Yuuzhun Vong vs. Star Trek

[SeaTrooper]

I just have a question about that.

Now, I am no scientist but bear with me.
If I recall correctly, Star Trek shields rotate at a certain frequency to allow their weapons to fire through the shield. Their weapons (phasers) also have a certain frequency. So, by that theory, the reason why we see starships firing through their own shields is that they match their weapons to the exact opposite phase. And the reason why we see starships taking some damage even while their Shields are still up is that the enemy weapons are not perfectly matched to the same phase and hence some energy still goes through.

By that theory if the Enterprise could match the frequency of the enemies weapons perfectly, and the enemy had no way of changing their weapon frequency than the ship would take 0% damage for as long as the shield generator output is greater than that of the enemies weapons.

Well done, the above is a good synopsis of current thinking for how ST shields work.

On the other hand, if this could not be achieved, than the ship would still take some damage even thou the shield generator output is greater than that of the weapons.

Now phasers have been shown to be able to alter frequency via simple software input from a console. Lasers on the other hand (now I might be wrong here) would actually take a serious hardware change to change their frequency by any reasonable value.

So could the reason why lasers could not harm the Enterprise be that the ship could have simply adjusted their shields to match the frequency of the lasers perfectly thus avoiding any stray damage plus the fact that a massive ship like the E. could produce more power than the small ship shooting at it?

Could this fact be the reason why the command crew noted how the lasers would be useless? As in: They can't out power our shields and they can't make use of the fault in our own defenses to take us down in a death of a thousand cuts either.

Yep, that's pretty much it. They were being approached by three tiny little obsolete laser-armed drones, from a significantly less advanced species. If their lasers were all operating on the same frequency, and we're assuming Starfleet had encountered them before and had some idea what this was, then E's shields would have been easily re-modulated (ugh, I hate that term) to provide near perfect protection while the power lasted.

If this is correct, a much stronger laser weapon that can produce output greater than that of an enemies shield generator would still do damage as normal. But it would first have to get the shields down with brute force instead.

And thus we have the sugar quote. A laser set to a frequency that the ship's shields have been set to match should not penetrate, but will drain those shields while it is hitting them. The greater the energy pumped into the lasers, and the higher the frequency they operate at, then the faster those shields will drain to failure. Although the Borg have energy generation capabilities that are greater than the Feds can achieve, this does not need to be an OOM greater than E in order to achieve burn-through. The impact point of any laser is a comparatively very small area of the entire globe-shield raised to defend that ship, so local burn-throughs would result if that point could not be reinforced fast enough. I think of it as poking a balloon with a pin.

[Stark]

The structure of the station is pretty spindly; blasting through one of the sections would probably have been all they expected. Perhaps the inhabited section is quite small, or Riker was just talking about overcoming the shields.

[Junghalli]

Side note: to make sense of getting an output and determining they could take it down in one shot, I thought about how scanning shields might actually work - they probably shoot a sensor beam at the object and measure the output their probing beam caused to happen. There's probably some rules of thumb in the Starfleet handbook about the relationship between shield output from a standard scan and how well it would fare against weapons.

Thinking about this, it might work by determining how much energy the shield generator consumes to somehow magic away a larger probing pulse of energy, in which case you might have a counterintuitive system where the lower the shield output the more powerful it is against weapons.

This is probably way off topic, but now I almost want to write a universe in which it works like this just to watch nerds tear their hair out trying to analyze the dialog.

"Their shield has an output of 31 watts!"
"Holy shit our entire compliment of nukes couldn't get through that!"

[Picard]

If you had a working brainstem, you would have grasped that that was only the boiled-down moron version.
It doesn't actually matter if we ever saw a hand-phaser firing on a Species####. What DOES matter is that we know that they will only be able to use their DET-effects against the Vong-shields, which means that they will have next-to no effect.

Except that phaser DET component is stronger than blaster shot by order of magnitude.

Yes, a blaster wouldn't heat the stone - it would blow it up!
We DO see high-DET effects from blasters, and we do see that blasters are DET-only weapons (there is no reason to assume a chain reaction, since we never observe anything that requires one). They can blow trough thick plasteel-doors and damage metal walls, something we never observe from hand phasers. That requires substantially more energy than making some rocks glow.

Thick plastic or thick steel doors? We see effects of blaster fire against MF hull and against walls in Cloud City - nothing too impressive. Even with phaser beam being 90% NDF, blasters would still be weaker.

cutting laser

I don't remember about "cutting laser", just "cutting beam". Blus it was after E-D's shields were brought down.

Dominion-weapons, IIRC. Not sure tough, not an expert on Trek.

Dominion weapons are similar to phasers, only seem to use "polarons" instead of "nadions".

[Stofsk]

cutting laser

I don't remember about "cutting laser", just "cutting beam". Blus it was after E-D's shields were brought down.

Worf's line in 'QWho' was: 'A type of laser beam is slicing into the saucer section.'

[Serafina]

Except that phaser DET component is stronger than blaster shot by order of magnitude.

As per you saying so. Heck, i just pointed out where blasters are seen to have high DEET-firepower, and you just dismissed it.

Thick plastic or thick steel doors? We see effects of blaster fire against MF hull and against walls in Cloud City - nothing too impressive. Even with phaser beam being 90% NDF, blasters would still be weaker.

Yes, thick metal doors. Watch ANH where they blew trough the door of Leias starship and trough several doors on the Death Star.
And the effect against the walls in Cloud City WAS impressive, given that they blew large chunks out of a reinforced building material (Trektards like you typically assume that it was ordinary concrete, even tough they have no basis for that assumption). We have a multitude of effects against metal walls, something phasers never do.

Dominion weapons are similar to phasers, only seem to use "polarons" instead of "nadions".

