Cloaked Phaser mines

[Kitsune]

A little addition: Some were not bad as far as range such as the SM-2ER based on the Leahy class cruisers with a range of around 80 miles in some sources but the sweep of the SPS-48 is only every few seconds which means the target could definately change position and the fire control is expected to keep the exact position of its target because based on data from the SPS-48 (Had to change that), it will always miss.

[Patrick Degan]

Ah, You probably thought you got rid of me......or maybe hoped

Not at all. I make allowances for slow learners.

Do you even understand the concept of heat transfer mechanics? Without an active heating system it makes no fucking difference whether the emitter is inside or outside the platform.

Did you even actually read what I had wrote. What I wrote was that it would reduce the power require to maintain a specific temperature. I did not say that no power would be required. Even if it was required, I doubt that power requirements would be all that high for heating a few systems.

I did read what you wrote, and it's clear that you still do not understand the physical concept involved. Having anything inside the platform will not protect it. Heat bleeds out of any body in space because of the extreme temperature gradient between the body and the outside environment. This is why spacecraft must maintain heating systems on a constant basis, elsewise the inside would cool by radiative transfer until the internal temperature matched the external temperature. First Law of Thermodynamics. This is in fact what began to happen to the Enterprise when her systems —including life support— were shut down by the T'kon defence system in "The Last Outpost".

I see you're going to continue indulging your bullshit definition-change game to try to skip around the difference between a mine and a weapon platform. And I will just have to keep dragging you back to point.

No, it is important to understand the technical definition of a mine, what it is and what it is not. The definition satets nothing about a specific role for a mine. To be honest, it does not really matter because we are discussing properties not splitting hairs but a splitting hair argumant has been being used against the concepts.

No, it's important to understand what is and what isn't a mine. That is not hairsplitting, that is clarity.

I looked up what kind of event happened at Chin'toka. I have not seen the episode. It appears to be the episode where the energy plaforms ripped the hell out of a Federation fleet. My understanding is that the weapon platforms were taken out by destroying the power generators.

By using a deflector dish application to "tag" the power asteroid with a false warp signature. Or in other words, spoofing. And it's a poor defence system which can be rendered ineffective in a stroke by attacking a single point of failure.

A comparison between fire control and comunication systems is not valid. Fire control systems are normally much higher powered, more focused, and not trying to cover the range that subspace communication which are expected.

They are allied systems, based upon signal spectrum, and the underlying physics are the same. The comparison is quite valid —particularly as interfering with communications in battle is an important tactical application as much as interfering with sensors or targeting.

Except a tight-beam system is useless for tracking a fast moving target at long ranges.

Umm, no, every fire control radar that I know of uses a tight beam emitter.

I think Mr. Phongn has pointed out your error already.

If you look at this picture of this Burke destroyer from my website:

Look infront of the mast, you will see what looks like a dish. That is one of the fire control transmitters for the SM-2 missiles. MKany gun systems have a similar system. Fire control systems do not have problems with the use of tight beams at long range due to teh target having less movement.

I believe Mr. Phongn has already pointed out your error.

Except there is no cover in open space. False Analogy fallacy.

I will try to explain it again and will proibably get bitten for my trouble. We do not have cloaking devices in reality so the bush is standing in for the cloaking device effectively hiding the machinegunner. That is, after all, the purpose. The caltrops, like the mines have no forms of concealment and there are so many that it is hard to miss them where you might not see one or two.

It is still a false analogy and for reasons which should be all too obvious.

Dumn mines are the easiest to trick. They don't know the diffeernce between a large rock and a starship. Whenever something hits it, assuming a contact mine, it will detonate.. An intelligent mine at least tries and determine if the target is a starship not a mine. It may fail and I expect failures but it will at least reduce the numbers.

A large rock will not have the same heat signature, mass profile, EM signature, or in this case a subspace field signature as a starship. Nor will it leave an ion trail in its wake. Any of which can be picked up by simple passive sensors. And as mines can be produced cheaply, deployed in large numbers, and are essentially expendible, the loss of a few to the wrong types of objects is not a huge problem.

Cloaking countermeasures already exist, a cloak cannot mask a body's mass or its radiant heat, a cloak by itself is insufficent to mask emissions, and the thing has to decloak before it can fire —which exposes it as a target.

Claoking Devices in Trek, from everything ever shown, work different than modern cloaking technology. the appearance is that the energy is sealed inside...

Explain how Data became aware of a cloaked Romulan Warbird following the Enterprise to Beta Stromgren in the episode "Tin Man" then.

I do agree that it would have to decloak to fire but the response time of the starship needs to be factored in. Kind of like the Bird of Prey in the "Search for Spock" firing before the bridge crew could get ready to fire.

Looks like you need to watch the movie again. Sulu actually got the first shots off because he had spotted the cloaking distortion field around Kruge's BOP, and scored a direct hit. The only reason the Enterprise was crippled was because the autosystems controlling shields and phasers malfunctioned.

What it shows is that there is to much volume to cover without mines without some form of propulsion.

These issues have already been dealt with in another discussion regarding the tachyon detection grid employed against the Romulans in "Redemption (2)". For whatever reason, fleet combat in ST does not involve manoeuvring outside of tight corridors of spatial volume, which is how these choke-point strategies are feasible in the first place.

How drearily predictable of you. I expected you'd leap for the "only stable wormhole" dodge —and that was not what I was talking about. The Bajoran wormhole, unique as it may be, was yet another choke-point —which are not unique in the ST universe.

I have talked to a variety of people trying to be fair to your argument. The vast majority of them have answered that there is nothing which can be considered Choke Points with the exception of the DS-9 wormhole and around planets. I am going with the majority rule unless you can state specific events and specific episodes.

The rule is "observed phenomena", not "majority opinion". I pointed out three such examples and desperately invoking the opinion of an unknown majority does not handwave those examples away no matter how much you dearly wish it did. "Majority opinion" —about the most feeble and pathetic attempt at a rebuttal as I've ever encountered.

Now lets have an end to your handwaving, shall we?

If there are no "Choke Points" it does not matter does it

The passage to the Mempha Sector seen in "Redemption (2)". The Bajoran terminus of the Wormhole in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Wolf 359 in "The Best Of Both Worlds (2)". The Second Battle of Bajor (the wall of Cardassian and Dominion warships) in the DSN episode "Sacrifice Of Angels". The Battle of Cardassia Prime (another wall of starships) in "What You Leave Behind". Examples of choke-points in Trek. DEAL WITH IT.

