EnterpriseSovereign wrote:What I want to know is why the cube had several chunks blown out of it by phasers, yet when the Enterprise fires photon torpedoes at it they do no damage whatsoever, both instances happened after the Borg had beamed a drone onboard engineering to presumably analyse the ship's capabilities.
They were at warp at the time - that may have reduced their effectiveness.
As far as I'm aware, torpedoes don't have a frequency either.
Generations disagrees with you.
What I want to know re: First Contact is, was Picard's order to concentrate fire on one section a genuine weak spot, or was it case of simply concentrating all fire on any one section and him picking one at random?
Probably the latter - he didn't get detailed tactical information from them at any other point in the film, simple a vague sense of their presence. The most detailed it got was picking Data's voice out of the chatter near the end.
The problem I have with Generations (one of them anyway), is that if it was a simple case of firing weapons at the same freq. as shields, then the Enterprises' weapons should have ignored the BOP's shields as easily as the other way round, unless they somehow fire through their own shields some other way.
EnterpriseSovereign wrote:As far as I'm aware, torpedoes don't have a frequency either.
Generations disagrees with you.
To speculate, we see photon torpedoes and other Trek warheads glow on a consistent basis. In Star Wars we usually take this to mean that the missiles use a force field or deflector shield to protect them from point defense or to increase penetration. From the same logic, and the existence of future "transphasic" torpedoes in VOY's Endgame, it seems likely that Starfleet warheads also use forcefields to grant similar advantages over an unshielded warhead.
This would also conform to the old theory that the Starfleet shields have a frequency in the first place so that they can fire their own weapons through them at 90 degrees out of phase.
Batman wrote:The Falcon has the power generation by default thanks to her linear acceleration.
No, it doesn't. You are just assuming that the engines of the Falcon are powered by the main reactor, and that on top of that the weapons are powered by the same. What merits either of these assumptions? A modern rocket may store a huge amount of energy in its chemical fuel, but all it can use it for is thrust, nothing else. A hydrogen bomb may have enormous energy, but we still don't have fusion reactors yet. A car may store tons of energy in fuel, but the computer, radio, and all other electronics in the vehicle are powered by car's battery. The same considerations could constrain the Millennium Falcon, since it was originally designed for shipping freight, not dogfights with capital ships.
What makes you think the numbers you have assigned to the Falcon's Quad Lasers are actually what you say they are? We don't have any kind of "asteroid destruction" event to go by with this ship. The closest we get to that would be from AOTC when Fett's Slave I attacked Obi-Wan's starfighter in Geonosis' ring system; but Slave I is a purpose built gunboat and the Millennium Falcon is a modified semi-truck from space. Even there, there is the assumption that they have similar design characteristics for the reactor output and the gun emplacements. They very easily may not.
In the end, I don't see this confrontation coming down to how much firepower the Falcon can bring to bear, because that is not its main strength. Most of the modifications its owner's have made to it are to increase its speed, because speed is a more important consideration for a smuggler than the ability to shoot people.
Incidentally:
Batman again, and with his own emphasis wrote:Given that unlike photon torpedoes turbolasers always deliver all of their yield to the target, yes, I'd suspect they'd be a lot more effective, especially if the Borg turn out to be unable to adapt to them period.
Again, an unwarranted assumption. You don't know what inefficiencies apply to a Turbolaser, because their mechanism of action is based on unknown physics. How much energy is lost to the green glowing bolt of light, for example? We don't know, we can't even rule out that its also emitting in non-visual wavelengths such as UV either. Likewise, how do you know that the Federation doesn't use shaped charges? They may throw energy around in an apparantly omnidirectional fashion, but that doesn't mean that they don't still throw more energy into the target than away from it. Indeed, from TOS we know that they once used nuclear weapons rather than antimatter warheads, so its likely that at some point someone discovered how to make a nuclear shaped charge like the casaba Howitzer design or the X-Ray laser. Use of this technologywould dramatically improve their efficiency, and would explain why theoretically multi-megaton warheads consistently appear to have yields equal to those of chemical warheads. They could just deliver their payload efficiently enough that most of the energy in fact has gone into the target, and we only see the waste.
This is a perfect example of the sloppy analysis I was talking about in that other thread. You have the numbers for turbolasers, and they are admittedly impressive, so you feel like you can get away with utterly stupid assertions pulled right out of your ass. You also have the absolute numbers for an antimatter warhead, and an uninformed observation about the nature of the detonations of photon torpedoes, which frequently appear to explode with much less force than we are told than can or do apply. Why should people take you seriously when you make so many assumptions without evidence? I don't trust people just because they agree with my general sentiments.
P.S. Merry Christmas and Happy New Years.
"Still, I would love to see human beings, and their constituent organ systems, trivialized and commercialized to the same extent as damn iPods and other crappy consumer products. It would be absolutely horrific, yet so wonderful." —Shroom Man 777 "To Err is Human; to Arrr is Pirate." — Skallagrim
“I would suggest "Schmuckulating", which is what Futurists do and, by extension, what they are." — Commenter "Rayneau"
As near as I can recall, the interpreation in SW and stuff is that the reactors pretty much power all systems (although engines and reactor may get conflated at times, esp in the older WEG materials I remember.) Now that said, what the engines tell us about firepower depends entirely on how the ship is built, and (at least by Saxton/ICs interpretation of matters) how big the ship is.
Generally, bigger ships have an easier time transfering a bigger chunk of their reactor power into weapons (hence the ROTS:ICS quote to that effect about 'true warships' channeling most/all of their reactor output through their guns, although I woudl caution thats an *ideal* interpretation, and ignores certain limiting factors like recoil and heat dissipation and the inability to power shields or engines, etc.) Fighters, however, are not big, bulky masses of metal with huge internal volumes, which fighters don't (and then there's the correlation of weapons to ship volume, which again favors bigger ships.) Fighters as a rule can only transfer a fraction of their total reactor power to weaponry, hence why lasers are generally in the 'gigajoule to terajoule per shot' despite having probable petawatt level reactors (at least as I remember the outputs calced somewhere in the petawatts) Rate of fire issues may also dictate lower 'per shot' firepower to facilitate greater rates of fire as well (fighters being smaller than capital ships can have downsides when it comes to cooling as well, even with magical neutrino radiators IIRC.)