So you admit that the technobabble is meaningless? If it isn't, then you should address the difference - because they made one, "polarons" were more difficult to counter than "nadions". Which shows that the NDF-chain reaction does NOT work on shields:
Dominion weapons do not show NDF. If NDF would affect shields, they should be better against them - yet we do not see that. In fact, the weapon without the chain reaction (the "polarons") are better against federation shields. You can dismiss that as the shields not being adapted (fits with canon), but then you still have a non-chain reaction weapon being as good as the chain-reaction weapon against shields, which just shows that the chain reaction doesn't matter against them.

Hence, phasers only use DET against shields, their NDF-component doesn't matter. QED.

[Serafina]

A few additions:

We see that phasers can be "dispersed" by naturally occurring radiation:
[quote="TNG Season 3, Ep# 49: "Ensigns of Command"]WORF: Human life form readings from the planet.

RIKER: So, the Sheliak weren't hallucinating.

PICARD: Numbers?

WORF: Impossible to get an accurate reading, Captain. The high radiation levels are disrupting our sensors.

DATA: Hyperonic radiation also interferes with ship's transporters; they are now inoperable.

WORF: So are the ship's phasers.

...

RIKER: How can humans survive down there?

BEVERLY: They must have found a way to adapt. Milan's work in radiation sensitivity suggests it's possible. Perhaps with extensive virotherapy ... Until they found the answer, their mortality rate must have been staggering.[/quote]Since humans were able to survive down there, the radiation couldn't bee too strong .
However, the important part is that the disrupted phasers were useless. Now, that disruption can't be very strong, it didn't distort light or even kill lifeforms! That is not consistent with a strong DET-weapon - you can't "disrupt" such a weapon, the energy has to go somewhere. A strong DET-effect would also be hard to "disrupt" - you would need a lot of energy, which is clearly not present here.
However, it IS consistent with chain-reaction weapon - the radiation could "disrupt" the chain reaction, therefore stopping it. If NDF was purely optional, the phasers would have continued to work with their DET-component, yet we don't see that.

[quote="TNG Season 3, Ep# 49: "Ensigns of Command"]DATA: Hyperonic radiation randomizes phaser beams. But I believe I can improvise a servocircuit which will compensate by continuously recollimating the output.

ARD'RIAN: You're using your own neural subprocessors to build a smarter phaser.

DATA: Essentially correct.[/quote]This just confirms what i just said - without that adaptation that re-enables the chain reaction, their phasers are useless. No DET-weapon could be disabled in such a way.

[quote="TNG Season 6, Ep# 144: "Starship Mine"]PICARD (pointing a phaser at Devor's head): Who are you? What are you doing on my ship?

DEVOR: The baryon sweep uses a high-frequency plasma field. That phaser won't work.

PICARD: You're probably right (pulling out a laser torch), but I'm willing to bet that this will.[/quote]Yet more evidence that phasers are disrupted by radiation, which just doesn't make sense for a DET-weapon (such as the laser torch).


Oh, and regarding Federation doors:
[quote="TNG Season 7, Ep# 171: "Genesis"]DATA: It is large, approximately 200 kilograms, and it is heavily armored with an exoskeleton of some sort. The lifesigns appear to be Klingon.

PICARD: Worf.

(Worf punches the door, and the metal buckles from the impact)[/quote]Granted, Word was mutated at that point, but we clearly saw that Chewie in SW (who should be of at least similar strength) couldn't bash in doors we saw destroyed by blasters. Yet we never see a phaser destroy the flimsy doors used by the Federation.

[quote="DS9 Season 1, Ep# 17: "The Forsaken"]INT. CORRIDOR (OPTICAL): Wisps of smoke escape from the closed door ahead... Sisko and Kira run up. Sisko touches the bulkhead door: it's hot.

SISKO: Phasers at maximum... They both draw their phasers, stand back... fire together... the door doesn't give. As security and medical personnel arrive, Sisko and Kira examine --

ANGLE -- THE DOOR: ... which shows a deep scar but another stronger metal lining is not affected...

KIRA: Toranium inlay... Cardassian design, I should have guessed... (to a deputy) We're going to need a bipolar torch to get through it...[/quote]Phasers are useless against their doors, they need a specialized cutting tool. The visuals of the episode show that they burn of a coating of perhaps one milimetre in thickness - this is inconsistent with a high-DET weapon, where the energy would have to go somewhere.



[quote="TNG Season 5, Ep# 115: "Power Play"]RIKER: A concussive charge would blow out the security field. Then we could go in with phasers on wide beam. Stun everybody. Sort it out later...[/quote]Evidently, they can't use their phasers to blow out force fields that can be blown out by a chemical reaction (tough you could argue that it was some sort of technobabble). We generally see that chemical explosions can compete with ST-firepower, which is just flat-out impossible with Trektard-supposed firepowers. We see this in "Insurrection" where volatile gas collected by the Enterprise was able to destroy the pursuing ships, even tough their weapons couldn't do it. A few other examples:

[quote="TNG Season 4, Ep# 91: "Night Terrors"]DATA: When Tyken was trapped in a Rift, his analysis determined that a massive energy release might overload and dislocate the anomaly. Fortunately, his cargo included anicium and yurium, which he used to detonate a massive explosion. He then escaped through the ruptured center of the Rift.

GEORDI: But we aren't carrying anything that could produce that kind of explosion. Even our photon torpedoes wouldn't be enough.[/quote]Two unknown chemicals in unknown are capable of producing an explosion more powerful than their photon torpedoes. Note that there is an upper limit to the volatility of any chemical explosion, it just can't be millions of times stronger than any known explosive.

[quote="TNG Season 4, Ep# 91: "Night Terrors"]DATA: Sir, Commander La Forge and I have come up with a potential solution to our predicament. Perhaps the modifications we used to increase firepower against the Borg might be effective here.

PICARD: Channeling power into the main deflector dish...