The remaining antimatter reacts with random debris, but thousands of tiny explosions or disintegrations of uncontained material radiating outward does not produce a huge blast —nor can they. The destructions of the Yamato and the Odyssey are indicative in this regard. As that of the Enterprise stardrive section in Generations.

Actually, you are right except the explosions should have still been more enegetic than those and it does not explain all of the explosions of ships. I will accept the explanation of screwed up special effects if you will though and assume this is not an argument one way or the other

Why should the blasts have been more energetic as material seperated from containment and involved progressively smaller amounts of material? There's nothing mysterious about matter/antimatter reactions —they follow perfectly predictable mechanics dependent upon amount of material and conditions. Invoking the "poor special effects" dodge does not cancel out the observed phenomenon, and if that's the best rebuttal you can manage, you have no argument.

No, you pulled numbers out of thin air. Otherwise, what was the basis of your estimations?

Dropping the arguement of the anti-matter carried on starship, I specifically still point out that we are still talking about more anti-matter than is most likely carried on every photon torpedo in the Federation.

Which has fuck-all to do with any discussion as to how much antimatter is manufactured for all applications.

There is a large energy loss when creating anti-matter and employing the antimatter you have in a cost effective way makes sense.

One hundred grams per warhead, which gives you a blast-yield of between 75KT and 2MT, depending on reaction efficency. On a weapon which requires nothing more than a simple proximity sensor and a power cell to keep the containment field running until the mine is triggered. Far more cost effective than a phaser platform requiring a reactor to power the phasers, the control computer, and a cloak.

For example, it sounds like the DS-9 manual suggest that there were around 2500 mines around the wormhole. With a propulsion system system, these can be used effectively otherwise they are not.

Or, they simply orbit the singularity which defines the wormhole and employ manoeuvring jets only as needed.

What the fuck does that have to do with anything?!

It is meant as an attention getter which it seems to have succeeded. basically like the fact that Nuclear Power makes no sense for Iran, sure you could build a station which is powered on anti-matter but it is not cost or resource efficient.

Are you insane? What the bloody fuck does ANY of this bullshit have to do with the consideration of the most feasible long-endurance power system for a space platform? Your attention-getter only wastes bandwidth on this thread. How you love to drag irrelevancies into this discussion.

That is a given, as much as the energy expenditure required to produce and refine any fuel. The point is that for all its difficulties, matter/antimatter offers one distinct —and overwhelming— advantage for space applications: greater energy density per unit of fuel mass, which translates into a significantly smaller onboard fuel storage with equal endurance.

And it is overriden in importance due to the higher availabilty of hydrogen and the cost to produce.

Wrong. The imperatives of independence from resupply for the longest period of time possible and onboard storage space efficency are what counts, not convenience. Especially for a military facility, which was what Terok Nor certainly was.

A mine which expends its own warhead material to fuel its onboard active systems? You can't even comprehend how ludicrous that concept is, can you? And station-keeping does not require continuous thrust over a long period —only a very occasional burst from the thrusters is actually needed.

which of course also means that the consuption of anti-matter would be negligable so it would not really matter.

As it reduces the effectiveness of the warhead over time, it most certainly does matter.

What numbers? You provide none.

I actually agree with you on the number of ships in the Federation but the number of torpedoes is pretty hard and I overscaled the numbers as a safety measure.

Excuse me, but where does it indicate that each and every Federation ship carries the same torpedo load? And why do you keep ignoring the amount of antimatter fuel which the ships are supplied with and where do you derive figures for those amounts? That is the standard for gauging the Federation's antimatter production, not the number of torpedoes carried in the fleet and how much antimatter is supplied for those.

You've produced a one-shot weapon which requires a not-compact power system which must maintain a cloak 24/7 for however long it is deployed and which does not give off neutrino emissions (beware of jargonese), will be expending energy simply to remain on-station, and will be launching at very low sublight velocities against fast-moving distant targets —which will certainly pick up torpedo launches on sensors and have more than enough time to raise shields (assuming they aren't already up) or be able to shoot them down.

They can be put into a stable orbit which negates the need to burn fuel to hold an orbit although they would have burn fuel to change the orientation before firing. A good assumption would have to be that cloaking devices specifically hide neutrino emissions otherwise cloaking devices would be useless.

Now whose changing his arguments? Earlier in this thread, you argued for propelled platforms to cover the spatial distances involved, and that based on the assumption of a smaller number of phaser platforms as compared to numbers of mines. And your assumption is baseless, it has been repeatedly shown that a cloaking field on its own is insufficent to mask emissions, and some energy emissions cannot be masked no matter what methods are employed (see "Tin Man").

Raising shields depends on a crews ability to respond quickly although my assumption would be that shields would already be up when you are attacking a planet. That is why the large number of torpedoes being fired as a volley. The assumption is using the DS-9 manual is that 20 torpedoes are sufficient to kill a starship.

Your phaser platforms now have photorp launchers as well? That wasn't what you've been arguing all along and you're now going to make your idea even more complicated —and thereby Move the Goalposts— to try to salvage your increasingly rickety argument? And of course, you're assuming Perfect Targeting as well for those photorp volleys?

You're just digging yourself in ever deeper.

Shooting them down, a Trekkie would argue that it is impossible because it has never happened in an episode.

See "The Price". TNG, third season.

Now, I wrote a trek fiction and one of the specific items I allowed was the shooting of torpedoes in that fiction blah blah blah blahblahblah....

Invoking your own fanfic as evidence?

Sometimes, the comedy just writes itself, doesn't it?

Also, according to most sources, torpdoes even launched from a stationary platfoirm still travel at high sublight.

But as not a single episode or movie has actually depicted this, those sources are valueless as evidence.

The very reason matter/antimatter is employed in warheads is because it requires far less material to produce an equivalent blast from any conventional nuke. Just what part of the "greater energy density per unit of fuel mass" equation don't you understand?

My question is how effective anti-matter really is by Trek. The force in some episodes might suggest that a nuke would be just as effective. They should be pretty effective but I wonder if in financial or safety terms, they are worth it.

That is not the point. The point is how little matter/antimatter material is required to produce the same blast.

Which is why nobody relies on one weapon system.

Which means that if I was defensing a moderately improtant planet, I would likely defend it with aroiund 200 photon torp platforms / mines (with 6 torps each), 40 energy weapon platfoms, and probably 8 to 12 squadrons of fighters.

Moving the Goalposts. You don't even see how you've lost track of the very point you started out attempting to defend when this farce began by doing so.

[phongn]

First, you have the wrong mount. It is a 3 inch mount from the 1950s up through the early 1970s. The USS Charleston had the mounts even in the late 1980s although teh fire control had been removed. The Rdsar system is from the 1950s and 1960s, not the 1940s. While probably primative by todays stanadars, by their standards they were tight beam.