The Falcon is much closer to a starfighter in size and design/role than it is to a capital ship, and so I would say its rules tend to follow that. The fact that Slave-1* seems to follow that dynamic would tend to support that. I'm also of the inclination that the quad guns probably are giga/terajoule per shot range max - the Falcon was built to run away first and fight if need be (and even then against small craft like fighters) so having the vast majority of reactor power devoted to engines rather than weapons makes sense. Hell, if there was going to be a significant draw on the ship's systems that wasn't the engines, I'd bank on shields being second instead of the guns. And then there's the fact the Falcon is still essentially a civilian craft with jury rigged systems and some occasionally stolen Imperial hardware, so you can hardly hold it to 'true' military standards in all respects, either.
Insofar as missiles and torpedoes go, thats a complete unknown and can range from 'conventional munitions' yields to 'greater than nuclear' yields, depending on the weapon (and its size/design/role) and such. I wouldn't bank on the Falcon neccesarily having powerful warheads neccesarily - missiles are expensive after all, and as I noted before, the Falcon is designed to run more than fight. The missiles are more of a 'last ditch' weapon anyhow.
Amusingly, while we get onto the 'photorps may be shaped charge' issue, we know that some protorps and concussion missiles are 'directional' yield too, and some in fact rely on mechanical rather than thermal damage. both of which can mean the Falcon's warheads do NOT need to be in the megaton range, either.
As far as TL 'effectiveness' that of course depends on what you think a turbolaser is, and that has been a long running argument as long as I can remember. If you go with the 'physical projectile' interpretation, they oculd very well explode like an 'omnidirectional-yield' photorp and be subject to similar limitations (FLAK BURSTS! )
Edit: BTW if one wants to be a bit nasty, WRT protorp yields try looking up 'Nergon-14' on wookieepedia.
* Slave-1, as per the AOTC: ICS, has two energy weapons. 600 GJ 'max per shot' blaster cannon on that one section that sticks down, and the midline (just below the cockpit) heavy laser cannons, which max out at ~8 TJ per shot at max power. Bear in mind that its quite possible that 'per-shot' yield and rate of fire are inversely related, as we have observed X-wings and TIE fighters exhibiting far lower rates of fire than (for example) Slave-1 in AOTC, but also destroy craft far more quickly. (although that depends on whether or not you figure fighter shields are wholly impermeable bubbles - plenty of sources, as well as the whole 'angle the deflectors' dynamic points to the fact that shields may not always cover a fighter perfectly, and hence ship destruction may be more due to shield gaps/shot placement than actual raw firepower. Artoo being hit is a good counter-example here.)
Batman wrote:The Falcon has the power generation by default thanks to her linear acceleration.
No, it doesn't. You are just assuming that the engines of the Falcon are powered by the main reactor, and that on top of that the weapons are powered by the same. What merits either of these assumptions?
The first is indeed sloppy thinking on my part, and I conceed that engine power does not equal power available for other systems. But why would the guns not be powered by the main reactor? Alternative power sources like batteries or a backup reactor sure, in the event the main reactor is damaged or already redlined with other duties as it is, but why wouldn't the guns be powered by it as long as it's available?
What makes you think the numbers you have assigned to the Falcon's Quad Lasers are actually what you say they are?
Because that's the typical value for starfighter scale weapons in Wars and the Falcon manages to hold her own against starfighters?
If her guns were massively weaker than a starfighters, she shouldn't be able to blow away TIEs with single hits.
If you're talking about the 6MT figure that was never in reference to the quads, but the LTL armed Falcon that apparently popped up in the EU somewhere.
Batman again, and with his own emphasis wrote:Given that unlike photon torpedoes turbolasers always deliver all of their yield to the target, yes, I'd suspect they'd be a lot more effective, especially if the Borg turn out to be unable to adapt to them period.
Again, an unwarranted assumption. You don't know what inefficiencies apply to a Turbolaser, because their mechanism of action is based on unknown physics. How much energy is lost to the green glowing bolt of light, for example? We don't know, we can't even rule out that its also emitting in non-visual wavelengths such as UV either.
Yeah. I mean when they say LTLs are 6MT they obviously mean that's the energy the shot consumes, not the energy it actually delivers because who cares about the damage a weapon actually does?
Likewise, how do you know that the Federation doesn't use shaped charges?
That'd be the part where the visuals disagree. Photorp detonations sure look omnidirectional, and while the fact that they look at all is potentially problematic there's also the little factoid that when they have to use them at short ranges, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes. If those are shaped charges, they have a really interesting blast pattern.
They may throw energy around in an apparantly omnidirectional fashion, but that doesn't mean that they don't still throw more energy into the target than away from it. Indeed, from TOS we know that they once used nuclear weapons rather than antimatter warheads, so its likely that at some point someone discovered how to make a nuclear shaped charge like the casaba Howitzer design or the X-Ray laser.
Because of what, exactly? And why on earth would it be relevant if they did?
Use of this technologywould dramatically improve their efficiency, and would explain why theoretically multi-megaton warheads consistently appear to have yields equal to those of chemical warheads. They could just deliver their payload efficiently enough that most of the energy in fact has gone into the target, and we only see the waste.
Or they could not, and photorps simply aren't all they're claimed to be. If those torpedoes are so powerful why did they have to blow up the Constellation's impulse drive to get a whopping 92MT in 'The Doomsday Machine'?