DATA: I believe within six hours we can generate a concentrated burst of energy which might disrupt the Tyken's Rift.

...

DATA: We are ready to discharge the main deflector, Captain.

...

GEORDI: Deflector power coils charging...

...

WORF: Discharge in three seconds... two... one...

...

RIKER: Nothing... it just fizzled out.[/quote]They need SIX HOURS in order to replicate the effects of a chemical explosion. Even if that explosion was made by a huge quantity of high explosives, that's still pretty damn unimpressive.

DATA: What we must discover is a means by which, working together with the aliens, we can produce an explosion more intense than either of us could achieve alone.

TROI: What is it you're looking for?

DATA: These are the elements we have available. Some of them could be used in the creation of an explosive reaction. If we can communicate this inventory to the other ship ...

...

TROI: "One... moon... circles... "

DATA: Yes, Counselor, one electron circles one proton... this is a hydrogen atom.

TROI: "One moon circles"... that's what they have been telling me... over and over ...

DATA: Perhaps the aliens are thinking as we are... to collaborate in producing an explosion. If hydrogen is combined with certain elements... calendenium, for example, it is extremely volatile.

They finally manage it - with another chemical explosion.

That just doesn't make sense if their weapons had gigatons of firepower, yet it is consistent with megatons of firepower.



Oh, and regarding the question "why are phasers that good against shields" - they could simply exploit the frequency-based shields in order to cause more damage (partially bypass the shields), which photon torpedoes could not do (since their explosion can not be carefully calibrated). That's also consistent with their highly variable effect against shields - sometimes they hit the right frequencies, sometimes they don't.

[bz249]

Oh, and regarding the question "why are phasers that good against shields" - they could simply exploit the frequency-based shields in order to cause more damage (partially bypass the shields), which photon torpedoes could not do (since their explosion can not be carefully calibrated). That's also consistent with their highly variable effect against shields - sometimes they hit the right frequencies, sometimes they don't.

Frequency is just one thing they also have to align the phase of the weapon (whichever has a frequency should also have a phase... at least in the real world) and aligning the frequency correctly, but misaligning the phase is just worse than not aligning the frequency at all. Also the exact function form describing the shield and phaser power output would be interesting to know (there are zillions of possible waveforms which have a certain frequency).

[Serafina]

On the contrary, that's very consistent with DET. If you fired an energy weapon into a scattering field right in front of you, the energy will come back on you! If firing your weapon causes an explosion directly in front of you, it is quite useless.

Except that there is no "scattering field" - it's simple weak radiation (we know that it's weak due to it's effects on the enviornment).

The atmosphere would do exactly this to an x-ray laser. Water does it to visible light. "A lot of energy" simply is not the case.

Yes, and when that happens we can observe the effects on it's environment.

Do you even know what 'recollimate' means? It has nothing to do with a chain reaction. It is all about countering light spread.

No, i just assumed it was another piece of Trekknobabble.
Regardless, we are stuck with the fact that very weak, non-ionizing radiation makes phasers next-to-useless. I do not see how such weak radiation could disperse an energy beam like that - it certainly wouldn't disperse a laser!
And if you want to claim that it disrupts the electronics, then that's not only incompatible with the "recollimation", but would also show that their electronics are not even shielded!

Has anybody even tried?

Whenever a door was locked and someone really had to go in, why didn't they use a phaser to blast it? Why don't intruders do that?
The fact is that we never see a phaser doing so. Your approach is "we didn't see anyone fail, hence it might be possible". That's like saying i can punch trough a metal door because no one ever saw me failing at doing so.

The energy probably did go somewhere - heating up the door, but it was spread out too quickly for it to melt through.

Ah - so you ARE aware that we DO see them trying to blow trough a door, yet you ignore it in your previous answer. Lovely.
So you are claiming that those high-energy figures Picard is wanking about were only enough to phaserize a thing sheet of metal?

If they actually did damage to the hull while the shields were up, that would make sense, but they drain the shields the same as anything else.

And why could frequency-matching not make them better against shields? If the shields only stop 50% of the phaser (or whatever), then they would need more energy to stop it.
That explanation is just as consistent as your "NDF works on shields"-theory. In fact, your theory requires that ST-shields incorporate matter on which the NDF-reaction can work, but we never see shields incorporating matter.

[Serafina]

The radiation IS the scattering field.

Care to explain how your handwave works?

Yeah, that's called logic. Especially backed up with the various other things we have seen them break through.

Nothing comparable to a thick metal door, which was the whole point of that comparison.

Regular Federation doors on sickbay and the Cardassian blast doors on DS9 (locked shut to contain an explosive fire btw) are apples and oranges.

You're saying "a man punched a dent in an interior door on my house but a gun didn't penetrate a reinforced armor plate therefore the gun is weak!1111!!!"

That is obviously horrible logic.

And again - the point was that we never see phasers destroying anything comparable to the doors we see destroyed by blasters, which WERE armored. We never even see them used against the thin doors you mention, even when it would have made sense to do so.

So yes, what i am actually saying is "i saw that one man punch trough a thick, reinforced door. I never saw that other man even try, even against weak doors when it would have solved his problems. Therefore, i conclude that the first man is stronger than the second one."
If you want to call that illogical, go ahead.

Wong's theory is that they do: http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Sh ... ield1.html

And I'll remind you the NDF is just a theory too. (gah, I hate saying that but it fits)

It's funny how you can appeal to an analysis you reject at the same time.

Anyway, let's assume that they actually work better against ST-shields. So what? As far as i know, SW-shields do not incorporate matter, hence phasers will only have their small DET-part against them.

[SeaTrooper]

Oh, and regarding the question "why are phasers that good against shields" - they could simply exploit the frequency-based shields in order to cause more damage (partially bypass the shields), which photon torpedoes could not do (since their explosion can not be carefully calibrated). That's also consistent with their highly variable effect against shields - sometimes they hit the right frequencies, sometimes they don't.

