the Borg and Dominion showed up that the Feds got their shit together and started building more tactically focused designs like the Akira, Norway, Saber and Steamrunner. The Sovereign was a bit of an oddball in that when going up against the Scimitar, its phasers were piss-weak with multiple direct hits at close range doing virtually nothing, with photon torpedoes doing little better. It was only when they (belatedly) started firing Quantum torpedoes that they actually managed to hurt the larger ship.

It should be noted that right before the Enterprise rammed the Scimitar, the external view of the Enterprise suddenly shows all the damage that had been mysteriously invisible before this point. This includes a direct hit that clearly punched straight through one of the dorsal phaser arrays, practically cutting it in half.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Perhaps I chose my words poorly- I always found that whole "slow motion wormhole" thing incredibly stupid. If all Fed ships had warp-powered phasers, then firing them at warp should result in either a drop in yield or a drop in speed (or both) since the engines and weapons would be sharing the same energy source.

Why would it?

Unless they're at warp 9.x and taxing the MAMC to its maximum, I don't see why phasers would draw lots of power.

They can fire them on auxiliary power and also on batteries. They don't seem to take up that much power. I mean, something that fits in your hand can vapourise a building.

They're not DET.

It bugged me that large Federation ships didn't carry proportionately-sized weapons, instead opting for small phaser strips, apart from a small number of exceptions. Of course, if it was the case that most of the strip was buried inside the ship it would be a different matter. It didn't help that around the early-TNG era most Federation ships were built mainly for exploration (including the Enr-D), its first encounter with the Borg showed how thin its hull actually is- IIRC the Defiant was the first ship to actually sport armour.

Ablative armour.

It was only when the Borg and Dominion showed up that the Feds got their shit together and started building more tactically focused designs like the Akira, Norway, Saber and Steamrunner. The Sovereign was a bit of an oddball in that when going up against the Scimitar, its phasers were piss-weak with multiple direct hits at close range doing virtually nothing, with photon torpedoes doing little better. It was only when they (belatedly) started firing Quantum torpedoes that they actually managed to hurt the larger ship.

It should be noted that right before the Enterprise rammed the Scimitar, the external view of the Enterprise suddenly shows all the damage that had been mysteriously invisible before this point. This includes a direct hit that clearly punched straight through one of the dorsal phaser arrays, practically cutting it in half.

But how are the Federation being shown as "under-armed" compared to their counterparts' ships?

Romulans? Galaxy can go toe to toe with a D'Derridex.

Klingons? Never seen a Connie or Galaxy or Excelsior lose a fight with a contemporary Klingon ship that I can recall.


And those are the two most powerful and aggressive "counterparts" to the Federation.

And within 3 years of the Borg being found, they had developed new weapons and systems and ships to combat them (somewhat successfully, too).


The Dominion was a curve ball - but even then, one on one, once they figured out the tactics, Federation ships were beating them. One on one.


?


Federation explorer class vessels are a match for any AQ race's dedicated warships.

And then we see the Defiant - yes, Federation ships are "under armed" if you look at the capabilities of the Federation. However they aren't war ships, they avoid combat where possible and even their science type vessels can pack a punch.

The Federation has never been "under armed". Alternate realities aside, show me a war the Federation lost in the last 50 years from ST:NEM?

I can't think of one.

[Simon_Jester]

Why would it?

Unless they're at warp 9.x and taxing the MAMC to its maximum, I don't see why phasers would draw lots of power.

They can fire them on auxiliary power and also on batteries. They don't seem to take up that much power. I mean, something that fits in your hand can vapourise a building.

They're not DET.

The catch is that the phaser power pack doubles as a large bomb on a number of occasions. It fits in your hand- but it packs a lot of raw energy for its size. While it's fairly clear that a phaser beam need not require a great deal of power, it is certainly the case that a great deal of power can be put into one.

But how are the Federation being shown as "under-armed" compared to their counterparts' ships?

Romulans? Galaxy can go toe to toe with a D'Derridex.