I recall plenty of omnidirectional explosion visuals and no mention of photorps being shaped charges. As long as the visuals show them as omnidirectional, I treat them as omnidirectional.
You have the numbers for turbolasers, and they are admittedly impressive, so you feel like you can get away with utterly stupid assertions pulled right out of your ass.
So when somebody states the firepower of an LTL is 6MT, I'm supposed to assume that's the energy that goes into it rather than what it actually delivers to the target. Um-no?
You also have the absolute numbers for an antimatter warhead, and an uninformed observation about the nature of the detonations of photon torpedoes
The only absoluter number for an M/AM warhead is it cannot exceed e=mc^2 and yeah, when the vast majority of detonations look omnidirectional, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes if it has to use them at short range and nobody on the show ever says otherwise, yes, I think I'm entitled to treating them as omnidirectional. But feel free to show photon torpedoes actually are shaped charges.
, which frequently appear to explode with much less force than we are told than can or do apply.
Which is totally not explained by photon torpedoes merely being dial-a-yield. Oh wait-it not only is, but we're explicitly told they are.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Batman wrote:Yeah. I mean when they say LTLs are 6MT they obviously mean that's the energy the shot consumes, not the energy it actually delivers because who cares about the damage a weapon actually does?
Many devices that require power are rated by their consumption, rather than the work they do. Why should that be unusual? Efficiency is a big factor in this. Knowing how the SW weapon interacts with its target and releases the energy matters greatly. There's also issues like 'does it lose energy to the enviroment, and if so, how much and under what conditions?'
That'd be the part where the visuals disagree. Photorp detonations sure look omnidirectional, and while the fact that they look at all is potentially problematic there's also the little factoid that when they have to use them at short ranges, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes. If those are shaped charges, they have a really interesting blast pattern.
Uh, you do realized 'shaped charge' weapons are not neccesarily 100% efficient right? Atomic rockets mentioned that the purported efficiency of the Casaba howitzer (nuclear shaped charge) involved 85% of the energy being directed at the target, which still leaves 15% NOT directed at the target.
I'm not even sure how you figured out from the visuals what you are saying is even accurate to begin with, mind, so there's any number of problems I can see with that line of reasoning.
Because of what, exactly? And why on earth would it be relevant if they did?
Well there's Reed's comments in Enterprise about photonic torpedoes being variable yield able to 'knock the comm array off a shuttlepod without scratching the paint' which would tend to suggest directed yields. According to the wiki DS9 'A call to arms' had weapons known as pulse mines with 'variable geometry detonators', which sounds alot like directing the yields to me
Or they could not, and photorps simply aren't all they're claimed to be. If those torpedoes are so powerful why did they have to blow up the Constellation's impulse drive to get a whopping 92MT in 'The Doomsday Machine'?
I recall plenty of omnidirectional explosion visuals and no mention of photorps being shaped charges. As long as the visuals show them as omnidirectional, I treat them as omnidirectional.
Similar logic has been employed against Star Wars (EG the absence of super explosive yields on Geonosis, or similar cases.) Why should that logic be applicable in Star Trek's case but not Star Wars?
So when somebody states the firepower of an LTL is 6MT, I'm supposed to assume that's the energy that goes into it rather than what it actually delivers to the target. Um-no?
Again, devices are rated in the power they use, not the work they do. This is especialyl relevant to the ROTS:ICS quotes WRT heavy weapons.
Now that I think about it, there's those 100 megaton missiles from the Clone Wars cartoon that mysteriously did not have 100 megaton explosions. Yields not matching up to what we see, and all that.
The only absoluter number for an M/AM warhead is it cannot exceed e=mc^2 and yeah, when the vast majority of detonations look omnidirectional, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes if it has to use them at short range and nobody on the show ever says otherwise, yes, I think I'm entitled to treating them as omnidirectional. But feel free to show photon torpedoes actually are shaped charges.
So what about flak bursts? That can be used as proof of SW blaster weapons being ominidirectional.
Batman wrote:Yeah. I mean when they say LTLs are 6MT they obviously mean that's the energy the shot consumes, not the energy it actually delivers because who cares about the damage a weapon actually does?
Many devices that require power are rated by their consumption, rather than the work they do. Why should that be unusual? Efficiency is a big factor in this. Knowing how the SW weapon interacts with its target and releases the energy matters greatly. There's also issues like 'does it lose energy to the enviroment, and if so, how much and under what conditions?'
We're talking about a weapon. Its purpose is to damage stuff. So yes, when somebody rates a gun at 6 MT, I do assume they mean that's the actual damage the gun does.
That'd be the part where the visuals disagree. Photorp detonations sure look omnidirectional, and while the fact that they look at all is potentially problematic there's also the little factoid that when they have to use them at short ranges, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes. If those are shaped charges, they have a really interesting blast pattern.
Uh, you do realized 'shaped charge' weapons are not neccesarily 100% efficient right? Atomic rockets mentioned that the purported efficiency of the Casaba howitzer (nuclear shaped charge) involved 85% of the energy being directed at the target, which still leaves 15% NOT directed at the target.
I do. I also know that ships that can routinely take several intentional torpedo hits on their shields are nevertheless endangered by shooting somebody else with them if they're close enough, which indicates the torpedoes are not particularly directional to begin with. If they were, the backwash from those (by your example) 15 percent should be trivially easy to deal with.
I'm not even sure how you figured out from the visuals what you are saying is even accurate to begin with, mind, so there's any number of problems I can see with that line of reasoning.
The visuals look omnidirectional? Big expanding sphere of light? I did my level best to ignore VOY and ENT so if photorp detonations looked markedly different there, I'll happily concede, but for TNG/DS9 yeah, that looks pretty damned omnidirectional for me.
Because of what, exactly? And why on earth would it be relevant if they did?
