yield of enterprise's "Phase Cannon"

[Kamakazie Sith]

Reed : "Photonic torpedoes. Their range is over fifty times greater than our conventional torpedoes. And they have a variable yield. They can knock the comm array off a shuttle pod without
scratching the hull, or they can put a three kilometre crater into an asteroid."

Are there any threads that have discussed torpedo yield? I searched for one but it came up with hundreds of other threads that were not what I am looking for.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Yes. The Lysians had under 10 Kilojoule shielding.

Fear .50 calibre rounds!


Stupid writers.

Hehe, yes. Say what you will about Photon Torp yields, it isnt suprising that a single torp coulda killed their Command Centre. Methinks the Lysians woulda had better protection with old fashioned armour plating.

LOL

"Fear our technology we possess shields!!! (Plugs energizer AA battery into port) Shields are now up and operating at max power!"

[Sea Skimmer]

Sound like the "tin can" battlecruisers the British Navy had prior to WW2...

British WW1 battlecruisers blew up because of poor ammo handling procedures not light protection.

[Ender]

Reed : "Photonic torpedoes. Their range is over fifty times greater than our conventional torpedoes. And they have a variable yield. They can knock the comm array off a shuttle pod without
scratching the hull, or they can put a three kilometre crater into an asteroid."

Are there any threads that have discussed torpedo yield? I searched for one but it came up with hundreds of other threads that were not what I am looking for.

I did some. Since the explosion would be in a vacuum, the crater would come from a buried explosive, as surface detonation would just result in melting and whatnot.

TO blow a 3000 meter crater takes ~205 KT

[greenmm]

Sound like the "tin can" battlecruisers the British Navy had prior to WW2...

British WW1 battlecruisers blew up because of poor ammo handling procedures not light protection.

They were described as not having enough protection against other battlecruisers, let alone battleships. Most of the WW1 battlecruisers were lucky to have a 4 to 9 inch armor belt, 4 to 6 on most, comparable to the much smaller heavy cruisers. These, of course, were the better ones: the 2 Lions, 3 Indefatigables, 3 Invincibles, Queen Mary, Tiger, Renown, and Repulse (the last 2 surviving until WW2).

The "tinclads", though, were even worse: the 2 Courageouses and the Furious (which was converted to a carrier). Their armor protection was equivalent to a light cruiser (1 to 3 inches on the main belt, other sections having less), and armed with 15" main guns.

They could have had the best design for their ammunition storage areas, the best fire suppression and fighting systems, and the best watertight comparment design ever seen... but their armor protection was so ridiculously light as to make them a liability in combat. Considering that most light cruisers (which their armor was comparable to) only mounted 6" guns, and heavy cruisers tended to the 8" region, any light or medium cruiser would have the firepower to batter through the "tinclad" armor, let alone an enemy battlecruiser armed with 12" or heavier cannons.

Hence the analogy I used, comparing those ships to the "tinclads"...

[His Divine Shadow]

Even Worse, they had a multi megajoule weapon on their ship, but KJ shields on their command centre...

More likely the shields where only there for deflecting radiation and such, their main protection was probably from armor.

[Chardok]

Speaking of shields, I've noticed alot of times on enterprise where Captain archer Tells the tac officer to "Polarize the hull plating" What does this infer? Polarization...

[greenmm]

Speaking of shields, I've noticed alot of times on enterprise where Captain archer Tells the tac officer to "Polarize the hull plating" What does this infer? Polarization...

I guess they thought it would sound lower-tech than having shield technology.

Of course, the question becomes, what do they mean by polarization? I doubt they're talking about the equivalent of polarized sunglasses, since you can't see through the hull. They must be talking about generating an electromagnetic field in the outer hull to reduce the amount of damage a particular attack does.

My question, then, is: how does this work against attacks which aren't based on charged particles? I can see ion beams and even particle beams being affected, but what about lasers? Or how about large nonmagnetic objects (like, say, rocks) hitting the hull? Or even "photonic" or even standard M/AM torpedoes? I mean, even a nuke fireball would probably be little affected by charged hull plating.

Or even worse... since you would only repel like charges, what happens when someone fires a weapon at you that has the opposite charge of your hull plating? Do near misses become on-target shots? Does the hull plating focus the attack to make it even more damaging?

[Howedar]

Even Worse, they had a multi megajoule weapon on their ship, but KJ shields on their command centre...

More likely the shields where only there for deflecting radiation and such, their main protection was probably from armor.

Already thought of that. Those shields would have been overwhelmed by sunlight.

[Sir Sirius]

Even Worse, they had a multi megajoule weapon on their ship, but KJ shields on their command centre...

More likely the shields where only there for deflecting radiation and such, their main protection was probably from armor.

Already thought of that. Those shields would have been overwhelmed by sunlight.

Weren't the shields transparent?

[Enigma]

Incidentally, in last night's ENT, there was a part when Reed had a phase pistol and he was calling out settings to figure something with it out. They were increasing the power, but he was calling it out in joules, not watts. He started "low" with less than 10MJ's, and worked his way up to 11MJ's before whatever the hell he was waiting for happened. Every time he increased the energy, the beam visibly changed, increasing in both width and intensity. From this incident, we can deduce two things:<snip>

That was in that Borg ep. when Reed tried to see if he could penetrate the drone's armour.