Phasers, packing crates, and toranium inlays.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-26 01:51am

brianeyci wrote:Either way, if phasers could fire in pure heating mode (as we have seen them do with heating up rocks and so on)

False assumption. The canon novel "Mosaic" indicates that you need to find rocks made certain types of material.

, then the Toranium material would have to be super-conductive and dissipate a lot of heat?

Superconductivity would not explain its reaction to the "bipolar torch". It is more likely that the "toranium" just has a high atomic number and resists the phaser effect for that reason.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2004-10-26 01:52am

Darth Wong wrote:Nobody ever denied that there might be good reasons why they don't make body armour out of it (although one should not put too much weight on the fact that they don't; after all, they don't appear to know what a helmet is). The point is simply that there are certain materials against which phasers are obviously near-useless, hence there is no reason for Trekkies to scoff at the "packing crate" phenomenon.

I never scoffed at the packing crate phenomenon. I was exploring whether or not if Kira used a phaser rifle, if that would have made an appreciable difference. Obviously not.

The Borg make body armor out of Tritanium, and that's effective against phaser fire. Although only on their "tactical drones", which given the Borg mentality to have general purpose drones all the time, would mean that these "tactical drones" make up a minority of the Borg.

Does the Federation have any backup weapons other than phasers? I know they have the TR-111 (the projectile DS9 weapon). What would a Starfleet officer do if he wanted to kill/capture someone who uses a Toranium body armor Fett style? Don't say cry and run -- in-universe please

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2004-10-26 01:55am

Darth Wong wrote:False assumption. The canon novel "Mosaic" indicates that you need to find rocks made certain types of material.

What were the kinds of rocks, if we know the kinds of rocks we can find the temperature needed to heat them.

Superconductivity would not explain its reaction to the "bipolar torch". It is more likely that the "toranium" just has a high atomic number and resists the phaser effect for that reason.

We don't know what the bipolar torch is. For all we know, it could be based on phaser technology, just a suped up phaser. Feds haven't been shown to use any other energy weapon other than phasers anyway, and they treat hand phasers as tools more than weapons, so that could make sense -- unless the Bipolar torch was a Bajoran implement. Bajorans use phasers as well though.

Brian

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2004-10-26 02:04am

brianeyci wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Nobody ever denied that there might be good reasons why they don't make body armour out of it (although one should not put too much weight on the fact that they don't; after all, they don't appear to know what a helmet is). The point is simply that there are certain materials against which phasers are obviously near-useless, hence there is no reason for Trekkies to scoff at the "packing crate" phenomenon.
I never scoffed at the packing crate phenomenon. I was exploring whether or not if Kira used a phaser rifle, if that would have made an appreciable difference. Obviously not.

The Borg make body armor out of Tritanium, and that's effective against phaser fire. Although only on their "tactical drones", which given the Borg mentality to have general purpose drones all the time, would mean that these "tactical drones" make up a minority of the Borg.

Does the Federation have any backup weapons other than phasers? I know they have the TR-111 (the projectile DS9 weapon). What would a Starfleet officer do if he wanted to kill/capture someone who uses a Toranium body armor Fett style? Don't say cry and run -- in-universe please

Brian

he would drop something heavy on the armored person, after ENT/TOS era no other weapons then pheser have in general depoyment.

And as bipolar torch. Its size limits its power, so couldn't that much powerfull then the sized type-II phaser.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2004-10-26 02:16am

Lord Revan wrote:he would drop something heavy on the armored person, after ENT/TOS era no other weapons then pheser have in general depoyment.

And as bipolar torch. Its size limits its power, so couldn't that much powerfull then the sized type-II phaser.

My thoughts exactly. Either fire his phaser at the ceiling causing something to collapse on the armored dude (difficult on starships whose corridors are resistant to phaser fire), or use transporters to drop something heavy on the guy. Unless a transporter inhibitor was in place, which probably would be given the Fett character went to all that trouble of making Toranium armor. My guess would be a smart officer would pull a Picard and go to the holodeck/replicate something useful. General deployment isn't an issue -- an armored Tritanium knight isn't a general situation.

The Bipolar torch was powerful enough to cut through the door while the Type-II was not. It was probably based on phaser technology, just powerful enough so that it could cut through the Tritanium with sustained fire.

<edit> er, Toranium. Damn those writers. </edit>

Brian

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-26 02:21am

brianeyci wrote:The Bipolar torch was powerful enough to cut through the door while the Type-II was not. It was probably based on phaser technology, just powerful enough so that it could cut through the Tritanium with sustained fire.