Yes, but that fire control is still short-ranged. Patrick originally wrote that tight-beam (whether conical or pencil) is useless for long-range tracking, so I'm not sure how this point is relevant (other than for the correction).

The concept is that the spy-1 gets a basic target tracking and then a tight beam gets the exact position before firing, when the beam is on target, the gun fires. The exact position is determined by the fire control radar, they general position is determined by the search radar. The SPY-1 actually is far more capable than previous air serch systems like the SPS-48 and early systems which would sweep the area and then the emmitter would guide the ordnance onto target and while extremely short ranged for today's standards , it was extremely long ranged for their standards.

So you're saying that SPY-1 finds the target and passes information onto the tight-beam SPG-62 for terminal guidance. That's what I've been saying this entire time. Secondly, you're saying the SPS-48 looks around for incoming SAMs and then used the SPG-55 to terminal guidance. I know that. The SPS-49 needs the SPG-55 as well.

As for range, you may notice that the air-search radar generally has greater range than the fire-control radars. Low-frequency search radars always have greater range than high-frequency fire-control radars.

The point is that the tight-beam radars are not capable of long-range tracking: they need some sort of search radar. A tight-beam tracking radar cannot adequately perform this function.

[Kitsune]

So you're saying that SPY-1 finds the target and passes information onto the tight-beam SPG-62 for terminal guidance. That's what I've been saying this entire time. Secondly, you're saying the SPS-48 looks around for incoming SAMs and then used the SPG-55 to terminal guidance. I know that. The SPS-49 needs the SPG-55 as well.

As for range, you may notice that the air-search radar generally has greater range than the fire-control radars. Low-frequency search radars always have greater range than high-frequency fire-control radars.

The point is that the tight-beam radars are not capable of long-range tracking: they need some sort of search radar. A tight-beam tracking radar cannot adequately perform this function.

To be honest, it really does not matter because according to Wong's Website, phasers only have ranges of arount 10 km or less. At that point, visual fire control is only needed and it is stick throwing range for modern radar fire control. That also gives great support for photon torpedoes being excellent weapons because at their suposed speeds speeds, 10 km of distance for the ship's fire control makes them pretty much unhittable. Assuming 25% of the speed of light, we are talking about only .00013 of a second to pass through the volume.

As well, star trek really gives us very little clue on how the sensor systems work. We don't know what systems are passive or active for the most part. I remember several episodes where they talk about scanning a target or being scanned but they seem to be talking about a system which seems to be trying to get deteealed info, not just where the target is. Not like some non startrek writers who talk about having Lidar hits on them.

[Kitsune]

And the claymore can be used in an offensive attack, it is commonly used to start ambushes. But that is really the only offensive use I can think of off the top of my head.

In a military website discussion, they classified a submine as little more than a mobile mine in ww2. The example is the large number of Japanese ships which were destroyed by American Mines and the mines were specifically meant to sink submarines.

Kitsune the "cloaked phaser mine" is a bad idea, it would be much better to just use the weapons platforms that the Dominion had in the Chintoka system and fix the problem of the remote power source. Plus you would want to back up the weapons platforms with a small fleet.

Trek has a lack of hard numbers which do not indicate where the actually effective numbers break down. The concept is similar between those platforms and my idea. The basic idea is that if you are within range of them, then they are within range of you.

[Kitsune]

I did read what you wrote, and it's clear that you still do not understand the physical concept involved. Having anything inside the platform will not protect it. Heat bleeds out of any body in space because of the extreme temperature gradient between the body and the outside environment. This is why spacecraft must maintain heating systems on a constant basis, elsewise the inside would cool by radiative transfer until the internal temperature matched the external temperature. First Law of Thermodynamics. This is in fact what began to happen to the Enterprise when her systems —including life support— were shut down by the T'kon defence system in "The Last Outpost".

I went ahead and did a little bit of research,checking with an engineer I see periodically.
What I asked him is if a heating element inside of a baox which is itself a vacumm and outside the box is also a vacumm. I compared it to a heating element outside of a box and simply asked him if the power requirment to keep the heating element inside of the box would be less. Her replied to me "Yes, the object is still insulated."

No, it's important to understand what is and what isn't a mine. That is not hairsplitting, that is clarity.

And one of the very specific points is that being a mine does not specifically designate a role by the webster's definition. Therfore all your arguments that a mine is designed for defense are not correct.

By using a deflector dish application to "tag" the power asteroid with a false warp signature. Or in other words, spoofing. And it's a poor defence system which can be rendered ineffective in a stroke by attacking a single point of failure.

Very good, it is a poor point that a defense system can be defeated by destroying a single point and it is proof that the military geniuses of startrek are Stupid. The Navy ship I was on had a couple of three inch mounts, they had an interlock which prevented teh guns from being shot pointed at the ship itself. It would be really simple to simply put a line of code which states 'Do not shoot at this point' but obviously they are too stupid to think of that.

The point is that the Platform ideas which I have been discussing do not rely on any form of external power and that the systems are linked by a computer to make sure that every single one of them does not target the same target. They are also designed to attempt to evaluate if a target is really a target or a subspace echo of some sort.

They are allied systems, based upon signal spectrum, and the underlying physics are the same. The comparison is quite valid particularly as interfering with communications in battle is an important tactical application as much as interfering with sensors or targeting.

What Physics, in Star Trek, the systems can work completely differently in two different episodes. I doubt we can agree but I will try anyway. First, when someone is putting out some form of Jamming, you know something is wrong. In a military mine, wrong usually means you are going to be attacked. Also, modern sensors (such as radar) can usually burn through any form of jamming at short range and a ship jamming is also preventing their own sensor systems from working properly. They can use one frequency which they do not jamm but the potenial weakness is that the enemy can use the same frequency. As well, jamming can often be traced staright back to the source. A simple long range tactic would be to fire a small number of missiles at the jamming sources and then following them with a second larger volley of missiles. If the jammer sources are destroyed by the first volley of missiles, the assumption is that they were external jamming systems and will home in on remianing targets otherwise the guidance assumes that the jaming systems are the ships and target them. The platforms may communicate by subspace but they would have an unjammable communcation system in the form of wisker lasers. I don't care if they consider it primative.

I think Mr. Phongn has pointed out your error already.

Dull as in the point that we are talking about different things. Besides, fire control is usually not long ranged compared to search systems. They don't have to be. Even if we are talking non-cannon numbers for range, it is still virtually rock throwing range. Subspace sensors are suppose to have range in light years, maybe a maximum of 300,000 light years for fire control? Subspace systems, which appear to be passive, get a generally tracking and then fire control systems get a full target.