Frequency is just one thing they also have to align the phase of the weapon (whichever has a frequency should also have a phase... at least in the real world) and aligning the frequency correctly, but misaligning the phase is just worse than not aligning the frequency at all. Also the exact function form describing the shield and phaser power output would be interesting to know (there are zillions of possible waveforms which have a certain frequency).

This is certainly true, and is probably one of the few areas that shows ST in a good light if their weapons/sensors are capable of determining these parameters during a fight. Otherwise, for phasers to be able to achieve leaking hits through shields, as we so regularly see, they must comprise multiple frequencies and wave-forms. Yet that is in contradiction with the 'phased coherant' descriptions we are given of it.

More likely, shields oscillate on and off; hence the over-use of the term frequency. A phaser blast may be stopped in the first few microseconds, and then some of it gets through as the shields rotates downwards. We have seen that they regularly cycle their shields (the DS9 Tribble episode). Frankly, this is the only way I see a coherant beam being able to defeat a shield whose frequencies were not known and 180 modulated from that beam.

[bz249]

This is certainly true, and is probably one of the few areas that shows ST in a good light if their weapons/sensors are capable of determining these parameters during a fight. Otherwise, for phasers to be able to achieve leaking hits through shields, as we so regularly see, they must comprise multiple frequencies and wave-forms. Yet that is in contradiction with the 'phased coherant' descriptions we are given of it.

More likely, shields oscillate on and off; hence the over-use of the term frequency. A phaser blast may be stopped in the first few microseconds, and then some of it gets through as the shields rotates downwards. We have seen that they regularly cycle their shields (the DS9 Tribble episode). Frankly, this is the only way I see a coherant beam being able to defeat a shield whose frequencies were not known and 180 modulated from that beam.

What would be a reasonable stuff with the shield is to use a trigger signal type thing which temporaly make the shield to nil, but keeps it at full power otherwise. This is possible with simple electronics, however whether it is possible with high power shield generators and weapons is still a question (at least to me). The fact that pulsed phasers of the Defiant were an achievement indicates that producing such with phasers might be a little bit more difficult than doing the same stuff with lasers (where femtosecond long pulses repeated with MHz frequency is commercially available).

[Picard]

Even if we knew that NDF was optional, that doesn't change the power of our observed DET-effects.

Which are in gigawatts of DET.

As per you saying so. Heck, i just pointed out where blasters are seen to have high DEET-firepower, and you just dismissed it.

Movie and scene, please.

Yes, thick metal doors. Watch ANH where they blew trough the door of Leias starship and trough several doors on the Death Star.

I don't have time to watch movie right now but I'll write a note and watch it when I catch time.

EDIT: I remember they blew throught doors. But effects were more like explosive charge.

So you admit that the technobabble is meaningless? If it isn't, then you should address the difference - because they made one, "polarons" were more difficult to counter than "nadions". Which shows that the NDF-chain reaction does NOT work on shields:
Dominion weapons do not show NDF. If NDF would affect shields, they should be better against them - yet we do not see that. In fact, the weapon without the chain reaction (the "polarons") are better against federation shields. You can dismiss that as the shields not being adapted (fits with canon), but then you still have a non-chain reaction weapon being as good as the chain-reaction weapon against shields, which just shows that the chain reaction doesn't matter against them.

Hence, phasers only use DET against shields, their NDF-component doesn't matter.

And so shipboard phaser DET is in high megatons/low gigatons per second, since phasers are used against shields almost as frequently as torpedoes are.

We see that phasers can be "dispersed" by naturally occurring radiation:

Not illogical. All non-protected electronic systems can be brought down by some forms of radiation, and phasers can't be completely protected since you still need area to unload particles and/or energy throught.

Since humans were able to survive down there, the radiation couldn't bee too strong .
However, the important part is that the disrupted phasers were useless. Now, that disruption can't be very strong, it didn't distort light or even kill lifeforms! That is not consistent with a strong DET-weapon - you can't "disrupt" such a weapon, the energy has to go somewhere. A strong DET-effect would also be hard to "disrupt" - you would need a lot of energy, which is clearly not present here.
However, it IS consistent with chain-reaction weapon - the radiation could "disrupt" the chain reaction, therefore stopping it. If NDF was purely optional, the phasers would have continued to work with their DET-component, yet we don't see that.

Except phasers were not operative. If you're right, then we have two options:
a) NDF does work against shields
b) phaser DET is in high megatons/low gigatons per second

Photon torpedoes are in high megatons at absolute minimum, more probably in low gigatons.

Granted, Word was mutated at that point, but we clearly saw that Chewie in SW (who should be of at least similar strength) couldn't bash in doors we saw destroyed by blasters. Yet we never see a phaser destroy the flimsy doors used by the Federation.

And we never saw ST doors being fired upon. Plus doors would most probably be protected by forcefields (which probably don't work at that point). Either way, we don't know how mutated Worf exactly was.

Phasers are useless against their doors, they need a specialized cutting tool. The visuals of the episode show that they burn of a coating of perhaps one milimetre in thickness - this is inconsistent with a high-DET weapon, where the energy would have to go somewhere.

Maybe, but you can mind explaining how possibly NDF can heat stones?

which is just flat-out impossible with Trektard-supposed firepowers

Supposed? You mean seen?

Two unknown chemicals in unknown are capable of producing an explosion more powerful than their photon torpedoes. Note that there is an upper limit to the volatility of any chemical explosion, it just can't be millions of times stronger than any known explosive.

Except that we don't know nature of explosion.

They need SIX HOURS in order to replicate the effects of a chemical explosion. Even if that explosion was made by a huge quantity of high explosives, that's still pretty damn unimpressive.

As above.

That just doesn't make sense if their weapons had gigatons of firepower, yet it is consistent with megatons of firepower.