Klingons? Never seen a Connie or Galaxy or Excelsior lose a fight with a contemporary Klingon ship that I can recall.

Personally I figure that weapons in Star Trek just aren't physically bulky and obtrusive compared to the parts of a starship necessary for it to fly- like building giant zap guns and miniaturizing them is easy but building FTL drives is hard, which makes a certain amount of sense. So building bigger guns onto a ship just doesn't make much sense.

In the case of the Defiant-class, that seems to have been a deliberate decision to make a ship much smaller than anything else the Federation uses, rather than a decision to upgun existing designs... which they just plain haven't needed to do very much.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Why would it?

Unless they're at warp 9.x and taxing the MAMC to its maximum, I don't see why phasers would draw lots of power.

They can fire them on auxiliary power and also on batteries. They don't seem to take up that much power. I mean, something that fits in your hand can vapourise a building.

They're not DET.

The catch is that the phaser power pack doubles as a large bomb on a number of occasions. It fits in your hand- but it packs a lot of raw energy for its size. While it's fairly clear that a phaser beam need not require a great deal of power, it is certainly the case that a great deal of power can be put into one.

No doubt. But that hand phaser comment aside, we've seen them fire when on low power or on batteries (when aux power has failed) (ST2).

I cannot conceivably imagine that phasers tax the warp core of a Starship.

Shuttle, perhaps. Starship? Nah.

But how are the Federation being shown as "under-armed" compared to their counterparts' ships?

Romulans? Galaxy can go toe to toe with a D'Derridex.

Klingons? Never seen a Connie or Galaxy or Excelsior lose a fight with a contemporary Klingon ship that I can recall.

In the case of the Defiant-class, that seems to have been a deliberate decision to make a ship much smaller than anything else the Federation uses, rather than a decision to upgun existing designs... which they just plain haven't needed to do very much.

Sure, I meant when the Federation tries, and if they wanted to they could double or triple or quadruple the weapons on a galaxy (with enough R&D - I doubt you can just bolt on a phaser array and be done with it). A Defiant can take on a small fleet of ships - up to 5-10 capital ships (Galor class), 20-30 Dominion battlebugs, a small Klingon fleet of attack ships (2 BoP and 1 Vorcha - and they were purposefully trying not to kill Klingons here)...

If they can pack that on a Defiant, imagine what they can pack on a hull like the Galaxy or Sov, if they wanted.

Fed ships are underpowered as to their potential, but not in comparison to other races.

A Federation all-purpose will match or beat a Klingon or Romulan warship if equivalent mass, in a one on one, despite the Fed ship having less weapons systems per m^3.

[Batman]

You don't build a ship, even a warship, with the maximum firepower you technologically can. You build it with the firepower you expect to need (and, 'no money' shenanigans aside, with what you can reasonably afford.) And so far it looks like the Feds don't need more heavily armed ships, they seem to be doing fine with what they have (except against the Borg, and even there they were doing okay by the time of First Contact-the Cube was reeling already as the E-E got there despite severely out-voluming (and presumably outmassing) the Feds (assuming they didn't lose a ridiculous number of ships on the way to Earth).
A ship that is guaranteed to pulverize any enemy is awesome. It can also only be in one place at the time. If, for the same cost, you can build 3, or 5, or 7 (and so on) ships that can STILL expect to stand up to any enemy you're likely to face, building that one supership makes no sense

[Simon_Jester]

Why would it?

Unless they're at warp 9.x and taxing the MAMC to its maximum, I don't see why phasers would draw lots of power.

They can fire them on auxiliary power and also on batteries. They don't seem to take up that much power. I mean, something that fits in your hand can vapourise a building.

They're not DET.

The catch is that the phaser power pack doubles as a large bomb on a number of occasions. It fits in your hand- but it packs a lot of raw energy for its size. While it's fairly clear that a phaser beam need not require a great deal of power, it is certainly the case that a great deal of power can be put into one.

No doubt. But that hand phaser comment aside, we've seen them fire when on low power or on batteries (when aux power has failed) (ST2).

