Would ion cannons affect ST ships?

[Trekdestroyer]

I have always considered what would happen should a st ship be shot with an ion cannon. I have heard all kinds of claims about what might happen so thus I will hear some opinions first.

[Alyeska]

Seeing what Ion storms do to Trek ships I think that an ion cannon would "Do really bad things" to a Trek ship.

[Praxis]

I have always considered what would happen should a st ship be shot with an ion cannon. I have heard all kinds of claims about what might happen so thus I will hear some opinions first.

It'd probably destroy it.

1) Ions generally wreack havoc with ST ships, either knocking them about like leaves or peircing the shields easily or causing malfunctions or setting off cloaking devices or things like that.
2) Ion cannons are supposed to unleash blasts that overwhelm ever Star Wars shields and electronics. Don't even think about what it'd to to Trek.
3) Star Wars ships can loose all power and hold together. If a Star Trek ship loses power to the warp core, the containment field fails and it explodes.

From these 3 points, I'd say a few ion cannon blasts would disable the ship and if ONE SHOT got through to engineering past the shields, the whole ship would go up when the core breaches.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

3) Star Wars ships can loose all power and hold together. If a Star Trek ship loses power to the warp core, the containment field fails and it explodes.

For some Federation vessels. I think the E-E has held up nicely in what is normally warp-core exploding instances. Then again, we are talking about an near-instantaneous loss of power.

[Alyeska]

Warp cores aren't nearly as fragile as is commonly believed. For starters Voyager crash landed on an ice planet and remained without power and with the lower decks crushed for more then a decade and yet there was no warp core breach.

[Praxis]

Warp cores aren't nearly as fragile as is commonly believed. For starters Voyager crash landed on an ice planet and remained without power and with the lower decks crushed for more then a decade and yet there was no warp core breach.

Could the crew- or safties- have transferred the antimatter to the storage tanks?

It wasn't an immediate sudden power loss, correct?

[The Silence and I]

The Defiant has lost power on more than one occasion IIRC without core breach too. The magnetic fields are supposedly based on superconducting coils, and do not degrade. A simple loss of power should not be a problem, although other conditions may cause the fields to degrade for no good RL reason.

As to the topic at hand, I forsee bad things. Very bad things resulting from an ion weapon. It may downright disable the shields, overload the computer core and go from there.

[Isolder74]

An E-d Run of the Galaxy Class would likely explode. Most other ships, might likely have other problems. Its shown in Star Trek IV that TOS era ships can stay togather under sudden power losses. Trek ships do tend to have nasty things happen to them when ions hit them, as in Ion storms ect, so the ship might have large hole shot in it by the ion beam.

It the Ion cannon was to make a direct hit on the Warp core almost any Federation ship would be in a lot of trouble not from the loss of power but in the loss of vitale parts of the Warp core.

[Sharp-kun]

Warp cores aren't nearly as fragile as is commonly believed. For starters Voyager crash landed on an ice planet and remained without power and with the lower decks crushed for more then a decade and yet there was no warp core breach.

Wouldn't an ion cannon cause the containment fields to fail?

[SirNitram]

Warp cores aren't nearly as fragile as is commonly believed. For starters Voyager crash landed on an ice planet and remained without power and with the lower decks crushed for more then a decade and yet there was no warp core breach.

It isn't a matter of 'Warp core bashing'. It's a matter of catastrophic failure of systems like containment. Antimatter does not work and play well with others. There's no real escaping that fact.

[Lord Revan]

Warp cores aren't nearly as fragile as is commonly believed. For starters Voyager crash landed on an ice planet and remained without power and with the lower decks crushed for more then a decade and yet there was no warp core breach.

Wouldn't an ion cannon cause the containment fields to fail?

Well they based magnetics and ion cannons have at least seconary EMP effects. So if not outright fail, the containment interfared by a ion cannon hit.

[Praxis]

A simple loss of power should not be a problem, although other conditions may cause the fields to degrade for no good RL reason.

