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Real world guideded missiles employ command, passive, active, semi-active or inertial guidence systems. Which one of these do photon torpedoes use ?

Sometimes they look actually dumb-fired.

I'd imagine they passively home in on heat radiation or something.

Aside from ST VI we've actually never seen homing torpedoes onscreen.

Posbi wrote:Aside from ST VI we've actually never seen homing torpedoes onscreen.

Incorrect. We have seen quided torpedoes in Message in a Bottle (VGR) fired by the USS Prometheus and we have seen guided torpedoes fired by DS9 in WOTW.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Sometimes they look actually dumb-fired.

I'd imagine they passively home in on heat radiation or something.

They indeed have been dumbfired in the past. And this irritates me to no end.

I would suspect that the torpedoes can opperate on a number of systems and their use depends on the enemy. I also suspet such systems are expensive and the Federation in all its wiseness has elected to use mostly dumbfire weapons.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Sometimes they look actually dumb-fired.

I'd imagine they passively home in on heat radiation or something.

passively homing in on heat radiation would be rather lame and impractical. if that was the case there's little stopping them from simply turn straight around and go back to to the originating ship.

on the other hand one feasible method would be to go by a ship's magnetic or warp signature. that way if they can read the specific magnetic/warp fluctuations unique to those types of ships, they could lock on far more accurately than just passive heat sensing. and would solve the problem of accidentally hitting 'friendly' ships. just select the magnetic or warp signature you want to target, send it to the most probable coordinates, and fire.

Considering the cheapness and availability of high-quality imaging systems, i'd say use that along with Darth Zod's magnetic/warp-sig idea. Use Warp Sigs for long-range targeting, and home in with visual (or subspace equivalent) guidance. The only problem with this idea is cloaked ships, but I have a suspicion that multiple close-range proximity blasts (guided by those damned neutrino emissions as a third homing option) aren't very good for the dumbass with the cloak you're trying to paste.

Also, is it theoretically possible to use a ship's own warp engines (or maybe even the micro-sized ones on a fighter-launchable torpedo! Warning: this is Definitely Not Canon, it's purely one of my conjectural designs.) as subspace antennas?

Illuminatus Primus wrote: I'd imagine they passively home in on heat radiation or something.

I highly doubt its anything infrared or optical given that the nose appears to be the same as the rest of the torpedo, and isn't transparent. Some form of subspace sensor system seems more likely, given that the torpedoes can engage warp targets.

Probably subspace like the rest of their sensors. remember, they had to specially modify a torp to home in on a heat signal in ST6

actually they'd equipped it with sensors to home in on the gaseous emissions of the bird of prey, not its heat signature.

Ender wrote:Probably subspace like the rest of their sensors. remember, they had to specially modify a torp to home in on a heat signal in ST6

Heat? I thought it was a neutrino emission...

Darth_Zod wrote:actually they'd equipped it with sensors to home in on the gaseous emissions of the bird of prey, not its heat signature.

My mistake. Years since I've seen the movie.

Darth_Zod wrote:actually they'd equipped it with sensors to home in on the gaseous emissions of the bird of prey, not its heat signature.

You mean they made it home in on the K-BoP's FARTS!!? LMFAO!! Works for me!!!

What, Ein, you don't remember the film? Spock's just sitting there while they talk about how to take down the BoP, and suddenly he says, "Gas, Captian."

Alan Bolte wrote:What, Ein, you don't remember the film? Spock's just sitting there while they talk about how to take down the BoP, and suddenly he says, "Gas, Captian."

I'm not sure I remember that clearly...

BTW is there any premise to the idea of using a ship's warp nacelles as subspace antennas?

Darth_Zod wrote:actually they'd equipped it with sensors to home in on the gaseous emissions of the bird of prey, not its heat signature.

Sadly stupid writing in this case; the gas was no longer cloaked once away from the BOP, and there was no conceivable reason whatsoever for its infrared emissions to be invisible, even if you accept the common and IMO unreasonable claim that cloaks need not dump waste heat.