I cannot conceivably imagine that phasers tax the warp core of a Starship.

Perhaps the phasers firing at minimum power do not tax the warp core, but when firing at maximum (as in, likely to be truly effective) power do so?

Alternatively, perhaps the phasers have their own (highly energetic) batteries to allow them to fire when the rest of the ship is on auxiliary power? There is some supporting evidence for this from what I remember.

Fed ships are underpowered as to their potential, but not in comparison to other races.

A Federation all-purpose will match or beat a Klingon or Romulan warship if equivalent mass, in a one on one, despite the Fed ship having less weapons systems per m^3.

To me, this suggests that the real limiting factor isn't the number of weapon emplacements, it's power. Ships of comparable size are comparably effective (e.g. a Galaxy and a D'Deridex) regardless of the details of what they're armed with, because what matters is the ability to project megawatts into the enemy's hull, not how many separate emitters you use to do it.

And the outlier, Defiant, packs an insane punch for her tonnage precisely because she is heavily overpowered for her tonnage, in terms of electrical generation. Alternatively, because those "pulse phasers" are uniquely designed to store unusual amounts of energy for powerful shots, or otherwise to get the same effect in a more energy-efficient way.

[Sea Skimmer]

The phaser banks have to be storing up something, given how often they come out up as drained. But it could be the phasers have some kind of slow move accumulators for the actual phaser particles, but can only accelerate and fire them with further external power.

Comparing Defiant to a Galaxy is basically the same as comparing a Bora class missile corvette to a LPD-17 (imagine it as the original LPD-17 design with a Mk41 VLS in the bow and what that implies). Its not going to produce very useful conclusions in direct comparsion. They are capable of some very different things.

One idea I've mused on is perhaps earlier wars had more FTL and long range combat because shields were weaker, and weapons came to favor the FTL capable torpedoes as main armament, and strip phasers for long range flexibility. As shields and hulls improved combat shifted to closer ranges where pulse weapons are more viable pointing wise and perhaps simply more powerful outright. Defiant blewup a lot of ships with quick bursts, but they almost always were fairly small ships to begin with. Against the Borg you could use nearly any weapon, but did need a very fast ship at warp to keep up with the enemy. Defiant was probably designed for that even more so then her weapons, both leading to a ship which simply pushed safe design limits. You can always engineer stuff to be less safe and durable and get more performance afterall. Right up until it begins exploding when turned on every time.

[Simon_Jester]

Although Defiant turned out to have some serious problems sustaining high speed in warp, as I recall, so their ability to keep up with the Borg must have proved disappointing if they were ever intended for that.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Although Defiant turned out to have some serious problems sustaining high speed in warp, as I recall, so their ability to keep up with the Borg must have proved disappointing if they were ever intended for that.

9.5 or so. Nothing amazing but not exactly "slow". Just slow compared to something like the Intrepid. Even a Galaxy normally maxes out at 9.6.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The Starfleet Command series offers one possibility in the form of a "Phaser Capacitor" which charges over time and when full enables phasers to be fired.

[Prometheus Unbound]

The Starfleet Command series offers one possibility in the form of a "Phaser Capacitor" which charges over time and when full enables phasers to be fired.

Oh they have phaser banks / coils which are the capacitors. They mention them a few times in the series. Off the top of my head in ST:NEM I believe it's Geordi who mentions their phaser power is down to 4%

The warp core was offline - yes - however they were running at full impulse, with maximum shields they could, firing phasers continuously and had forcefields and all sorts up - on fusion power only - and lasted the entire fight without the warp core.



So I say again, phasers do not require a huge amount of power to fire, not in comparison to a MAMRC and seem to be happy firing for ages on normal impulse power.

[Simon_Jester]

Although, again, this does not necessarily mean that the phasers should be fired without using warp power when the ship is not at warp. Only that they can. There are a lot of powered systems that continue to function at reduced power, but function less well.