It is still a false analogy and for reasons which should be all too obvious.

Please, enlighten me. Let us throw this into a real world situation. I am assuming you are at least talking about thousands of mines. The target would likely be of a similar size to harpoon missiles being face on, we can detect those now (Harpoon Missiles are also sea skimmers which means they cannot be detected until the go over the radar horizon and can get caught in surface clutter - ie: waves which the mine does not have as an advantage) Now, there is no clutter or line of site to work with so the mines can be picked up at about half normal range and even if made from radar transparent materials, could likely be detected at 10 miles. Now, a missile at that range means that likely only the inner point defenses will be able to engage it but the mines do not move which means they will be detected before the ship reaches the mine field. They are immobile and make easier targets for line of site weapons and a hole could simply be blown in them or a safe course could be plotted through them.

A large rock will not have the same heat signature, mass profile, EM signature, or in this case a subspace field signature as a starship. Nor will it leave an ion trail in its wake. Any of which can be picked up by simple passive sensors. And as mines can be produced cheaply, deployed in large numbers, and are essentially expendible, the loss of a few to the wrong types of objects is not a huge problem.

Hmm, this no longer sounds like a dumn mine. It seems to evaluate if the target is really a starship or not. I may disagree about the effctiveness of some of the sensor systems but that is not a big problem but weach system and the computer to evaluate the data, the cost goes up. Now, why don't you give the mines a small drive like the ones in the DS-9 Wormhole and give the ability to swarm a target. Then you can build less mines and they can cover more space. You can also give them a heavier warhead.

An intersting fact is that these more advanced mines still suffer from the trick that got the mines in the novel "Starfire: Crusade" although cost will be greater (Cost of a Tramp Freighter with an ECM Deception System).

Explain how Data became aware of a cloaked Romulan Warbird following the Enterprise to Beta Stromgren in the episode "Tin Man" then.

I did a bit of research on the episode and found a statement of "A few hours later, the sensors detect something odd, but it's a clear sign that they are being followed." I am specifically stating that I am not stating that Cloaked ships are undetectable but that they are harder to detect and a target which is not mobile is harder to detect than a mobile ship. My "Platforms" are still much smaller and output far less energy than a starship. Assuming, because I only have basic info on the episode and some dim recollection of the episode, that the ships were moving at warp speed, there is no way the signature could be thermal because the ship would be outrunning its own heat signature.

Looks like you need to watch the movie again. Sulu actually got the first shots off because he had spotted the cloaking distortion field around Kruge's BOP, and scored a direct hit. The only reason the Enterprise was crippled was because the autosystems controlling shields and phasers malfunctioned.

You are right...it has been a long time since I have seen the episode and your statement is correct. I had to look it up. I still stand by my statement that this is not a common situation. For example, if Riker had not tricked the Klingon captain, how much damage would the Bird of Prey have done before the Enterprise destroyed it?

These issues have already been dealt with in another discussion regarding the tachyon detection grid employed against the Romulans in "Redemption (2)". For whatever reason, fleet combat in ST does not involve manoeuvring outside of tight corridors of spatial volume, which is how these choke-point strategies are feasible in the first place.

I will agree that most fights in Star Trek appear to be at sublight speeds and if we go by model size, the ranges are incredibly close. So close in many cases that modern cannons have better ranges in many cases. The question is "What the hell" makes them decide to fight in these locations. Is there something special about these locations, there seems to be nothin which indicates this which seems to shoot down them being any more than this is the point where the fleets deciude to meet at. I did state earlier that they are idiots and more people have lost battles due to stupidity than won through Genius. This do not make choke points. Even if you knew the general location of the battle before it started, if it is one millionth of a lightyear dufferent than expected, you wasted your mines.

The rule is "observed phenomena", not "majority opinion". I pointed out three such examples and desperately invoking the opinion of an unknown majority does not handwave those examples away no matter how much you dearly wish it did. "Majority opinion" about the most feeble and pathetic attempt at a rebuttal as I've ever encountered.

You have observed situations where ships just seem to decide to fight in sublight. No explanation, no reasoning if they have to fight there, and you have only your own speculation. Speculation does not make a choke point. You don't want to accept my speulcation on the tachyon net so I do not accept your speculation.

The passage to the Mempha Sector seen in "Redemption (2)". The Bajoran terminus of the Wormhole in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Wolf 359 in "The Best Of Both Worlds (2)". The Second Battle of Bajor (the wall of Cardassian and Dominion warships) in the DSN episode "Sacrifice Of Angels". The Battle of Cardassia Prime (another wall of starships) in "What You Leave Behind". Examples of choke-points in Trek. DEAL WITH IT.

Deal with the fact that your are obsessed with Choke Points, something that does not exist except in your own imagination. All but the Wormhole can be shown to be only your speculation for why they chose those locations.

Why should the blasts have been more energetic as material seperated from containment and involved progressively smaller amounts of material? There's nothing mysterious about matter/antimatter reactions —they follow perfectly predictable mechanics dependent upon amount of material and conditions. Invoking the "poor special effects" dodge does not cancel out the observed phenomenon, and if that's the best rebuttal you can manage, you have no argument.

Ok, in your universe, they moved down the phaser banks for one episode down to the torpedo launchers and then moved them back. I guess that is not bad special effects.

If we are talking about about tons of anti-matter for a starship, the first explosions might be relatively small but it used a comparatively small amount of anti-matter. The explosion will push the anti-matter and matter around, eitehr you will get several huge explosion which will consume most for the antimatter or you will have little explosions for a long time.

Which has fuck-all to do with any discussion as to how much antimatter is manufactured for all applications.

Very simple, if we used nuclear mines and you wanted more nuclear material than every nuclear missile is our inventory to create mines, you will not get it especially to protect one location.

One hundred grams per warhead, which gives you a blast-yield of between 75KT and 2MT, depending on reaction efficency. On a weapon which requires nothing more than a simple proximity sensor and a power cell to keep the containment field running until the mine is triggered. Far more cost effective than a phaser platform requiring a reactor to power the phasers, the control computer, and a cloak.

You did not say "Simple Proximity Sensor" above:
I read heat sensors, mass sensors, Electromagnetic sensors, subspace field sensors, and an ion sensor. Does not sound quite so simple. As well, let us assume by some incredible odds, the ship actually hits your mine. It will do nothing based ona ship being able to take multiple photon hits which are assumed to carry a kg of anti-matter and an assumed blast explosion of from 32 to 7 mega-tons. By that, assuming 20 torpedoes to destroy one ship, we are talking about 320 mines to have the same effect using the high numbers for each. Using the 24 meatons, you still get 240 mines for the same effect. Phaser, I don't know how to compare by the top platforms, you are talking about 3 1/3 platforms and there is no question of them at least having the theoretical idea of being able to hit. You are talking about a ration of 72 mines for each torpedo platform.