Actually having to sample the gas in order to track it is just mind-bogglingly stupid.

If anyone is interested, Brandon Bray has put an interesting theory that the Photon Torpedo is actually a cannon ball.

http://pub9.ezboard.com/fbabylon5techma ... ID=8.topic

Jeremy wrote:If anyone is interested, Brandon Bray has put an interesting theory that the Photon Torpedo is actually a cannon ball.

http://pub9.ezboard.com/fbabylon5techma ... ID=8.topic

last I heard cannon balls did not have a propulsion system in the cannon ball shells like a photon torpedo has. The given surname torpedo fits perfectly. Plus I don't think cannon balls exploded as much as they just were like big bullets, IIRC back in the day mortors were the exploding ordinance that everyone(especially hollywood)thinks of as cannon balls. Photon torpedoes have been stated to have a matter/anit-matter warhead.

one thing that's been bugging me lately, but figured i'd bring up in this thread as a new one isn't really needed;

how the hell do they fire multiple warheads at once? in the series we often times see them firing out 5+ rapid bursts of torpedo fire. yet whenever they show us the actual torpedo room, and the process of loading a torpedo, it's rather quite slow. which means either they have a separate launcher for multiple torps at once, or they use a different method that they have yet to show on screen.

Darth_Zod wrote:one thing that's been bugging me lately, but figured i'd bring up in this thread as a new one isn't really needed;

how the hell do they fire multiple warheads at once? in the series we often times see them firing out 5+ rapid bursts of torpedo fire. yet whenever they show us the actual torpedo room, and the process of loading a torpedo, it's rather quite slow. which means either they have a separate launcher for multiple torps at once, or they use a different method that they have yet to show on screen.

what torpedo rooms have we seen? I can only think of one the Ent-A in ST:VI, oh and on the NX-01 Enterprise. IIRC neither of them has shown a staggering firing rate.

Since they seem to have much better range against targets travelling at warp speeds, I would venture to say that they can home on "subspace interference" to hit targets using their warp drives. Various types of warp drive apparently have distinctive "signatures", which would provide some IFF capability, as well.

"Torpedo guidance" is apparently one of the functions of the tactical station, so torpedoes may be "command guided" from the ship at least some of the time.

maybe it's not so much the warp drive as the ship's size and shape? with the mass of the ship in question distorting gravity just enough to give the field its own unique appearance to sensors.

As I recall they always seem to need a target lock before firing torpedoes. It seems to me that torpedoes rely on targeting data provided by the ship firing it. Perhaps they track torpedo targets with the sensors and communicate that information to the torpedoes themselves (at ranges below a couple light seconds - ie most encounters I cna remember - they might use lightspeed communications tech. At much longer ranges - rare, but they do occur I think - they might use something FTL, or even some sort of self-guided warhead.)

Darth Wong wrote:

Darth_Zod wrote:actually they'd equipped it with sensors to home in on the gaseous emissions of the bird of prey, not its heat signature.

Sadly stupid writing in this case; the gas was no longer cloaked once away from the BOP, and there was no conceivable reason whatsoever for its infrared emissions to be invisible, even if you accept the common and IMO unreasonable claim that cloaks need not dump waste heat.

Actually having to sample the gas in order to track it is just mind-bogglingly stupid.

Not nearly as stupid as firing a torp that will track engine emissions and yet somehow perfectly nails the claoked BOP on the tip of its nose.

Darth_Zod wrote:one thing that's been bugging me lately, but figured i'd bring up in this thread as a new one isn't really needed;

how the hell do they fire multiple warheads at once? in the series we often times see them firing out 5+ rapid bursts of torpedo fire. yet whenever they show us the actual torpedo room, and the process of loading a torpedo, it's rather quite slow. which means either they have a separate launcher for multiple torps at once, or they use a different method that they have yet to show on screen.

Preloading for combat situations?