Although Defiant turned out to have some serious problems sustaining high speed in warp, as I recall, so their ability to keep up with the Borg must have proved disappointing if they were ever intended for that.

9.5 or so. Nothing amazing but not exactly "slow". Just slow compared to something like the Intrepid. Even a Galaxy normally maxes out at 9.6.

Could have sworn that was after refit and modification and that there were more serious problems in trials (possibly the ship being in danger of shaking itself to pieces at high warp). However, my watching of DS9 is spotty enough that I can't place the reference.

[Lord Revan]

IIRC before O'Brien fixed the ship the Defiant couldn't go warp at all without tearing itself apart, I could be wrong on this matter but was clearly something quite serious.

[Batman]

IIRC the 'shakes herself apart' problem only occurred at 'full power' which presumably means maximum Warp.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The Starfleet Command series offers one possibility in the form of a "Phaser Capacitor" which charges over time and when full enables phasers to be fired.

Oh they have phaser banks / coils which are the capacitors. They mention them a few times in the series. Off the top of my head in ST:NEM I believe it's Geordi who mentions their phaser power is down to 4%

The warp core was offline - yes - however they were running at full impulse, with maximum shields they could, firing phasers continuously and had forcefields and all sorts up - on fusion power only - and lasted the entire fight without the warp core.



So I say again, phasers do not require a huge amount of power to fire, not in comparison to a MAMRC and seem to be happy firing for ages on normal impulse power.

It's been pretty well established that the limiting factor on phaser yield is the energy available to power them. Certainly without the warp core it would explain why the E-E's phasers were so pitifully weak vs the Scimitar. Yes, they could fire all day but with a yield so low all they did was illuminate the Reman ship- it follows that the more power you can feed them the more damage they'll do. That said, there must be a minimum power threshold below which Phasers simply cannot fire, regardless of whether they're type X (E-D), or XII (E-E).

And it was Data who reported that they were all out of Photons and that Phasers were down to 4% What Geordi said was that the Scimitar's shields were still at 70%- had they fired more than 9 Quantums they'd probably have done far better! And they didn't have all the forcefields working- the one protecting the Warp core died when it did...

[Sea Skimmer]

IIRC before O'Brien fixed the ship the Defiant couldn't go warp at all without tearing itself apart, I could be wrong on this matter but was clearly something quite serious.

He said she almost tore herself apart on trials, with a tone that implied he was fearful this could happen again. So we really have no idea if they truly fixed the problem or simply issue an order that says 'do not exceed war 9.96' or something similar like that.

[Crazedwraith]

IIRC before O'Brien fixed the ship the Defiant couldn't go warp at all without tearing itself apart, I could be wrong on this matter but was clearly something quite serious.

He said she almost tore herself apart on trials, with a tone that implied he was fearful this could happen again. So we really have no idea if they truly fixed the problem or simply issue an order that says 'do not exceed war 9.96' or something similar like that.

O'Brien definitely developed some kind of fix for the warp drive. The Valiant had a similar problem where it couldnt excede Warp 4 I think and Nog used O'Briens fix there to improve performance.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

IIRC before O'Brien fixed the ship the Defiant couldn't go warp at all without tearing itself apart, I could be wrong on this matter but was clearly something quite serious.

He said she almost tore herself apart on trials, with a tone that implied he was fearful this could happen again. So we really have no idea if they truly fixed the problem or simply issue an order that says 'do not exceed war 9.96' or something similar like that.

O'Brien definitely developed some kind of fix for the warp drive. The Valiant had a similar problem where it couldnt excede Warp 4 I think and Nog used O'Briens fix there to improve performance.

More like Warp 3.2. Which might be the only reason the ship was supposedly "stuck behind enemy lines" when the war kicked off. It was the incompetence and hubris of Red Squad that was the ship's downfall. Rather than make for the nearest Starbase when the senior officers were killed to take on some more experienced crew it was a ship crewed by cadets that elected to carry out the ship's mission.