Well there's Reed's comments in Enterprise about photonic torpedoes being variable yield able to 'knock the comm array off a shuttlepod without scratching the paint' which would tend to suggest directed yields.
Um-no? It suggests variable yields and/or being able to simply using the torpedo as a kinetic impactor without the warhead going off to begin with. This doesn't require the warhead to be directional.
According to the wiki DS9 'A call to arms' had weapons known as pulse mines with 'variable geometry detonators', which sounds alot like directing the yields to me
Which means pulse mines can be, not that photon torpedoes are. Is there any relation between the two?
Or they could not, and photorps simply aren't all they're claimed to be. If those torpedoes are so powerful why did they have to blow up the Constellation's impulse drive to get a whopping 92MT in 'The Doomsday Machine'?
I recall plenty of omnidirectional explosion visuals and no mention of photorps being shaped charges. As long as the visuals show them as omnidirectional, I treat them as omnidirectional.
Similar logic has been employed against Star Wars (EG the absence of super explosive yields on Geonosis, or similar cases.) Why should that logic be applicable in Star Trek's case but not Star Wars?
That'd be the part where on the Wars side there's a) the DS1, downscaling from which easily gives you firepower orders of magnitude in excess of anything the ICSes ever claimed, and b) the fact that the ICS are canon. At least to my knowledge, there's absolutely nothing in Trek showing photorps to be directional. But by all means prove me wrong. IT's not like that would be a first
So when somebody states the firepower of an LTL is 6MT, I'm supposed to assume that's the energy that goes into it rather than what it actually delivers to the target. Um-no?
Again, devices are rated in the power they use, not the work they do. This is especialyl relevant to the ROTS:ICS quotes WRT heavy weapons.
And I disagree. The one prime aspect of what weapons do is the work they do. It's a gun. How much energy it consumes is irrelevant, what matters is how much of that energy it delivers to the target.
The only absoluter number for an M/AM warhead is it cannot exceed e=mc^2 and yeah, when the vast majority of detonations look omnidirectional, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes if it has to use them at short range and nobody on the show ever says otherwise, yes, I think I'm entitled to treating them as omnidirectional. But feel free to show photon torpedoes actually are shaped charges.
So what about flak bursts? That can be used as proof of SW blaster weapons being ominidirectional.
No they can't. They can be used as proof that Wars weapons can be set to end up omnidirectional, nothing more. Unless you wish to argue turbolasers always flak burst?
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Batman wrote:I do. I also know that ships that can routinely take several intentional torpedo hits on their shields are nevertheless endangered by shooting somebody else with them if they're close enough, which indicates the torpedoes are not particularly directional to begin with. If they were, the backwash from those (by your example) 15 percent should be trivially easy to deal with.
Wanting to avoid damage from your own shots doesn't necessarily mean that they're hitting you just as hard as they're hitting your target, it just means that you don't want to help your enemy kill you. For example, in the SFB/SFC games photon torpedoes do feedback damage if you fire them at point blank range (close enough to have zero miss chance). The self-inflicted damage to the firing ship is much less than the damage done to the target (which tends to be in the "destroy your ship in one shot" range), but it's still enough to put a nice dent in your shields and leave you more vulnerable to return fire. It's not too hard to imagine a similar situation outside of game mechanics: damage from the Enterprise's own torpedo shots won't kill it, but it might turn the following "enemy firing phasers, our shields are down to 10%" scene into "enemy firing phasers, shields are down and our warp core is about to explode!" and therefore they would only want to fire at close range in a desperate situation with no other alternative.
lPeregrine wrote:Wanting to avoid damage from your own shots doesn't necessarily mean that they're hitting you just as hard as they're hitting your target, it just means that you don't want to help your enemy kill you.
Batman isn't talking about helping your enemy kill you, he's talking about being killed outright from the backwash, as stated in "The N'th Degree".
Batman wrote:We're talking about a weapon. Its purpose is to damage stuff. So yes, when somebody rates a gun at 6 MT, I do assume they mean that's the actual damage the gun does.
Good for you. now explain why everyone should be thinking the exact way you should, and how this changes the fact Formless had a legitimate point. Simply saying 'I think otherwise' is not an appropriate rebuttal.
I do. I also know that ships that can routinely take several intentional torpedo hits on their shields are nevertheless endangered by shooting somebody else with them if they're close enough, which indicates the torpedoes are not particularly directional to begin with. If they were, the backwash from those (by your example) 15 percent should be trivially easy to deal with.
And this proves what exactly? We know Photorps are eminently customizable to a ludicrous degree (although we dont know the exact tradeoffs BEHIND such changes in performance.) how does the fact 'some explosions may be omnidirectional, but not others' refute the point? I could just as eaisly point out that all those cases we have of 'point blank engagements' in trek where photorps ARE used and the backblast is not destroying ships may very well be proof of some sort of shaped charge. Like alot of the large-scale Dominion War battles in DS9.
Mind you, the reasons WHY something is dangerous at a given distance also matters, so again making generalizations here is hazardous (again Formless's point I believe.)
The visuals look omnidirectional? Big expanding sphere of light? I did my level best to ignore VOY and ENT so if photorp detonations looked markedly different there, I'll happily concede, but for TNG/DS9 yeah, that looks pretty damned omnidirectional for me.
So once again its basically 'thats how I look at it, so that's the way it must be?' What the fuck kind of evidence is that? Are you an authority on 'engineering designs of fictional futuristic sci fi explosions' or something?
Um-no? It suggests variable yields and/or being able to simply using the torpedo as a kinetic impactor without the warhead going off to begin with. This doesn't require the warhead to be directional.
And again, we must take your inteprretation as literal fact. Seriously by this point you should change your name to Moses instead of Batman, because you're passing down divine decrees from on high for everyone to apparently follow.
Which means pulse mines can be, not that photon torpedoes are. Is there any relation between the two?