Yup, so they're on even footing with SW.

But let me give you this list:
Voyager, "Rise" - 200 megatons absolute minimum, with heavily underestimated size of asteroid
TNG, "Skin of Evil" - from 500 megatons to 10 gigatons
Energy requirements for GO24 - 8.1 to 45 gigatons per torpedo

[Serafina]

Which are in gigawatts of DET.

As per you saying so, based on the assumption that what we see is pure DET without NDF.

Movie and scene, please.

Are you daft? It's right in the next part of my post you quote right next.

I don't have time to watch movie right now but I'll write a note and watch it when I catch time.

EDIT: I remember they blew throught doors. But effects were more like explosive charge.

Except that Han said "you better hope they don't come with blasters" (or something similar) when C3PO and R2 locked themselves inside the room. So we know they did it with blasters.
Furthermore, we have the damaged Sandcrawler on Tatooine, which shows visible hull damage and where blasters blew apart support beams, tracks and various other things. That vehicle had a thick metal hull, yet blasters damaged it.

And so shipboard phaser DET is in high megatons/low gigatons per second, since phasers are used against shields almost as frequently as torpedoes are.

Except that Destructionator XIII actually shot my explanation there in the foot - they use phasers against shields because NDF DOES work against Trek-shields (or at least Federation shields). Star Wars shields work on a different principle, they are not frequency- and particle-based, so it's unlikely that NDF will work against them. Hence, you will have to rely on the small DET-component of the phasers.

Not illogical. All non-protected electronic systems can be brought down by some forms of radiation, and phasers can't be completely protected since you still need area to unload particles and/or energy throught.

You are an idiot - any radiation strong enough to disrupt modern electronics would be lethal to humans. Yet we saw humans right on that planet, along with other lifeforms. Heck, long exposure to ionizing radiation will even make metals brittle.
That planet did NOT have radiation strong enough to disrupt modern electronics. We can only explain it's effects on phasers with one of the following:
-Phasers have no hardened electronics and are about as vulnerable as early microchips. At least that would explains why they have to use jello-packs for their computers. Then again, in ST IV we see that a phaser is useless when exposed to a nuclear reactor, so perhaps that fits better than i thought.
-That radiation could somehow radically affect a phaser beam, even tough it did not affect light or normal matter. Inconsistent with what we see, unless you want to claim that this was reaaly special radiation.
-The radiation disrupts the NDF-effect of the phaser. That's much more likely, since such a reaction would be complicated and therefore easy to disrupt, and it already relies on exotic particles, so no further assumption is needed.

Except phasers were not operative. If you're right, then we have two options:
a) NDF does work against shields
b) phaser DET is in high megatons/low gigatons per second

Photon torpedoes are in high megatons at absolute minimum, more probably in low gigatons.

Blablabla - you keep on claiming those numbers without presenting a shred of actual evidence.
Besides, Destructionator XIII has already shown that phasers and NDF DO work against shields. So if i go by your options here, a) is already taken and we don't need your gigatons per second.

And we never saw ST doors being fired upon. Plus doors would most probably be protected by forcefields (which probably don't work at that point). Either way, we don't know how mutated Worf exactly was.

Ah, so you go by the same idiotic logic "we never saw it, so i can assume whatever i want". And you assume forcefields (which phasers are effective against) which we never saw that somehow failed to work against Worf, even tough we see that ST-forcefields stop physical attacks.
The point, which you missed, is that a door which can be broken by an animal with a mass of 200 kilograms has never been shown to be destroyed by phasers. If phasers could destroy them, it would be highly useful to intruders or in any situation where someone is locked out of a specific room.
On the other hand, we do see that blasters can damage doors which can not be damaged by someone of equal or greater strength.
It's pretty simple: SW-doors are stronger and can be damaged by blasters. ST-doors are weaker and can not be damaged by phasers. Therefore, blasters have greater firepower than phasers.

Except that we don't know nature of explosion.

Oh, yes, we DO. It wasn't antimatter, since antimatter could not be handled like that. It wasn't fusion, since fusion doesn't spontaneously occur like that. It wasn't fission, since hydrogen was involved/a dispersed cloud wouldn't undergo rapid fission.
We have three observed instances:
-the concussive charge. Granted, that could be technobabble, but it seems to refer to chemical explosives.
-The Briar patch. That gas could not be antimatter, since it didn't annihilate with matter. It couldn't be fusion or fission, since such a dispersed cloud as it was thrown at the pursuing ships would undergo neither. What's left? A chemical reaction ,which was capable of outright destroying their pursuers, something which their weapons could not do. Granted, that might be because their shields were weak against it, but we see what their weapons do against hulls - if they had gigatons of firepower, then no chemical explosion would even scratch their hulls which are capable of withstanding such firepower.
-The incident i quoted in length. It could not be antimatter, fusion or fission for pretty much the same reasons as above, and it ended up being more powerful than their whole weapons loadout. They might have had a huge quantity of those chemicals, but that's still pretty damn unimpressive.



Sorry, pal - you didn't make it. Phasers clearly rely on NDF and therefore have only a small DET-component. Therefore they will be weak against SW-shields and ultradense hulls.
Also, their firepower is within a few orders of magnitudes of chemical explosives - so close that sometimes chemical explosives are actually stronger than the weapons of their most powerful starship! That's just outright impossible if they have gigatons of firepower - no chemical explosion could get close to that (granted, it could with millions of tons of explosive materials, but we don't see those in any of those instances).
Oh, and

Yup, so they're on even footing with SW.

If that would be the case, they would still get slaughtered by numbers, speed, an actual ground army instead of a few guys in pijamas with rockheaters and some superweapons here and there.

[Batman]

Even if we knew that NDF was optional, that doesn't change the power of our observed DET-effects.

Which are in gigawatts of DET.

As evidenced by you saying so. Unless you are talking ship phasers, in which case you are probably correct.