Or, they simply orbit the singularity which defines the wormhole and employ manoeuvring jets only as needed.

It says they swarm, therefore they do much more than course corrections

Are you insane? What the bloody fuck does ANY of this bullshit have to do with the consideration of the most feasible long-endurance power system for a space platform? Your attention-getter only wastes bandwidth on this thread. How you love to drag irrelevancies into this discussion.

Seriously, take a chill pill. Yes, you may not seem my anology and it may waste bandwidth but the amount of bandwith is small enough that it really does not matter and your own reply to it wastes bandwidth.

Wrong. The imperatives of independence from resupply for the longest period of time possible and onboard storage space efficency are what counts, not convenience. Especially for a military facility, which was what Terok Nor certainly was.

I don't agree, the writers of the DS-9 Manual don't agre, and Wong does not agree. Consider that the US Navy presently considers only Submarines and Carriers worth the cost of nuclear power. Most Navy ships are gas turbine and the fuel is convenient and cheaper than nuclear power. With Fusion, we are talking about at least many of months of fuel. Before that time, the station would either be destroyed or captured before running out of fuel.

As it reduces the effectiveness of the warhead over time, it most certainly does matter.

<Shrugs>Not worried about it. Don't nessearrily want a huge mine field around my planet for years.

Excuse me, but where does it indicate that each and every Federation ship carries the same torpedo load? And why do you keep ignoring the amount of antimatter fuel which the ships are supplied with and where do you derive figures for those amounts? That is the standard for gauging the Federation's antimatter production, not the number of torpedoes carried in the fleet and how much antimatter is supplied for those.

Your are right, I have no clue how many torpedoes each ship has. Now, what I did was called overdoing the Math. Sources give ships numbers of Torpedoes of around 250 for the Galaxy and maybe about a 100 for an Intrepid. I increased the galaxy class by double to 500. I then overdid the number of ships, I think there may be 2000 at most capital ships but some want to increase that numbber but I doubt many would go over 10,000 capital ships. Therfore, if anything, the number of torpedoes carried in the fleet should be much smaller than the number of 5,000,000 torpedoes.

Now whose changing his arguments? Earlier in this thread, you argued for propelled platforms to cover the spatial distances involved, and that based on the assumption of a smaller number of phaser platforms as compared to numbers of mines. And your assumption is baseless, it has been repeatedly shown that a cloaking field on its own is insufficent to mask emissions, and some energy emissions cannot be masked no matter what methods are employed (see "Tin Man").

Because of the range of beam or missile weapons, you do not need thrusters to make fast movements. A swarm style weapon, like those at DS-9, need a good thruster. Phaser and Photon Torpedo platforms can reach out and touch someone without them.

I agree with you on a full sized starship but a platform is going to be a small fraction of the size and a small fraction of the emissions meaning a reduced chance of detection.

Your phaser platforms now have photorp launchers as well? That wasn't what you've been arguing all along and you're now going to make your idea even more complicated —and thereby Move the Goalposts— to try to salvage your increasingly rickety argument? And of course, you're assuming Perfect Targeting as well for those photorp volleys?

You're just digging yourself in ever deeper.

You never give up trying to be insulting. The idea is for me to get ideas, pathways that may get opened up may not be the pathways you like and/or approve of. Thats tough. My idea now is that generally, a box launcher for photon torpedoes would be cheaper and more effective than phasers. The box launcher for missiles has been used in other places and it is generally a good idea. It is not as if I can change the title to "Cloaked Photon Torpedo Platforms" or my preferred term "Pepperbox"

See "The Price". TNG, third season.

Do you mind giving the exact events?
I had a long discussion on SD.net on this very subject and while people suggsted that it certainly sounds like ships can hit targets that small, it has never actually happned outside of a novel that they shot down them. The suggestion is taht they could not be destroyed by a phaser.

Invoking your own fanfic as evidence?
Sometimes, the comedy just writes itself, doesn't it?

Yes, I invoked for the reason that stated that in general I support the idea that photon torpedos can be shot down, otherwise you could have replied "Well, you did it in your fanfic!" and I would have had no defense. It is not evidence at all, it is an explanation of the possibilities.

But as not a single episode or movie has actually depicted this, those sources are valueless as evidence.

Ok, them why haven't they shot down torpedoes being fired at them on a constant basis? They should be if they are easy targets.

That is not the point. The point is how little matter/antimatter material is required to produce the same blast.

Finances and economics are always important

Moving the Goalposts. You don't even see how you've lost track of the very point you started out attempting to defend when this farce began by doing so.

I never did state that there is no possibilities of fighters, other types of weapon systems,or other changes. The things I have stated from the beginning is that phaser platforms could be effective, which I still do, and that stationary mines would not be effective. Even the swarm style mines in DS-9 could be effective but long range platforms are more effective. I still had the torp platforms backed up with phaser platforms because they can be used more than once without reloading.

Well, I do need to specific something. i am talking about 8 to 12 squadrons of 6 fighters each, not 12 fighters each which makes a number from 48 to 72.

[Patrick Degan]

I did read what you wrote, and it's clear that you still do not understand the physical concept involved. Having anything inside the platform will not protect it. Heat bleeds out of any body in space because of the extreme temperature gradient between the body and the outside environment. This is why spacecraft must maintain heating systems on a constant basis, elsewise the inside would cool by radiative transfer until the internal temperature matched the external temperature. First Law of Thermodynamics. This is in fact what began to happen to the Enterprise when her systems —including life support— were shut down by the T'kon defence system in "The Last Outpost".

I went ahead and did a little bit of research,checking with an engineer I see periodically. What I asked him is if a heating element inside of a baox which is itself a vacumm and outside the box is also a vacumm. I compared it to a heating element outside of a box and simply asked him if the power requirment to keep the heating element inside of the box would be less. Her replied to me "Yes, the object is still insulated."

Then obviously you didn't outline the situation fully to your alledged engineer friend. The problem is vacuum plus near- or absolute zero temperatures outside the box. Try asking astronaut Jim Lovell about that one, since he and his crewmates faced the problem of their spacecraft losing its internal heat when they couldn't keep the heating systems aboard the Odyssey powered up for the three days Apollo 13 was making its way back to Earth after the accident, which was why they had to pile into the Aquarius.

Nice Appeal to Authority fallacy, BTW.