I love it how you constantly switch between 'I make an assumption and it must be logical because I think so' and 'other people make assumptions and its bad'. Totally not a double standard here. Again did it elude you just how customizable photon torpedoes are?
That'd be the part where on the Wars side there's a) the DS1, downscaling from which easily gives you firepower orders of magnitude in excess of anything the ICSes ever claimed.
which involved a whole slew of assumptions that may or may not be true. Don't be obtuse, you know very well many people have legitimately objected ot the assumptions made in those calcs for various reasons. Its not fucking gospel.
and b) the fact that the ICS are canon.
Yes, it is. How those numbers are interpreted, however, are not. I'm guessing you've never bothered reading the ICS. I howver, not only have read them, but owned them, and have a pretty damn intimate knowledge of not only what is in them, but of the logic behind them. Again they're not fucking gospel. I can pull the 'my inteprretation has more weight than yours' argument too, except I actually have weight behind it.
At least to my knowledge, there's absolutely nothing in Trek showing photorps to be directional. But by all means prove me wrong. IT's not like that would be a first
Again I love when how other people make assumptiosn, you get all nitpicky and demand they must provide CONCRETE PROOF to back up those statements. But hey, if you make an assumption, no proof is required. ASTONISHING and again totally not a double standard.
And I disagree. The one prime aspect of what weapons do is the work they do. It's a gun. How much energy it consumes is irrelevant, what matters is how much of that energy it delivers to the target.
Fine. Since you were so keen on demanding evidence for other people, why don't YOU pony up a bunch of evidence to show that your interpretation of the facts is, in fact, the proper one. After all I can harldy claim to be perfect either.
No they can't. They can be used as proof that Wars weapons can be set to end up omnidirectional, nothing more. Unless you wish to argue turbolasers always flak burst?
Based on what? Oh wait, let me guess, how oyu THINK Star Wars weapons work, right? Because all that matters is what you think, and its totally not as if numerous interpretations of what SW weaponry is or is not exists. Again Moses handing down the commandments from on high.
Batman wrote:The first is indeed sloppy thinking on my part, and I conceed that engine power does not equal power available for other systems. But why would the guns not be powered by the main reactor? Alternative power sources like batteries or a backup reactor sure, in the event the main reactor is damaged or already redlined with other duties as it is, but why wouldn't the guns be powered by it as long as it's available?
For starters, there are possible compatibility issues. The reactor is civilian grade, whereas the guns have been upgraded to military hardware. The ship was obviously designed to have weapons there, presumably for scaring off pirates or something, but we've been told many times in the EU that the Quad Lasers aren't a standard armament for the Falcon's product line. Thus, the original weapons may have been weaker than the current ones, and the main reactor isn't up to specs with the new weapons.
On the flip side, the weapons are probably rated for a certain amount of energy, and any higher energy could burn them out or even cause damage like a fire or an explosion. A purpose built reactor just for the quads could be better able to regulate power than plugging them directly into the main reactor. This would make them safer to use, and ensure that any damage to them doesn't cause any feedback effects on other key systems such as the shields, engines, or the always temperamental hyperdrive. Notably, those are all more critical systems for the ship's functioning than its guns.
Both of these are reasons that might on their own or in combination necessitate that the guns have their own reactor separate from the Engine reactor. Besides, some vehicles and machines are just built that way. It could make the ship more modular and thus more customizable: or on the flip side, more redundant and robust. Not every ship in science fiction has to be designed with one centralized reactor like in Star Trek, which screws everything up every time it has a hiccup. That's just an assumption in itself.
Because that's the typical value for starfighter scale weapons in Wars and the Falcon manages to hold her own against starfighters?
If her guns were massively weaker than a starfighters, she shouldn't be able to blow away TIEs with single hits.
Not necessarily. Remember, the Falcon mostly fights unshielded TIE fighters, which could easily bring the energy down. Second, Quad Laser cannons are intended as an anti-starfighter weapon, whereas fighters are expected to be capable of strafing targets on the ground or on the surface of a capital ship. These uses could require weapons even stronger than a point defense gun brings to bear.
If you're talking about the 6MT figure that was never in reference to the quads, but the LTL armed Falcon that apparently popped up in the EU somewhere.
Frankly, I don't know why the EU Falcon and her extensive refits are being brought up, when the vast majority of her service life was as a smuggling vessel. I thought that the OP intended this to be classic Millenium Falcon vs a Borg Cube, since most people don't give a fuck about the New Jedi Order era and more than they care about Archer's Enterprise.
Batman, attempting to be sarcastc wrote:Yeah. I mean when they say LTLs are 6MT they obviously mean that's the energy the shot consumes, not the energy it actually delivers because who cares about the damage a weapon actually does?
Batman again, attempting to sound smart wrote:So when somebody states the firepower of an LTL is 6MT, I'm supposed to assume that's the energy that goes into it rather than what it actually delivers to the target. Um-no?
Yes, actually, that's exactly how the energy of real firearms is measured. In ballistics, internal and external ballistics are relatively simple, but terminal ballistics is messy. Its a practical science, for sure, but the sheer number of variables makes it prone to giving rather idealistic figures. Do you score a glancing hit, or a hit to the center of mass? What is the material you are shooting? How deeply does it penetrate the material? Does the projectile expand in the target, thus imparting more energy, or does it keep its shape and pass right through without stopping? Does it lose energy to inefficiencies of a particular gun design? If it has armor piercing characteristics, how much energy is lost when it hits Kevlar or trauma plates?
None of those things remain constant in every situation where you fire the weapon.
Energy weapons like turbolasers will have similar issues relating to measuring the energy they impart to a target, so any "official" figure on their energy consumption should be treated as exactly that-- energy put into the shot, not energy delivered to the target. You can't cheat entropy, and there will be variables effecting the exact terminal effects of any weapon. For instance, one that comes to mind that doesn't effect projectiles but is a known issue with energy beams is attenuation of the beam over a distance. Point is, hyper precise numbers for terminal effects can't be relied upon to always deliver in practical use.