As per you saying so. Heck, i just pointed out where blasters are seen to have high DET-firepower, and you just dismissed it.

Movie and scene, please.

ANH, bulkhead breach. ANH, Docking Bay 93 escape. ANH, Death Star chase scenes. ESB, luring Luke into a trap/Leia & CO escaping scenes.
Not that you don't know that already, you're either willfully ignoring it or really too damned stupid to understand what those visuals mean.

Yes, thick metal doors. Watch ANH where they blew trough the door of Leias starship and trough several doors on the Death Star.

I don't have time to watch movie right now but I'll write a note and watch it when I catch time.
EDIT: I remember they blew throught doors. But effects were more like explosive charge.

Tough luck. The novelization says it was blasters. Nothing in the movie says it wasn't.

So you admit that the technobabble is meaningless? If it isn't, then you should address the difference - because they made one, "polarons" were more difficult to counter than "nadions". Which shows that the NDF-chain reaction does NOT work on shields:
Dominion weapons do not show NDF. If NDF would affect shields, they should be better against them - yet we do not see that. In fact, the weapon without the chain reaction (the "polarons") are better against federation shields. You can dismiss that as the shields not being adapted (fits with canon), but then you still have a non-chain reaction weapon being as good as the chain-reaction weapon against shields, which just shows that the chain reaction doesn't matter against them.
Hence, phasers only use DET against shields, their NDF-component doesn't matter.

And so shipboard phaser DET is in high megatons/low gigatons per second, since phasers are used against shields almost as frequently as torpedoes are.

Actually they're in the KT to MT range because there's exactly zero evidence for high MT/low GT phasers.

We see that phasers can be "dispersed" by naturally occurring radiation:

Not illogical. All non-protected electronic systems can be brought down by some forms of radiation, and phasers can't be completely protected since you still need area to unload particles and/or energy through.

Thank you for admitting that phasers are so sensitive and lousily insulated against radiation that they can be incapacitated by radiation that has no negative effect whatsoever on humans in jumpsuits.

Since humans were able to survive down there, the radiation couldn't bee too strong .
However, the important part is that the disrupted phasers were useless. Now, that disruption can't be very strong, it didn't distort light or even kill lifeforms! That is not consistent with a strong DET-weapon - you can't "disrupt" such a weapon, the energy has to go somewhere. A strong DET-effect would also be hard to "disrupt" - you would need a lot of energy, which is clearly not present here.
However, it IS consistent with chain-reaction weapon - the radiation could "disrupt" the chain reaction, therefore stopping it. If NDF was purely optional, the phasers would have continued to work with their DET-component, yet we don't see that.

Except phasers were not operative. If you're right, then we have two options:
a) NDF does work against shields
b) phaser DET is in high megatons/low gigatons per second

Bzzt. Wrong. Zero evidence for phaser power in that range period, leave alone without NDF.

Photon torpedoes are in high megatons at absolute minimum, more probably in low gigatons.

Again, no evidence (excuse me, no actual evidence, as in actually happening in the TV series or the movies as opposed to the fevered imaginations of you or Dorkstar),

Granted, Worf was mutated at that point, but we clearly saw that Chewie in SW (who should be of at least similar strength) couldn't bash in doors we saw destroyed by blasters. Yet we never see a phaser destroy the flimsy doors used by the Federation.

And we never saw ST doors being fired upon.

Exactly. Even when they were trying to get through one. Kinda hints at hand phasers not being able to do it.

Plus doors would most probably be protected by forcefields (which probably don't work at that point)

Because-you say so.

Either way, we don't know how mutated Worf exactly was.

We DO know that whenever they need to get through a closed door, they don't phaser it away.

Phasers are useless against their doors, they need a specialized cutting tool. The visuals of the episode show that they burn of a coating of perhaps one milimetre in thickness - this is inconsistent with a high-DET weapon, where the energy would have to go somewhere.

Maybe, but you can mind explaining how possibly NDF can heat stones?

The same way NDF works to begin with-somehow. NDF is essentially magic.
Oh, have fun using DET to get that rock to glow in the fashion seen in the episode. You know what happens when you dump enough energy to make that rock glow red hot into it with a beam that narrow the old-fashioned way? The rock explodes.

which is just flat-out impossible with Trektard-supposed firepowers

Supposed? You mean seen?

No. Supposed. Because we don't see firepower like that. Maybe you do. In that case, I suggest taking off your 'magnify Trek firepower by orders of magnitude just because' glasses.

Two unknown chemicals in unknown are capable of producing an explosion more powerful than their photon torpedoes. Note that there is an upper limit to the volatility of any chemical explosion, it just can't be millions of times stronger than any known explosive.

Except that we don't know nature of explosion.

Yes we do. It's a chemical explosion. Which means it'll be massively weaker than a fission, fusion, or leave alone an M/AM reaction. You're once again torpedoing your own point. Why don't you run the math on how much matter you need to get MT leave alone GT yields from a chemical explosion. Oh wait. That was something of a dead giveaway. MTs to GTs?

They need SIX HOURS in order to replicate the effects of a chemical explosion. Even if that explosion was made by a huge quantity of high explosives, that's still pretty damn unimpressive.

As above.

Indeed. Unless you want to put forward the idea that the E-D funneled several billion tons of hydrogen into the rift?

That just doesn't make sense if their weapons had gigatons of firepower, yet it is consistent with megatons of firepower.

Yup, so they're on even footing with SW.

Err-no. Wars-200GT MTL on a Clone Wars era troop transport. TT and up firepower for real warships. The EU doesn't go away just because you want it to. But again, if you want to go back to downscaling from the Death Star 1, I'm game

But let me give you this list:
Voyager, "Rise" - 200 megatons absolute minimum, with heavily underestimated size of asteroid

As evidenced by nothing whatsoever. Show me the calculations.

