"Mike" (presumably Mike Dicenso from SFJ) is trying to dispute the short range of Star Trek ship weapons shown in "The Arsenal of Freedom" on the "ST weapon accuracy and range" page of the wiki.

He's found one image from the episode in which the drone beam weapon disappears to a "vanishing point" on the screen, and he argues that this proves the drone must be thousands of kilometers away in the third dimension.

Why did it follow the Enterprise into the planet's atmosphere, then? When it could have fired from outside the atmosphere and not been visible long enough to be targeted?

It thought following the Enterprise into the atmosphere would be tactically smarter!

Enjoy.

http://stardestroyer.net/mrwong/wiki/index.php/Talk:ST_weapon_accuracy_and_range

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As far as I remember there's a wide-angle shot were the Enterprise is hit by the drone, but according to my memory the point the beam tapers to is the cloaked Echo Papa, not some point far away in the distance. I would have to dig up my TNG DVDs to be sure though.

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That's basically my response. The drone has to break cloaking to fire, but not to visible light. I shows up very briefly on sensors before it fires, and it disappears again so quickly that the Enterprise can't get a weapons lock. It never actually becomes visible. The most we ever see is a silhouette created from re-entry heat.

Basically, the drone has no reason to enter the planet's atmosphere if it can score hits on the Enterprise from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Since it does enter the atmosphere, it's effective range must be much shorter.

---

"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776

"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"

what episode is this from? i want to inspect it.

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RAT-FLAIR

It's in the title, "The Arsenal of Freedom" or "The One with the USS Lollipop".

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人之初
性本善
性相近
習相遠

People at birth are naturally good. Their natures are similar, but their habits make them different from each other.
-Sanzi Jing (Three Character Classic)

Due to its own re-entry heat, the Enterprise should be extra-visible when it descends into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the ship is actually in danger of being damaged or destroyed by the re-entry heat; the probe can just sit back to see what happens without endangering itself; if the target gives up and gains altitude, it can attack while the shields are still weakened. This doesn't seem like much of an excuse.



The Enterprise has used its phasers for precision targeting of sites on a planet's surface on more than one occasion. "Legacy" and "Inheritance" come to mind.



The drone attacked exclusively with beams. If anything might have trouble with atmosphere, it would be the drone itself, which would be all the more reason for it to stay out of the atmosphere.



This does not seem to have been a problem for phasers in the incidents cited earlier, and the Minoan weapons were supposedly superior.

---

"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776

"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"

i just watched the episode. they weren't that deep into the atmosphere. they were descending into the very upper part. the weapon couldn't be disrupted that much (even if it would, but seeing how they used phasers in the atmosphere before, i doubt they would be disrupted).

the only solution dose seam to be a short range.

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RAT-FLAIR

They were in deep enough that hull overheating despite the shields was becoming a problem (which should have been a secondary consideration compared to them crashing into the surface any second if their speed was high enough for that) so I'd say they were in reasonably deep. Still that should have only made them an easier target, massive IR signature and all, and we know the big E (even back in Kirk's time) had no trouble firing on targets at the bottom of an M-class planetary atmosphere. And the Arsenal weapons were supposed to be considerably more advanced than that.

Of course, the whole setup was also made of derelicts, probably not having received maintenance for centuries, which is bound to have taken some toll on their effectiveness.

If I remember the episode correctly Geordi's idea was pretty explicitly stated to be that if they could get the drone to follow the into the atmosphere, the atmospheric disturbance of reentry would allow them to target and destroy it.

He didn't, at that, and I don't think there were any hints he had more information than the audience did (which is not necessarily a problem) nor was there any indication where he would have gotten it (which is).