Batman wrote:
Formless wrote:Likewise, how do you know that the Federation doesn't use shaped charges?
That'd be the part where the visuals disagree. Photorp detonations sure look omnidirectional, and while the fact that they look at all is potentially problematic there's also the little factoid that when they have to use them at short ranges, the launching ship is in danger from its own torpedoes. If those are shaped charges, they have a really interesting blast pattern.
That doesn't answer the question. Just because you think an explosion looks omnidirectional doesn't mean shit. The one direction that's actually important is also the one direction where the camera can't show you what is going on in those examples. As for the fact that they risk damaging their own ship when it goes off at close range, has it ever occurred to you that this has more to do with the fact that the idiots routinely conduct combat at ranges below the safe distance of their own weapons, rather than their weapons being omnidirectional? As in, point fucking blank? At that close range, fucking shrapnel should be an issue, to say nothing of the explosion itself. Shaped charges are supposed to ensure more energy is flung in one direction than any other. What a shaped charge cannot do is cheat Newton's Third Law of Motion, any more than an energy weapon can cheat entropy. Thus, for energy to be imparted disproportionately towards the target, some energy must still be sent backwards or otherwise away from it.
This isn't quantum physics. Its just rocket science.
Because of what, exactly? And why on earth would it be relevant if they did?
What, I'm supposed to do all the thinking for you? Seriously, just put two and two together, dumbshit. If they can make nuclear shaped charges, which should be piss easy for a civilization like the Federation, but they instead choose to use antimatter weapons and consider nukes to be obsolete... what does that say about antimatter weapons? *
Or they could not, and photorps simply aren't all they're claimed to be. If those torpedoes are so powerful why did they have to blow up the Constellation's impulse drive to get a whopping 92MT in 'The Doomsday Machine'?
Maybe because those ships were equipped with weapons that they actually intend to fucking use? Name one other event in the history of Trek where a 92MT bomb was needed to achieve their objectives. No one packs a .500 S&W Magnum when a .38 Special will do. weapons are designed and selected for functionality, not overkill.
You are an idiot, and need to stop debating VS scenarios long enough to learn something about reality first.
I recall plenty of omnidirectional explosion visuals and no mention of photorps being shaped charges. As long as the visuals show them as omnidirectional, I treat them as omnidirectional.
So instead of thinking about the issue, you just shut your brain off when someone brings up the possibility. This is exactly why no one should pay any attention to you when you open your mouth about Star Trek. You don't analyze, you just assume.
But feel free to show photon torpedoes actually are shaped charges.
My point isn't to show that they are, but that they could be, and that you ignorantly dismiss the possibility without cause (or rather, because you are biased towards lax standards of analysis). However, as I implied before, the fact that the explosions often appear smaller than the yield the characters frequently state, and do demonstrate on some occasions, indicates one of two things: either a ridiculous number of Starfleet personel are unaware of how weak the average phototorp is, which is inconsistent with the dial-a-yield nature of the devices, or there is something more subtle going on when a photon torpedo detonates. And before you say it (dolt, you said it), being dial-a-yield and being shaped charges are not mutually exclusive explanations for why their torpedoes often appear weaker than they could be. That's just another one of your moronic assumptions. We know they come in multiple classes, and this could indicate more than just different sized weapons and warheads. It can indicate different homing methods, different shielding, different explosive characteristics. It can indicate many things that the audience isn't expected to understand, but the characters in the story do.
Oh, and there is the question I asked earlier. Figured that one out yet? Spoiler
It means that antimatter weapons should be at least as efficient as a nuke, shit for brains, otherwise they wouldn't use them! And a shaped charge will always be a more efficient anti-vehicle weapon than an omnidirectional bomb.
This is another difference between you and me. You assume Star Trek characters are idiots, whereas I wait for them to demonstrate stupidity on a case by case basis.
"Still, I would love to see human beings, and their constituent organ systems, trivialized and commercialized to the same extent as damn iPods and other crappy consumer products. It would be absolutely horrific, yet so wonderful." —Shroom Man 777 "To Err is Human; to Arrr is Pirate." — Skallagrim
“I would suggest "Schmuckulating", which is what Futurists do and, by extension, what they are." — Commenter "Rayneau"
lPeregrine wrote:Wanting to avoid damage from your own shots doesn't necessarily mean that they're hitting you just as hard as they're hitting your target, it just means that you don't want to help your enemy kill you.
Batman isn't talking about helping your enemy kill you, he's talking about being killed outright from the backwash, as stated in "The N'th Degree".
Nth Degree wrote:RIKER: We can't use photon torpedoes. An explosion this close could cripple us.
Its interesting to note that after Barclay amps the shields up by 300%.. they take 3 max yield photorps at close range without harming the ship (utilizing just the warp power, at that.) How they couldn't figure that out without Super Barclay is beyond me, but meh. Either way its not a very straightforward analysis of the situation.
(Funny enough about that epsiode, they go to warp 2, and they the 'energy' striking the shields is still affecting them.. clearly its FTL 'energy' LOL. I'm also not quite sure how they can still see the dang thing at warp - again FTL, but I digress.)
There's also Q who, but that involves an unshielded starship -at an estimated 5-10 km (at leats by Mike's analysis.. but also by Mike's analysis and Atomic rockets any nuclear-grade explosion should do fuck all at that range... again go figure.)
Batman wrote:Because that's the typical value for starfighter scale weapons in Wars and the Falcon manages to hold her own against starfighters?
If her guns were massively weaker than a starfighters, she shouldn't be able to blow away TIEs with single hits.