TNG, "Skin of Evil" - from 500 megatons to 10 gigatons

As evidenced by nothing whatsoever. Show me the calculations.

Energy requirements for GO24 - 8.1 to 45 gigatons per torpedo

As evidenced by nothing whatsoever. General Order 24 might have been a bluff to begin with and requires nothing beyond KT level firepower even if it is the real thing.

[Serafina]

Okay, essentially Picard is trying to argue that a BB-gun is more powerful than an anti-tank missile. His logic is "we never saw a BB-gun used against a tank, so how can you say it won't take it out". It doesn't occur to him that no one is using BB-guns against tanks because they are utterly useless.
Replace "BB-gun" with "phaser" and "tank" with "door" and you got an exact, mint-condition replica in original packaging of his argument.

[Batman]

Which shouldn't come as much of a surprise, really. Picard is either stupid, insane or deep enough into willful denial to think he actually has a case.

[Junghalli]

BEVERLY: They must have found a way to adapt. Milan's work in radiation sensitivity suggests it's possible. Perhaps with extensive virotherapy ... Until they found the answer, their mortality rate must have been staggering.

It did have an awful negative effect. IIRC that's the reason they sent Data down there to begin with - human members of the crew would have been killed by it.

Just as a minor note, there are some bacteria that can survive pretty fierce radiation, e.g. the famous Deinococcus radiodurans.

D. radiodurans is capable of withstanding an acute dose of 5,000 Gy of ionizing radiation with almost no loss of viability, and an acute dose of 15,000 Gy with 37% viability.[9][10][11] A dose of 5,000 Gy is estimated to introduce several hundred double strand breaks (DSBs) into the organism's DNA (~0.005 DSB/Gy/Mbp (haploid genome)). For comparison, a chest X-ray or Apollo mission involves about 1 milligray, 5 Gy can kill a human, 200-800 Gy will kill E. coli, and over 4,000 Gy will kill the radiation-resistant tardigrade.
...
Deinococcus accomplishes its resistance to radiation by having multiple copies of its genome and rapid DNA repair mechanisms. It usually repairs breaks in its chromosomes within 12–24 hours through a 2-step process. First, D. radiodurans reconnects some chromosome fragments through a process called single-strand annealing. In the second step, a protein mends double-strand breaks through homologous recombination. This process does not introduce any more mutations than a normal round of replication would.

Of course this is just a bacterium, it's another question whether you could scale this up to complex organisms (like the plants we saw on that planet), or engineer it into human beings (not being a biologist I really can't comment intelligently on that issue)...

[Agent Sorchus]

Of course this is just a bacterium, it's another question whether you could scale this up to complex organisms (like the plants we saw on that planet), or engineer it into human beings (not being a biologist I really can't comment intelligently on that issue)...

It would be incredibly difficult. The thing is in a complex multi-cellular life it isn't that the radiation kills all of your cells instantly, no it usually kills just enough cells to kill the whole since there are more points of failure. With the mechanism used it protects better the individual cell but not the body of cells. Also this is going to put a lot of stress on the system, which is going to leave weakened immune and other things that are problematic for a multicellular organism. The simpler it is though (as in less difference between individual cells) the more likely this would be to save the whole. I don't know about trees exactly, but plant life is simpler so it may be feasible.

[Junghalli]

The simpler it is though (as in less difference between individual cells) the more likely this would be to save the whole. I don't know about trees exactly, but plant life is simpler so it may be feasible.

Well, it would have to work on humans if we're going to suggest that planet is a conventionally super-radioactive environment.

Most likely it's magic plot device radiation that isn't that lethal but somehow disables a lot of Star Trek magic technology.

[SeaTrooper]

What would be a reasonable stuff with the shield is to use a trigger signal type thing which temporaly make the shield to nil, but keeps it at full power otherwise. This is possible with simple electronics, however whether it is possible with high power shield generators and weapons is still a question (at least to me). The fact that pulsed phasers of the Defiant were an achievement indicates that producing such with phasers might be a little bit more difficult than doing the same stuff with lasers (where femtosecond long pulses repeated with MHz frequency is commercially available).

The common argument there is that each species already knows the freq of their own beam weaponry, and can thus set their shields 180deg in order to pass through them. This would, of course, require those beams to be restricted to as narrow a freq-spectrum and wave-form as possible, otherwise you'll have side-lobe and damage your own shields. However, if everyone is using ultra-focused and super-coherant beam weapons, then enemy shields that are NOT modulated 180deg out from it shouldn't be allowing all that leakage through.

Which is where we come to a basic explaination of frequency. Put simply, and as it refers to ST, frequency is the number of oscillations per second, which may or may not be the rate it flashs on/off. Assuming it is (and I've no reason not to) then the endless repetitions of 'frequency' in ST may refer to their shields going up-down-up some millions or billions of times per second. In that case, then we DO have some opportunity for a beam to leak some chunks of each blast through those oscillating shields; hence they take damage well before the shields completely fail.

Whew... hope that's clear enough. This point has beenn argued before, so I hope anyone with a better appreciation will step in if my description is inadequate.

[Serafina]

Read the quote Serafina posted again:

BEVERLY: They must have found a way to adapt. Milan's work in radiation sensitivity suggests it's possible. Perhaps with extensive virotherapy ... Until they found the answer, their mortality rate must have been staggering.

It did have an awful negative effect. IIRC that's the reason they sent Data down there to begin with - human members of the crew would have been killed by it.

Of course, these people did manage to adapt to it somehow, but no negative effect whatsoever simply isn't true.

Yes, the radiation was initially deadly (tough we don't know over what time period). But human beings could still adapt to it - that still puts a limit on it.

Actually, you don't know that. The fictional element could have been super-uranium that did fission and the hydrogen was used for a secondary explosion (like a hydrogen bomb contained by magic) or whatever. Maybe the hydrogen was just part of a trigger for the other element's reaction.