No, it's important to understand what is and what isn't a mine. That is not hairsplitting, that is clarity.

And one of the very specific points is that being a mine does not specifically designate a role by the webster's definition. Therfore all your arguments that a mine is designed for defense are not correct.

In a word, bullshit. It is you who is trying to play these absurd definition-change games to get around what words actually fucking mean, and I think we've had enough of that.

By using a deflector dish application to "tag" the power asteroid with a false warp signature. Or in other words, spoofing. And it's a poor defence system which can be rendered ineffective in a stroke by attacking a single point of failure.

Very good, it is a poor point that a defense system can be defeated by destroying a single point and it is proof that the military geniuses of startrek are Stupid. The Navy ship I was on had a couple of three inch mounts, they had an interlock which prevented teh guns from being shot pointed at the ship itself. It would be really simple to simply put a line of code which states 'Do not shoot at this point' but obviously they are too stupid to think of that.

Nice, but none of this balloon-juice you're spewing has any relevance to the discussion at hand.

The point is that the Platform ideas which I have been discussing do not rely on any form of external power and that the systems are linked by a computer to make sure that every single one of them does not target the same target. They are also designed to attempt to evaluate if a target is really a target or a subspace echo of some sort.

The high-tech version of the Maginot Line, and one which has wandered so far afield from the definition of a mine that it may as well be called something else.

They are allied systems, based upon signal spectrum, and the underlying physics are the same. The comparison is quite valid particularly as interfering with communications in battle is an important tactical application as much as interfering with sensors or targeting.

What Physics, in Star Trek, the systems can work completely differently in two different episodes. I doubt we can agree but I will try anyway. First, when someone is putting out some form of Jamming, you know something is wrong. In a military mine, wrong usually means you are going to be attacked. Also, modern sensors (such as radar) can usually burn through any form of jamming at short range and a ship jamming is also preventing their own sensor systems from working properly. They can use one frequency which they do not jamm but the potenial weakness is that the enemy can use the same frequency. As well, jamming can often be traced staright back to the source. A simple long range tactic would be to fire a small number of missiles at the jamming sources and then following them with a second larger volley of missiles. If the jammer sources are destroyed by the first volley of missiles, the assumption is that they were external jamming systems and will home in on remianing targets otherwise the guidance assumes that the jaming systems are the ships and target them. The platforms may communicate by subspace but they would have an unjammable communcation system in the form of wisker lasers. I don't care if they consider it primative.

Yes we all know how jamming works, thank you. Now how about actually answering the fucking point instead of trying to impress us by regurgitating an encyclopaedia? You tried claiming that ST never showed ECM operations when it clearly has done.

Besides, fire control is usually not long ranged compared to search systems. They don't have to be. Even if we are talking non-cannon numbers for range, it is still virtually rock throwing range. Subspace sensors are suppose to have range in light years, maybe a maximum of 300,000 light years for fire control? Subspace systems, which appear to be passive, get a generally tracking and then fire control systems get a full target.

Except that was not the point either Phongn or myself were actually discussing. So again, you can cease your lecturing over the obvious.

Let us throw this into a real world situation. I am assuming you are at least talking about thousands of mines. The target would likely be of a similar size to harpoon missiles being face on, we can detect those now blah blah blah blahblahblahblahblahblah...

How you love dragging irrelervancies into this discussion. Only you can think a cruise missile and a space mine are even remotely comparable objects to one another, while not considering that the latter will not be under powered flight, or pumping out a radar signal, and is likely to be coated with materials formulated to absorb or scatter scanning waves.

A large rock will not have the same heat signature, mass profile, EM signature, or in this case a subspace field signature as a starship. Nor will it leave an ion trail in its wake. Any of which can be picked up by simple passive sensors. And as mines can be produced cheaply, deployed in large numbers, and are essentially expendible, the loss of a few to the wrong types of objects is not a huge problem.

Hmm, this no longer sounds like a dumn mine. It seems to evaluate if the target is really a starship or not.

It does no such fucking thing! It no more "evaluates" its target any more than a simple magnet "evaluates" whether the object before it is metal, wood, plastic, or ceramic.

I may disagree about the effctiveness of some of the sensor systems but that is not a big problem but each system and the computer to evaluate the data, the cost goes up.

A simple sensor keyed to react in the presence of a subspace field, or EM field, or mass distortion. This does not require a computer, just a simple cybernetic relay mechanism.

Now, why don't you give the mines a small drive like the ones in the DS-9 Wormhole and give the ability to swarm a target. Then you can build less mines and they can cover more space. You can also give them a heavier warhead.

Because its cheaper to use many small, excpendible mines than a few complex, propelled ones. And the heavier the warhead, the more fuel is required to drive it. Really, you just can't comprehend the concept of a simple device for a simple job, can you?

An intersting fact is that these more advanced mines still suffer from the trick that got the mines in the novel "Starfire: Crusade" although cost will be greater (Cost of a Tramp Freighter with an ECM Deception System).

Which has nothing to do with anything I'm talking about.

Explain how Data became aware of a cloaked Romulan Warbird following the Enterprise to Beta Stromgren in the episode "Tin Man" then.

I did a bit of research on the episode and found a statement of "A few hours later, the sensors detect something odd, but it's a clear sign that they are being followed." I am specifically stating that I am not stating that Cloaked ships are undetectable but that they are harder to detect and a target which is not mobile is harder to detect than a mobile ship. My "Platforms" are still much smaller and output far less energy than a starship. Assuming, because I only have basic info on the episode and some dim recollection of the episode, that the ships were moving at warp speed, there is no way the signature could be thermal because the ship would be outrunning its own heat signature.

They will still be pumping out more energy than a small 2 metre mine, register a larger mass, and will not be outrunning their own IR signatures, or the signals pumped out by their sensors.

Looks like you need to watch the movie again. Sulu actually got the first shots off because he had spotted the cloaking distortion field around Kruge's BOP, and scored a direct hit. The only reason the Enterprise was crippled was because the autosystems controlling shields and phasers malfunctioned.

You are right...it has been a long time since I have seen the episode and your statement is correct. I had to look it up. I still stand by my statement that this is not a common situation. For example, if Riker had not tricked the Klingon captain, how much damage would the Bird of Prey have done before the Enterprise destroyed it?

None. Picard was already aware of the possibility of a cloaked Klingon ship in his vicinity and already had the Enterprise on battle alert.

These issues have already been dealt with in another discussion regarding the tachyon detection grid employed against the Romulans in "Redemption (2)". For whatever reason, fleet combat in ST does not involve manoeuvring outside of tight corridors of spatial volume, which is how these choke-point strategies are feasible in the first place.