Not necessarily. Remember, the Falcon mostly fights unshielded TIE fighters, which could easily bring the energy down. Second, Quad Laser cannons are intended as an anti-starfighter weapon, whereas fighters are expected to be capable of strafing targets on the ground or on the surface of a capital ship. These uses could require weapons even stronger than a point defense gun brings to bear.
to add what to Formless said, I already noted that shields are not neccesarily 'impenetrable bubbles' due to the angling/overlapping nature of shields (the ability to open brief holes without lowering the whole shield, for example.) We knwo from the Lando Calrisisan novels that shields are porous:
Lando Calrisisan and the Starcave of Thonboka wrote:On his screen, Lando could see that the fighters had erected their deflection, too. Fighter shields were notoriously porous, there just wasn't enough engine to support them. That's one thing that made a vessel the size of the Falcon so handy.
We also know that overlapping shields in the novel 'Tyrants Test' creates interference zones (gaps) that can be exploited. Funny enough there, they use those fields also to 'shape charge' a concussion missile detonation, so logically all concussion missiles must be shaped charges. If we want to follow ST logic in SW, there's also the SWTJ entry about proton torpedoes being 'under a kiloton' and having an omnidirectional blast that can threaten starfighters with 'source vessel damage' unless they're fired from great distances away.
It can also be noted many people have argued that the Falcon must have shields comparable to the Naboo Yacht from AOTC, and if that were true there would be a contraidction between that and a TIE fighter being able to damage the ship.
Oh, and I went back to look on the 'Pulse mines'
A Call to Arms wrote:O'BRIEN: What about pulse mines? We could equip them with variable geometry detonators.
the 'variable geometry detonators' were an add on to the mines. Since, as I mentioned before, we know Photorps are eminently customizable, it stands to reason they could modify one to carry such a detonator. What trade offs in performance that requires we do not know, of course (given Nth Degree, we could infer that it does not allow 'maximum yield' for example.) but it should be at least possible.
Interestingly, by the time of Nemesis, ST does seem to have developed shaped charges (going by the visuals), since we see plenty of torpedo impacts with no visible omnidirectional explosions, either the blasts are shaped to direct their energy at the target or none of the warheads are detonating .
There's also the Scimitar firing photons at point blank range into Donatra's Valdore, with no adverse effects, the only explosive reaction that can be seen is when the Valdore's shields fail and it starts taking hull damage. Same when the Enterprise's shields also fail.
The only thing that directly references shaped charges in Trek that I know of is in Birth of the Federation, where there's a weapon tech called "Quantum shielding", that directs all of the available explosive energy and directing it at the enemy vessel or its shields. I don't know of any bona-fide canon sources though...
LOL, but that's just evidence that they are using torpedoes as kinetic impactors!
Watching that and seeing how the Enterprise's shields in that movie were hugging the hull instead of forming a bubble around it, it occurred to me that many of the seemingly "omnidirectional" explosions are likely just a product of the deflector shields doing their job-- deflecting the energy of torpedo explosions away from the ship, and blowing them up prematurely. That's also the first time in TNG era Trek I've seen where they were definitely using different shield systems for each section of the ship rather than designing one bubble that would fail all at once or not at all. Maybe that was a tradeoff for placing less distance between themselves and any explosion that was only partially deflected. Or maybe it allowed them to fly in tighter formation-- DS9 really seemed to have a lot of heavy ships flying into battle with their shields already disabled or down according to visuals.
Unless of course they had hull-hugging shields for a lot longer than I think, in which case nevermind.
"Still, I would love to see human beings, and their constituent organ systems, trivialized and commercialized to the same extent as damn iPods and other crappy consumer products. It would be absolutely horrific, yet so wonderful." —Shroom Man 777 "To Err is Human; to Arrr is Pirate." — Skallagrim
“I would suggest "Schmuckulating", which is what Futurists do and, by extension, what they are." — Commenter "Rayneau"
Formless wrote:LOL, but that's just evidence that they are using torpedoes as kinetic impactors!
Watching that and seeing how the Enterprise's shields in that movie were hugging the hull instead of forming a bubble around it, it occurred to me that many of the seemingly "omnidirectional" explosions are likely just a product of the deflector shields doing their job-- deflecting the energy of torpedo explosions away from the ship, and blowing them up prematurely. That's also the first time in TNG era Trek I've seen where they were definitely using different shield systems for each section of the ship rather than designing one bubble that would fail all at once or not at all. Maybe that was a tradeoff for placing less distance between themselves and any explosion that was only partially deflected. Or maybe it allowed them to fly in tighter formation-- DS9 really seemed to have a lot of heavy ships flying into battle with their shields already disabled or down according to visuals.
Unless of course they had hull-hugging shields for a lot longer than I think, in which case nevermind.
Certain people invooked something similar to what you proposed to explain away the 'flak burst' phenomena in Star Wars (and to be fair, the idea that energy beams would abruptly stop and explode IS a tad odd..) Basically shields are supposed to be volumetric (and possibly variable geometry, I'm going by recollection here) and that depending on configuration and strength, their effects might extend some distance from the hull (perhaps getting weaker.) Hence the 'explosions' at a distance from the ships we often see are actually shield interactions - indeed most 'flashes' we see invariably got labelled shield interactions for the beams (although another way to inteprret is 'omindiirectional exploding weapons fire'!) I don't see why similar assumptions couldn't be made for Trek if the evidence supports the interpretation. We know that late in TNG (and after) they seemed to do alot of fiddling and variations on their tech - different phaser rifles, pulse as well as beam phasers, differnet warp nacelle configurations, etc. so experimenting with different kinds of shields wouldn't be improbable.
Certain people invooked something similar to what you proposed to explain away the 'flak burst' phenomena in Star Wars (and to be fair, the idea that energy beams would abruptly stop and explode IS a tad odd..)
It's not unique to SW- ST has it too, in "the Die is Cast", the weapons that the Jem'Hadar attack ships were firing ended in a burst too. I always thought that never made any sense.