So, what about the Briar-patch from Insurrection then?
Those gases were clearly just that - gas. No super-technobabblium, no antimatter - just gas.

Nobody actually knows.

In other words, you are handwaving it away because you don't like it.

Chemical explosions occasionally rivaling ST-weapons makes perfect sense if you accept KT-firepower for them. If you take the briar patch as an example, the fact that the gas was more powerful can simply because it bypassed the shields, thus striking the hull directly. We have other instances that show us that ST-starships can be destroyed by KT-level firepower without their shields - Jem'Hadar ramming attacks and photon torpedoes.
Low KT-level firepower is reasonable if we assume that that gas was both very dense and volatile - and we can already conclude the density from it's effect on the ships inside it (very low impulse speed etc.).
On the other hand, if you assume MT or even GT-level firepower, that whole scene just doesn't make sense. You can't get such a big explosion with the amount of gas we saw.

[Picard]

ultradense hulls

Don't make me laugh.

If that would be the case, they would still get slaughtered by numbers, speed, an actual ground army instead of a few guys in pijamas with rockheaters and some superweapons here and there.

Ah, yes, except that even if SW ships can match ST firepower, ST ships totally stomp SW when it comes to issue of range.

As evidenced by you saying so. Unless you are talking ship phasers, in which case you are probably correct.

...and as evidenced by my blog and several ST episodes.

Again, no evidence (excuse me, no actual evidence, as in actually happening in the TV series or the movies as opposed to the fevered imaginations of you or Dorkstar),

I already gave evidence - Voyager, "Rise"; TNG, "Skin of Evil", few other episodes.

Because-you say so.

And beacouse-we-see-lot-of-things-protected-by-forcefields.

No. Supposed. Because we don't see firepower like that. Maybe you do. In that case, I suggest taking off your 'magnify Trek firepower by orders of magnitude just because' glasses.

Yeah, right. And you think that Saxton is right? I just analyzed actual episodes, and if you don't like that...

Err-no. Wars-200GT MTL on a Clone Wars era troop transport. TT and up firepower for real warships. The EU doesn't go away just because you want it to. But again, if you want to go back to downscaling from the Death Star 1, I'm game

Riight. You want to tel me tha unarmed troop transport is equipped with guns 100 000 times stronger than main guns of ISD as seen in G canon? Wanker.

As evidenced by nothing whatsoever. Show me the calculations.

I used Wong's calculator. And actual episode.

As evidenced by nothing whatsoever. General Order 24 might have been a bluff to begin with and requires nothing beyond KT level firepower even if it is the real thing.

Except that GO24 was not bluff and is canon, unlike BDZ.

[Serafina]

Just more bog-standard Trektard stupidity. Move along, nothing special to see here.

ultradense hulls

Don't make me laugh.

Sorry, moron, it's right there in the canon? You don't like it? Well, that's just bad luck for you.

Ah, yes, except that even if SW ships can match ST firepower, ST ships totally stomp SW when it comes to issue of range.

As per you saying so. Yet we know that they have far greater engagement ranges than ST right from G-canon, and range is not going to be of much use when you are outnumbered 100:1. Because, you know, battles are not fought about empty regions of space.
Again - if you had a working brainstem, you would know why ST would get slaughtered: The empire can concentrate all it's troops on single attacks, because their FTL-speed is orders of magnitudes faster. If they want to, they can just jump to a planet with a thousand ships, drop out of hyperspace in orbit and just BDZ the damn thing. ST on the other hand is so slow that they will need decades or even centuries to reach any imperial planet.

...and as evidenced by my blog and several ST episodes.

Except that your blog is bullcrap, full of lies and false assumptions.

And beacouse-we-see-lot-of-things-protected-by-forcefields.

Yet we never see forcefields around doors. And besides, weren't you saying that phasers are super-powerful against forcefields? They wouldn't do much good then, eh?

Yeah, right. And you think that Saxton is right? I just analyzed actual episodes, and if you don't like that...

Saxon is so right that he got published in an official, canon SW-publication. That doesn't really hold up against a crappy blog full of errors everyone with internet access can spot.

Riight. You want to tel me tha unarmed troop transport is equipped with guns 100 000 times stronger than main guns of ISD as seen in G canon? Wanker.

Who the fuck said that an Acclamator is unarmed? Oh, right, just you

Except that GO24 was not bluff and is canon, unlike BDZ.

Except that we SEE BDZs happening. We never see GO24 being carried out.


So, as i said - nothing special. Picard claims that his blog is the end-all of ST/SW-calculations, which can even overrule canon - despite the blatant errors/lies in it. He then outright lies about canon (SW-hulls, armament of the Acclamator) and demonstrates blatant ignorance about basic strategy.

[Picard]

Sorry, moron, it's right there in the canon? You don't like it? Well, that's just bad luck for you.

Your dismissal of everything you don't like (including fact that G canon overrides any and all EU wank) does not mean it's not true.

Yet we know that they have far greater engagement ranges than ST right from G-canon

5 000 kilometers is now more than 225 000 kilometers? How so?

Except that your blog is bullcrap, full of lies and false assumptions.

Riiight. Can you show some of these?

Saxon is so right that he got published in an official, canon SW-publication. That doesn't really hold up against a crappy blog full of errors everyone with internet access can spot.

Official =/= canon. And I bet Lucas never saw Saxton's work, let alone acknowledged it as canon.

Who the fuck said that an Acclamator is unarmed? Oh, right, just you

Plus any and every single scene from movies where Acclamators appear.

Except that we SEE BDZs happening. We never see GO24 being carried out.

Yes, we see sub-kiloton to kiloton range shots being fired by ISD on... wait. We do have indirect evidence ...and estimation derived from it.

Heavy turbolasers as based on BDZ are 24 megatons to 1.4 gigatons