The problem was that once they did that, we don't know whether they transmitted that info back to Starfleet. If they decided to maintain radio silence then the alternative is to copy the data onto a probe/modified torpedo (like the one they used to scan the Jem'Hadar battleship) and send it back to Federation space. That way even if the ship didn't make it their actions would not have been in vain- what we had was an attempt to destroy the ship that was carried out in the most incompetent fashion possible.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Auxiliary Power is still a fusion reactor. That is a lot of energy depending on the reactor's output, but it is still significantly less than the output of a M/AM reaction. Of course, the fusion reactor likely creates the fuel for the M/AM annihilation (which accounts for much of the Time Spent Traveling at STL).

What that means though is that phasers can run on Aux power, and when doing so they probably have to run on capacitors in order to be combat effective because the fusion reactor generates a fraction of what a M/AM reactor is capable of producing. In heavy combat (against say, The Scimitar), if you want to fire lots of shots they have to be low yield, otherwise you drain the capacitor too quickly. Even doing that, they were discharging faster than charging.

The same with shields

Without the warp core, their instantaneous energy budget is much reduced. The warp core is net loss with high output, while a fusion reactor is net-gain with (relatively) low output.


I feel the need to respond to this directly:

It bugged me that large Federation ships didn't carry proportionately-sized weapons, instead opting for small phaser strips, apart from a small number of exceptions.

Why? Why is this even a thing?

These are not surface battleships where their ability to lob heavy slugs down range is limited by their tonnage, and where it is beneficial to have a physically bigger gun. Thinking in terms of tonnage per se is a brainbug borne out of surface navies. This is not to say that tonnage does not matter at all. A bigger ship means a bigger reactor, better internal heat management, and the ability to handle larger power conduits and the like. But you will note what all that is in the service of. Power.

So long as your directed energy weapon can handle the increased power input, who gives a shit how physically big it is? Which brings us to the Defiant.

The defiant has serious problems. All discussion about its tendency to explode aside... It has an overpowered reactor. It has a big ships power systems in a miniaturized package, and we know that in the event of a shield impact, there is some feedback into the ship's power system that does things like explode bridge consoles. That is for a normal ship. Jesus Fucking Christ, it is worse on a Defiant class ship. The USS Valiant had blown out internal bulkheads and hull breaches before shields even dropped. Ablative armor should prevent hull breaches from weapons fire partially penetrating the shields, so the logical conclusion is that it was internal.

[Sea Skimmer]

I think that goes back to the almost tore itself apart on trials thing. The Trek ships use force fields to hold themselves together, at least under hard use. On Defiant that's probably a lot more extreme, probably to the point she needed extra force field power simply to hold her actual warp core and power ducts together.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think that goes back to the almost tore itself apart on trials thing. The Trek ships use force fields to hold themselves together, at least under hard use. On Defiant that's probably a lot more extreme, probably to the point she needed extra force field power simply to hold her actual warp core and power ducts together.

Yeah. I mean, with fuck-off powerful directed energy weapons (even with the relatively low yield by sci fi standards, the energy density of a phaser is in Holy Shitballs territory. They have basically coalesced Hiroshima into a few square meters) and M/AM torpedoes, there is no such thing as a material that will do jack or shit to mitigate damage. Ablative or reactive armor might work to some extent, but they will still be reliant on structural integrity fields. Not only to hold themselves together against the usual stresses, but to act like armor. Which brings us to the same problem as energy feedback in the shields. Get hit in any way, and SIF systems that are running on a power system that is in a state of barely contained overload suddenly have to draw more power, there goes a console. You'd think bridge consoles and the like would have circuit breakers to stop that. And they probably do. On the other hand, when the circuit breaker takes enough energy to instantly sublimate, there is not much anyone can really do about that, and it is energetic enough that the console still explodes.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I think that goes back to the almost tore itself apart on trials thing. The Trek ships use force fields to hold themselves together, at least under hard use. On Defiant that's probably a lot more extreme, probably to the point she needed extra force field power simply to hold her actual warp core and power ducts together.