Such as a massive ion bombardment and energy overload?

[Mange]

Well, the bridge crew of the Trek vessel would be killed due to exploding consoles, as well as many members of the crew in the corridors because of the computer interface exploding. The ship would be totally knocked out of commission, and it's quite possible that ion blasts would lead to warp core breach as the containment field would shut down due to power loss and erratic computers.

[Solauren]

let's not forget Ion Radiation poisoning

[Gustav32Vasa]

let's not forget Ion Radiation poisoning

[The Silence and I]

A simple loss of power should not be a problem, although other conditions may cause the fields to degrade for no good RL reason.

Such as a massive ion bombardment and energy overload?

Potentially...but unlikely. Ion storms are considered dangerous, but the reason IIRC has more to do with computer systems and structual integreity. Ion storms are like the pen-ultimate thunderstorm; the "winds" knock starships about like leaves and shake them apart...at least, that is what I've inferred, as I do not believe we have seen anyone try to navigate one. This strays into writer's intent, but basically the writers wanted something that would sound dangerous, so they called it a storm and threw in "ion" to make it futuristic.
The original Galaxy run, on the other hand, is very easily destroyed by power surges/overload.

[dragon]

The only problem with the Ion storms in Star Trek was how often they got caught in one. I mean if you see an Ion storm coming why not just go to warp and get away from it or go around it. After all most of the Ion storms in the series and books were usally smaller than a solar system.
Except I do rember one episode of TOS where the storm was light years across.

At least the small storms had little affect on the ships on the bigger intense storms did. Unless of course you were in a shuttle craft that couldn't outrun a 33000 kph storm.

[Gil Hamilton]

The Defiant has lost power on more than one occasion IIRC without core breach too. The magnetic fields are supposedly based on superconducting coils, and do not degrade. A simple loss of power should not be a problem, although other conditions may cause the fields to degrade for no good RL reason.

Wouldn't help. The coils may be superconducting, but the cooling system to keep their temperature low enough to maintain superconductivity still needs power. They probably use batteries to maintain the containment. StarTrek can store energy at high densities for large periods of time, it seems. A large bank of batteries could keep the fields on the antimatter storage and warp core working.

However, none of that matters if the batteries themselves get their shit ruined by the Ion Cannon blast. Then they are dicked.

[Sarevok]

If hit by ion cannon fire a first generation Galaxy class starship would suffer a warp core breach and blow up. Other ships probobly wont blow up since they have demonstrated they maintain antimatter containment even when all systems are shut down (Voyger surviving under a glacier). The main problem that trek ships hit by ion cannon fire will be losing power to all systems. A ship could be disabled.

[Ender]

An Ion cannon blast has enough raw power to overwhelm the shields of a SD, then the charged plasma causes the EMP as a tertiary effect. That's gonna destroy the ship long before AM containment becomes an issue.

[nasor]

let's not forget Ion Radiation poisoning

Whaaa?

[Ender]

let's not forget Ion Radiation poisoning

Whaaa?

Alpha and beta radiation (or if your perfer contamination). Bad juju my friend.

[nasor]

let's not forget Ion Radiation poisoning

Whaaa?

Alpha and beta radiation (or if your perfer contamination). Bad juju my friend.

Those are both the result of nuclear processes that don't really have anything to do with ionization, so I’m not sure why either would be called ‘ion radiation poisoning’.

[Lord Revan]

Those are both the result of nuclear processes that don't really have anything to do with ionization, so I’m not sure why either would be called ‘ion radiation poisoning’.

well Alfa radiation is electrons and Beta is ionized helium(without the electrons) . Gamma is the only one that wouldn't be a byproduct of inionzation, since it EM radiation.

[Sharp-kun]

Other ships probobly wont blow up since they have demonstrated they maintain antimatter containment even when all systems are shut down (Voyger surviving under a glacier).

As said, those systems are likely dependent on things like batteries to prevent core breaches. An ion blast would fuck them up Containment needs some form of powered system to work.