I will agree that most fights in Star Trek appear to be at sublight speeds and if we go by model size, the ranges are incredibly close. So close in many cases that modern cannons have better ranges in many cases. The question is "What the hell" makes them decide to fight in these locations. Is there something special about these locations, there seems to be nothin which indicates this which seems to shoot down them being any more than this is the point where the fleets deciude to meet at. I did state earlier that they are idiots and more people have lost battles due to stupidity than won through Genius. This do not make choke points. Even if you knew the general location of the battle before it started, if it is one millionth of a lightyear dufferent than expected, you wasted your mines.

Trying to dance around the issue does not refute it, nor does the "they are idiots" excuse. It has been outlined repeatedly how the limitations to their machinery is the very likely cause of the above-named phenomena and is why choke-point interception strategies are feasible.

The rule is "observed phenomena", not "majority opinion". I pointed out three such examples and desperately invoking the opinion of an unknown majority does not handwave those examples away no matter how much you dearly wish it did. "Majority opinion" about the most feeble and pathetic attempt at a rebuttal as I've ever encountered.

You have observed situations where ships just seem to decide to fight in sublight. No explanation, no reasoning if they have to fight there, and you have only your own speculation. Speculation does not make a choke point. You don't want to accept my speulcation on the tachyon net so I do not accept your speculation.

It is not speculation, it is canon evidence. Your denial does not erase this, no matter how much you think it does.

The passage to the Mempha Sector seen in "Redemption (2)". The Bajoran terminus of the Wormhole in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Wolf 359 in "The Best Of Both Worlds (2)". The Second Battle of Bajor (the wall of Cardassian and Dominion warships) in the DSN episode "Sacrifice Of Angels". The Battle of Cardassia Prime (another wall of starships) in "What You Leave Behind". Examples of choke-points in Trek. DEAL WITH IT.

Deal with the fact that your are obsessed with Choke Points, something that does not exist except in your own imagination. All but the Wormhole can be shown to be only your speculation for why they chose those locations.

No, they exist in Star Trek whether you like the idea or not. Canon evidence.

Why should the blasts have been more energetic as material seperated from containment and involved progressively smaller amounts of material? There's nothing mysterious about matter/antimatter reactions —they follow perfectly predictable mechanics dependent upon amount of material and conditions. Invoking the "poor special effects" dodge does not cancel out the observed phenomenon, and if that's the best rebuttal you can manage, you have no argument.

Ok, in your universe, they moved down the phaser banks for one episode down to the torpedo launchers and then moved them back. I guess that is not bad special effects.

You think this little bullshit semantical game of yours lets you get around the evidence? Or that a wholly unrelated incident in one episode negates the examples named regarding starship destructions and M/AM reaction mechanics? I am well aware of "Darmok", and for whatever reason the producers depicted a phaser firing out of the photorp launcher area in that one episode, the observed phenomenon has to be evaluated with an "in-universe" explanation (e.g. an experimental weapon mounting), just as with all observed phenomena in any series/movie.

If we are talking about about tons of anti-matter for a starship, the first explosions might be relatively small but it used a comparatively small amount of anti-matter. The explosion will push the anti-matter and matter around, eitehr you will get several huge explosion which will consume most for the antimatter or you will have little explosions for a long time.

Or the material will disperse and vanish in a burst of gamma radiation whenever it encounters debris. Or the antimatter storage bottles might survive the ship's destruction, leaving only the antimatter actually in the reaction chamber as the agent of the blast.

Very simple, if we used nuclear mines and you wanted more nuclear material than every nuclear missile is our inventory to create mines, you will not get it especially to protect one location.

So you deprive your starships of warheads for their tactical offensive weapons instead of simply manufacturing more warheads from material you're already producing in bulk. Brilliant.

One hundred grams per warhead, which gives you a blast-yield of between 75KT and 2MT, depending on reaction efficency. On a weapon which requires nothing more than a simple proximity sensor and a power cell to keep the containment field running until the mine is triggered. Far more cost effective than a phaser platform requiring a reactor to power the phasers, the control computer, and a cloak.

You did not say "Simple Proximity Sensor" above:
I read heat sensors, mass sensors, Electromagnetic sensors, subspace field sensors, and an ion sensor. Does not sound quite so simple.

Do not try playing that game with me. You know perfectly well that the above were examples of what a sensor could be keyed to look for.

As well, let us assume by some incredible odds, the ship actually hits your mine. It will do nothing based ona ship being able to take multiple photon hits which are assumed to carry a kg of anti-matter and an assumed blast explosion of from 32 to 7 mega-tons.

Except photon torpedoes have never displayed such blast yields in any episode or movie, and we saw starship shields failing from a weapon charge equivalent to a 3KT warhead. Which renders your next set of speculations moot.

By that, assuming 20 torpedoes to destroy one ship, we are talking about 320 mines to have the same effect using the high numbers for each. Using the 24 meatons, you still get 240 mines for the same effect.

See above.

Or, they simply orbit the singularity which defines the wormhole and employ manoeuvring jets only as needed.

It says they swarm, therefore they do much more than course corrections

Not when there isn't a target within the minefield.

Are you insane? What the bloody fuck does ANY of this bullshit have to do with the consideration of the most feasible long-endurance power system for a space platform? Your attention-getter only wastes bandwidth on this thread. How you love to drag irrelevancies into this discussion.

Seriously, take a chill pill. Yes, you may not seem my anology and it may waste bandwidth but the amount of bandwith is small enough that it really does not matter and your own reply to it wastes bandwidth.

No, you wasted bandwidth on a total non-sequitor. Nothing involving nuclear power in Iran has the least relevance to this discussion and you knew it beforehand.

Wrong. The imperatives of independence from resupply for the longest period of time possible and onboard storage space efficency are what counts, not convenience. Especially for a military facility, which was what Terok Nor certainly was.

I don't agree

Which is opinion and therefore irrelevant.

the writers of the DS-9 Manual don't agree

Pity tech manuals are not canon. Paramount policy.

and Wong does not agree.

I don't think he would appreciate you taking his words out of context, nor using his name in vain for another Appeal to Authority fallacy.

Consider that the US Navy presently considers only Submarines and Carriers worth the cost of nuclear power. Most Navy ships are gas turbine and the fuel is convenient and cheaper than nuclear power.

Yet another of your many tedious irrelevancies. The examples of wet-navy ship propulsion have no bearing on any discussion regarding spacecraft or space stations or their need for independence from resupply.

With Fusion, we are talking about at least many of months of fuel. Before that time, the station would either be destroyed or captured before running out of fuel.