Batman wrote:The first is indeed sloppy thinking on my part, and I conceed that engine power does not equal power available for other systems. But why would the guns not be powered by the main reactor? Alternative power sources like batteries or a backup reactor sure, in the event the main reactor is damaged or already redlined with other duties as it is, but why wouldn't the guns be powered by it as long as it's available?
For starters, there are possible compatibility issues. The reactor is civilian grade, whereas the guns have been upgraded to military hardware. The ship was obviously designed to have weapons there, presumably for scaring off pirates or something, but we've been told many times in the EU that the Quad Lasers aren't a standard armament for the Falcon's product line. Thus, the original weapons may have been weaker than the current ones, and the main reactor isn't up to specs with the new weapons.
Well according to Wookieepedia the Falcon's guns are powered directly from her power core and have been modified by Han to be more powerful than they would otherwise be:
Wookieepedia on AG-2G quad laser cannon wrote:The Corellian Engineering Corporation AG-2G quad laser cannon was a powerful laser cannon, two of which were installed on the top and bottom of the Millennium Falcon by Lando Calrissian and modified by Han Solo. Imperial Lancer-class frigates mounted twenty of these quad laser cannons, for use against fast-moving starfighters.
The cannons drew power directly from the Falcon's Quadex power core. Enhanced power cyclers, high-volume gas feeds, and custom-modified laser actuators (with larger energization crystals) greatly increased the cannon's energy output, and the weapon could destroy a TIE fighter with a single shot. Enhanced cooling packs and compressors allowed for prolonged fire without the risk of overheating. The splitter coupling dispersed the energy beam, forcing the target's shields to deflect energy simultaneously from two hits and increasing the likelihood of overloading the shields and inflicting greater damage.
Formless wrote:
Batman, attempting to be sarcastc wrote:Yeah. I mean when they say LTLs are 6MT they obviously mean that's the energy the shot consumes, not the energy it actually delivers because who cares about the damage a weapon actually does?
Batman again, attempting to sound smart wrote:So when somebody states the firepower of an LTL is 6MT, I'm supposed to assume that's the energy that goes into it rather than what it actually delivers to the target. Um-no?
Yes, actually, that's exactly how the energy of real firearms is measured. In ballistics, internal and external ballistics are relatively simple, but terminal ballistics is messy. Its a practical science, for sure, but the sheer number of variables makes it prone to giving rather idealistic figures. Do you score a glancing hit, or a hit to the center of mass? What is the material you are shooting? How deeply does it penetrate the material? Does the projectile expand in the target, thus imparting more energy, or does it keep its shape and pass right through without stopping? Does it lose energy to inefficiencies of a particular gun design? If it has armor piercing characteristics, how much energy is lost when it hits Kevlar or trauma plates?
None of those things remain constant in every situation where you fire the weapon.
Energy weapons like turbolasers will have similar issues relating to measuring the energy they impart to a target, so any "official" figure on their energy consumption should be treated as exactly that-- energy put into the shot, not energy delivered to the target. You can't cheat entropy, and there will be variables effecting the exact terminal effects of any weapon. For instance, one that comes to mind that doesn't effect projectiles but is a known issue with energy beams is attenuation of the beam over a distance. Point is, hyper precise numbers for terminal effects can't be relied upon to always deliver in practical use.
Although you're right in that Batman can't state with certainty what the terminal energy delivered is, that energy figure should reference the output energy and not the input energy, you know, like in real world energy weapons. When the Navy talks about creating 100 kW lasers, they mean beams that output that much power, not beams that consume that much power. Now admittedly that is short hand as the Military actually specifies power, wavelength, range and medium in which the beam will travel for a full description, but the power is always what the laser outputs.
Batman wrote: If those torpedoes are so powerful why did they have to blow up the Constellation's impulse drive to get a whopping 92MT in 'The Doomsday Machine'?
The Doomsday Machine did this weird thing where it somehow (drumroll) deactivated anti-matter, which meant that photon torpedoes and anything else that relied on anti-matter were pretty much a big no-go (hence why they also detonated the fusion impulse drives rather then the warp core).
Connor MacLeod wrote:Now that I think about it, there's those 100 megaton missiles from the Clone Wars cartoon that mysteriously did not have 100 megaton explosions. Yields not matching up to what we see, and all that.
Assuming of course that 'long range missile' actually refers to a specific weapons system with a particular warhead rather then a catch-all for.....a missile with long range.
"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste..."
the atom wrote:Assuming of course that 'long range missile' actually refers to a specific weapons system with a particular warhead rather then a catch-all for.....a missile with long range.
There's actually nothing wrong with the quote per se. The problem actually comes in we don't know exactly HOW that energy is used, but people assume it automatically means LIKE A NUKE. Because its easy to let preconceptions cloud your thinking if you go solely by your own conception of 'what makes sense.'
I mean if you think about it, phasers probably have hugetastic energy yields too (as many claim) the only difference is in how that energy is used (it manifests in a form that has little to no interaction with real life.) I mean look at Mike's neutrino theory.. you have a bunch of high velocity neutrinos (enough to impart physical momentum to people STRUCK by phasers mind) and without a significant change in the msas in the target you need high velocity, which can translate to high energy. The fact phasers can have thermal effects (burn people, set stuff on fire, heat rocks) may even be a byproduct of the reaction (note that would still be 'relatively little or no interaction' compared to the energy inptut it must have.)
Thats kind of the interesting thing about 'technobabble' - people tend to think it means 'zero energy' just because its magic, rather than simply altering 'how' the is involved in the interaction (or the source, or whatever.) Same with the death star, really
Technobabble is just a 'handwave' with an attempt at explanation. As long as your explanation makes some (internal, at least) sense, and you're not trying to use it to 'cheat' (EG ignoring something just so you can have the calcs/interpretation you want.) there's nothing wrong with it.
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