Obviously, you don't understand that without a shred of evidence or even reasoning to explain why a slightly larger phaser would be given a completely different name, look totally different, and produce a different-looking beam, you have nothing.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2004-10-26 02:35am

Darth Wong wrote:Obviously, you don't understand that without a shred of evidence or even reasoning to explain why a slightly larger phaser would be given a completely different name, look totally different, and produce a different-looking beam, you have nothing.

The evidence is circumstantial -- the Feds don't use any type of energy weapons other than phaser-based technology, and they treat their hand phasers as tools, so perhaps the Bipolar torch is a suped up hand phaser. It doesn't really matter whether or not a bipolar torch is a phaser or not a phaser. It doesn't really tell you anything about how effective phasers could be against Toranium. If the torch is a phaser, higher power settings would go through Toranium, but would require using something "biploar", whatever the hell that means. For some reason hand phasers aren't "bipolar", so there must be a disadvantage to using phasers with "bipolarity" (lol). If the torch is not a phaser, then Toranium is tough shit. It was more a comment than anything else.

Brian

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-10-26 01:26pm

brianeyci wrote: The evidence is circumstantial -- the Feds don't use any type of energy weapons other than phaser-based technology, and they treat their hand phasers as tools, so perhaps the Bipolar torch is a suped up hand phaser.

*sigh*
1. The bipolar torch was a tool, not a weapon. The fact that the Feds abuse phasers as tools regularly doesn't change their nature.
Israeli soldiers regularly used their rifle's magazines as bottle openers (to the point that the IDF icorporated one into the rifle's design). Does that make them tools, too?
2. It is NOT called a phaser. It's called a bipolar torch.
3. It does not look like a phaser.
4. Its EFFECTS do not look like a phaser's.
5. Thanks to being not much larger than a phaser, it CANNOT be significantly more powerful thanks to the limits of Fed power storage technology.
There's no evidence whatsoever for the thing being phaser-based.

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2004-10-26 01:54pm

brianeyci wrote:The evidence is circumstantial -- the Feds don't use any type of energy weapons other than phaser-based technology, and they treat their hand phasers as tools, so perhaps the Bipolar torch is a suped up hand phaser. It doesn't really matter whether or not a bipolar torch is a phaser or not a phaser. It doesn't really tell you anything about how effective phasers could be against Toranium. If the torch is a phaser, higher power settings would go through Toranium, but would require using something "biploar", whatever the hell that means. For some reason hand phasers aren't "bipolar", so there must be a disadvantage to using phasers with "bipolarity" (lol). If the torch is not a phaser, then Toranium is tough shit. It was more a comment than anything else.

Brian

You must prove bipolar torch has anything to do with phasers, sure they their phaser as tools sometimes, but they GCSs to exploration that them doesn't make anyhing else then warships. Starfleet still considers phaser to weapons and this must have been said thousand times allready, but I'll say it again: the size of the torch limits power generation and storage capabilities.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-10-26 02:29pm

By brianeyci's logic, comm badges are phaser-based, tricorders are phaser-based, dermal regenerators are phaser-based. I mean, they're tools, and they probably use some kind of beam.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2004-10-26 02:32pm

My point was that the Feds don't use any other beam technology in their weapons other than phaser technology, so beam technology in a cutting torch might be based on phaser technology as well. Not that the phaser is a tool = bipolar torch is a tool = bipolar torch is a phaser. Anyway, like I said, the point is moot. It doesn't matter whether or not the bipolar torch was a phaser.

Brian

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-26 02:36pm

brianeyci wrote:My point was that the Feds don't use any other beam technology in their weapons other than phaser technology, so beam technology in a cutting torch might be based on phaser technology as well.

Ah yes, because as we all know, WEAPONS encompass all possible types of TOOL

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-10-26 02:37pm

"It might" doesn't count as evidence. You have a tendency to derail arguments into useless speculation red herrings (or strawmen, I dunno).

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2004-10-26 02:43pm

Fine you want to hear it, the point was silly, it is conceded, I shouldn't have said it. Yadayada. I was trying to explore what the Bipolar torch would be, rather than making any conclusions about it.

Not really a strawman, since I am not making an argument about what the difference between a bipolar torch being a phaser and a bipolar torch not being a phaser would actually mean -- just speculating about the nature of the torch. For now, we don't know what the hell it is, and it will probably stay that way unless we see another bipolar torch later with some technobabble to explain it.

Brian

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-10-26 03:09pm

Brian, no offence, but stating It was probably based on phaser technology is NOT speculation, especially not in a debate thread.
There's nothing wrong with speculating, by all means start a 'What in blazes is a bipolar torch' thread, or post something along the lines of 'While we're at it-what the hell IS a bipolar torch?' in an apropriate thread (like this one

).
The way you did phrase it was for all practical purposes a claim that the bloody thing IS phaser based, for which you are naturally required to present evidence, and evidence AGAINST which will naturally be presented.