Except the goal is to keep the station independent of refueling for years at a stretch and able to hold out against any cutoff of supply. A fuel load of 185,000 metric tons of matter/antimatter would sustain the DS9 reactor for twenty years.

As it reduces the effectiveness of the warhead over time, it most certainly does matter.

<Shrugs>Not worried about it. Don't nessearrily want a huge mine field around my planet for years.

Which is not the point at all and no answer.

Excuse me, but where does it indicate that each and every Federation ship carries the same torpedo load? And why do you keep ignoring the amount of antimatter fuel which the ships are supplied with and where do you derive figures for those amounts? That is the standard for gauging the Federation's antimatter production, not the number of torpedoes carried in the fleet and how much antimatter is supplied for those.

Your are right, I have no clue how many torpedoes each ship has. Now, what I did was called overdoing the Math. Sources give ships numbers of Torpedoes of around 250 for the Galaxy and maybe about a 100 for an Intrepid. I increased the galaxy class by double to 500. I then overdid the number of ships, I think there may be 2000 at most capital ships but some want to increase that numbber but I doubt many would go over 10,000 capital ships. Therfore, if anything, the number of torpedoes carried in the fleet should be much smaller than the number of 5,000,000 torpedoes.

And I see you're determined as hell to pretend that the issue is the amount of antimatter to weaponise the torpedoes instead of how much antimatter would be produced for all applications.

Now whose changing his arguments? Earlier in this thread, you argued for propelled platforms to cover the spatial distances involved, and that based on the assumption of a smaller number of phaser platforms as compared to numbers of mines. And your assumption is baseless, it has been repeatedly shown that a cloaking field on its own is insufficent to mask emissions, and some energy emissions cannot be masked no matter what methods are employed (see "Tin Man").

Because of the range of beam or missile weapons, you do not need thrusters to make fast movements. A swarm style weapon, like those at DS-9, need a good thruster. Phaser and Photon Torpedo platforms can reach out and touch someone without them.

Assuming they are not jammed, malfunction, or are simply shot down.

I agree with you on a full sized starship but a platform is going to be a small fraction of the size and a small fraction of the emissions meaning a reduced chance of detection.

And a mine is far smaller, puts out no active emissions, is far harder to detect, and costs only a fraction of a phaser platform —points which for whatever reason continue to elude your understanding.

Your phaser platforms now have photorp launchers as well? That wasn't what you've been arguing all along and you're now going to make your idea even more complicated —and thereby Move the Goalposts— to try to salvage your increasingly rickety argument? And of course, you're assuming Perfect Targeting as well for those photorp volleys?

You're just digging yourself in ever deeper.

You never give up trying to be insulting. The idea is for me to get ideas, pathways that may get opened up may not be the pathways you like and/or approve of.

No, the idea is to defend the validity of your concept and now you're wandering further afield of that concept, as well as adding to what was already a ludicrously complex idea for what should be a simple area-denial weapon.

My idea now is that generally, a box launcher for photon torpedoes would be cheaper and more effective than phasers. The box launcher for missiles has been used in other places and it is generally a good idea. It is not as if I can change the title to "Cloaked Photon Torpedo Platforms" or my preferred term "Pepperbox"

No, what you're doing is Moving the Goalposts i.e. changing the terms of the discussion midstream while simply ignoring every objection put before you.

See "The Price". TNG, third season.

Do you mind giving the exact events?
I had a long discussion on SD.net on this very subject and while people suggsted that it certainly sounds like ships can hit targets that small, it has never actually happned outside of a novel that they shot down them. The suggestion is taht they could not be destroyed by a phaser.

The Enterprise shot down two missiles launched from a Ferengi ship which targeted the entrance to the Barzan wormhole.

Invoking your own fanfic as evidence?
Sometimes, the comedy just writes itself, doesn't it?

Yes, I invoked for the reason that stated that in general I support the idea that photon torpedos can be shot down, otherwise you could have replied "Well, you did it in your fanfic!" and I would have had no defense. It is not evidence at all, it is an explanation of the possibilities.

Never assume motives in advance. Fanfic material would never have been considered as evidence under any circumstances for any reason.

But as not a single episode or movie has actually depicted this, those sources are valueless as evidence.

Ok, them why haven't they shot down torpedoes being fired at them on a constant basis? They should be if they are easy targets.

Perhaps for reasons of conserving phaser power for ship targets, or possibly due to response times being too short at close-quarters fire exchange as has been seen in several on-screen combats, or the necessity to track ships for targeting instead of smaller objects such as photorps. Given that photorps really do not deliver a significant charge, it is probably more reasonable to simply take the hit on the shields. It would be more feasible to shoot down a torpedo fired at longer ranges.

That is not the point. The point is how little matter/antimatter material is required to produce the same blast.

Finances and economics are always important

Not when the economy imposed is a dumb one and not where mass considerations for a space weapon are the single most important factor.

Moving the Goalposts. You don't even see how you've lost track of the very point you started out attempting to defend when this farce began by doing so.

I never did state that there is no possibilities of fighters, other types of weapon systems,or other changes. The things I have stated from the beginning is that phaser platforms could be effective, which I still do, and that stationary mines would not be effective. Even the swarm style mines in DS-9 could be effective but long range platforms are more effective. I still had the torp platforms backed up with phaser platforms because they can be used more than once without reloading.

Statements you haver made by simple repeated assertion and by ignoring the practical objections raised in the course of this discussion. The platforms are effective only so long as their fuel and torpedo loads hold out; once they're gone they're useless. They offer no significant advantage over a minefield for area-denial, and they will not be able to stop a warfleet, which makes them strategically useless for the purpose of repulsing an invasion.

[buzz_knox]

You said a claymore could be used as an "assault weapon," implying an offensive role. I questioned when it has been used in such a fashion (being rather unwieldy in that role) and you responded with that?

Neither the claymore or the CAPTOR are really weapon "platforms." They are single-use defensive weapons. Sure, the former needs to be command-detonated or use tripwire and the latter has much greater range than a typical magnetic-influence or contact mine, but that doesn't mean they really compare to your phaser weapon platforms.

Not trying to take sides, but the claymore can be used to initiate an ambush. In Vietnam, for example, claymores were sometimes rigged in trees firing downwards into enemy columns.

Claymores and all mines are commonly used for attacks. Examples include Vietnam, Aghanistan, Chechnya (sp) and even Iraq. They can't necessarily take out a convoy but they can serve as terror weapons, or can block a road by taking out a lead vehicle, bogging the convoy down and allowing further assault from conventional forces. Put some mines along anticipated lines of retreat or manuever, and they become an effective force multiplier.