Yeah. I mean, with fuck-off powerful directed energy weapons (even with the relatively low yield by sci fi standards, the energy density of a phaser is in Holy Shitballs territory. They have basically coalesced Hiroshima into a few square meters) and M/AM torpedoes, there is no such thing as a material that will do jack or shit to mitigate damage. Ablative or reactive armor might work to some extent, but they will still be reliant on structural integrity fields. Not only to hold themselves together against the usual stresses, but to act like armor. Which brings us to the same problem as energy feedback in the shields. Get hit in any way, and SIF systems that are running on a power system that is in a state of barely contained overload suddenly have to draw more power, there goes a console. You'd think bridge consoles and the like would have circuit breakers to stop that. And they probably do. On the other hand, when the circuit breaker takes enough energy to instantly sublimate, there is not much anyone can really do about that, and it is energetic enough that the console still explodes.

But that's akin to my keyboard blowing up because my PSU has a power surge :S

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think that goes back to the almost tore itself apart on trials thing. The Trek ships use force fields to hold themselves together, at least under hard use. On Defiant that's probably a lot more extreme, probably to the point she needed extra force field power simply to hold her actual warp core and power ducts together.

Yeah. I mean, with fuck-off powerful directed energy weapons (even with the relatively low yield by sci fi standards, the energy density of a phaser is in Holy Shitballs territory. They have basically coalesced Hiroshima into a few square meters) and M/AM torpedoes, there is no such thing as a material that will do jack or shit to mitigate damage. Ablative or reactive armor might work to some extent, but they will still be reliant on structural integrity fields. Not only to hold themselves together against the usual stresses, but to act like armor. Which brings us to the same problem as energy feedback in the shields. Get hit in any way, and SIF systems that are running on a power system that is in a state of barely contained overload suddenly have to draw more power, there goes a console. You'd think bridge consoles and the like would have circuit breakers to stop that. And they probably do. On the other hand, when the circuit breaker takes enough energy to instantly sublimate, there is not much anyone can really do about that, and it is energetic enough that the console still explodes.

But that's akin to my keyboard blowing up because my PSU has a power surge :S

Not really. There is a lot less energy running through your PSU, and a lot of other smaller power lines will fail before your keyboard is affected (plus, your PSU and Keyboard are not in the same gas-tight container).

Their power system has huge current loads, largely because they have built a massively redundant system that lets them reroute power all over the ship in order to compensate for battle damage. So all over the ship, there are trunks of fucking plasma. From that, their smaller systems (like the computers) draw power, albeit indirectly by way of conversion into electricity by EPS manifolds that draw power from smaller EPS taps.

There are a few ways this can fail.

1. The EPS conduit surges (or is physically damaged by shock) and fails, releasing high energy plasma into interior spaces and blows out an internal bulkhead. Emergency cutoffs are a thing, and the plasma gets rerouted to power essential systems very quickly, but enough gets through to cause damage.

2. The EPS taps surge (or are physically damaged by shock) and fail. More energy intensive systems (like structural integrity or artificial gravity plating) has to draw power from these, a local part of the tap fails and the plasma escapes into interior spaces which can include control consoles which cannot be isolated from those same interior spaces due to their own power draw requirements and wired connections to the main computer core etc. As a result, small amounts of plasma discharge into the computer consoles causing them to explode in your face. This is probably the most likely, given that the most commonly reported injury in combat are plasma burns.

3. EPS manifold fails, cutting off power to a system before manual reroutes restore it. May cause a surge which propagates up into a computer console. Circuit breaker fuse saves the user from experiencing the full voltage, but still sublimates rather rapidly and the resulting minor explosion is caused by small amounts of vaporized metal.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Then it's like plugging my keyboard direct into the wall and the house being struck my lightning and me getting blown up.

That's a really stupid design. I appreciate they may need large amounts of power conduits to have things like forcefields and structural integrity but why does that run through the consoles? It's not normally the wall that explodes behind it - helm consoles spontaneously ignite and throw *rocks* at people.