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I know that sounds ridiculous, but bear with me.

In 'Return to Grace' DS9, the crappy Cardassian freighter that Dukat was in command of fired on an asteroid and a BoP. Both times, the ship experienced recoil. Something that Fed ships never have. I read somewhere that due to no recoil, the max phaser power was something like 3 MT/sec.

The Groumall does (or did) not have bad Inertial dampners because they were warping along just fine. Does that mean that the Groumall puts out more firepower than the Feds? Even though they obviously did not.

A peculiar contradiction.

Did they experience recoil from the Planetary Defense weapon they installed on the ship or from the ship's prexisting weapons?

It may something to do with the design with of Cardassian phaser banks. Unlike the Federation who relies on photon torpedoes as their main heavy hitters the Cardassians use phasers.

How large was this Cardassian freighter? If it was, say, 100m long, then it would probably have only around 0.5% of the mass of a GCS (remember that you have to cube the ratio of length in order to get the likely ratio of volume, hence mass). In that case, the same yield of phaser bank would produce a much greater recoil acceleration.

Also, IIRC, she outranges Fed ships.

According to EAS the Groumall was 170 meters in length and they even ditched all their gargo before fring the weapon. The weapon they jury rigged to one of the cargo bays was a planetary defence distruptor.

Did they experience recoil from the Planetary Defense weapon they installed on the ship or from the ship's prexisting weapons?

Both I believe. But i was referring to the standard phasers.

How large was this Cardassian freighter? If it was, say, 100m long, then it would probably have only around 0.5% of the mass of a GCS (remember that you have to cube the ratio of length in order to get the likely ratio of volume, hence mass). In that case, the same yield of phaser bank would produce a much greater recoil acceleration.

Good point. I believe the length was around 200-255m. However, we see the phasers clearly were not up to par to a GCS's, so what could have produced a recoil?

I dunno about the design, what sorta stupid design creates such a recoil? Cardassian Warships sure dont produce any, and their weapons are presumably more powerfull.
And remember, they had to charge their emitters for aabout a freaking hour before they could fire. Okay, more like 5 minutes. And all that to take several seconds of sustained fire to barely fragment an asteroid.

TurboPhaser wrote:

Did they experience recoil from the Planetary Defense weapon they installed on the ship or from the ship's prexisting weapons?

Both I believe. But i was referring to the standard phasers.

Their prexisting weaponry caused no visible recoil effects.

Sir Sirius wrote:

TurboPhaser wrote:

Did they experience recoil from the Planetary Defense weapon they installed on the ship or from the ship's prexisting weapons?

Both I believe. But i was referring to the standard phasers.

Their prexisting weaponry caused no visible recoil effects.

*checks DVD*
No, not during the battle drill, but when they shot at the BoP, recoil happened. And later when they severley damaged the BoP with the Planetary defence disruptors.

Oh and a little factoid, that planetary disruptor has a range of 200,000 KM. Not bad

SirNitram wrote:Also, IIRC, she outranges Fed ships.

According to TNG "The Wounded" she does not......

TurboPhaser wrote:No, not during the battle drill, but when they shot at the BoP, recoil happened.

You are right, I only checked the drill.

TurboPhaser wrote:Oh and a little factoid, that planetary disruptor has a range of 200,000 KM. Not bad

Yeah, but that was against an Asteroid, immobile targets are easy to hit.

How long did it take them to destroy the asteroid with the ships normal armament?

Didn't they fire on an unshielded BoP with that weak disruptor?

Kamakazie Sith wrote:How long did it take them to destroy the asteroid with the ships normal armament?

One shot, but there is no way to scale the asteroid.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Didn't they fire on an unshielded BoP with that weak disruptor?

Actualy the ships normal weapons were Phasers, they didn't even penetrate the hull when they hit the BoP in it's weakest spot.

Sir Sirius wrote:

Kamakazie Sith wrote:How long did it take them to destroy the asteroid with the ships normal armament?

One shot, but there is no way to scale the asteroid.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Didn't they fire on an unshielded BoP with that weak disruptor?

Actualy the ships normal weapons were Phasers, they didn't even penetrate the hull when they hit the BoP in it's weakest spot.

It's too bad we can't scale that asteroid.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:It's too bad we can't scale that asteroid.

It wasn't that large. Here's the asteroid destruction with the freghter's regular weapons:



Here's another asteroid fired on by the system 5 planetary disruptor:

Lord Poe wrote:

Kamakazie Sith wrote:It's too bad we can't scale that asteroid.

It wasn't that large. Here's the asteroid destruction with the freghter's regular weapons:

Can we compare against the BoP?

Yep, heres a comparison from the DVD.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Can we compare against the BoP?

Actually, you might be able to, if you use the botton half of the beam for the comparison, because the beam spreads out once it hit the BoP:

Lord Poe wrote:

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Can we compare against the BoP?

Actually, you might be able to, if you use the botton half of the beam for the comparison, because the beam spreads out once it hit the BoP:

Excellent idea. And I remember those pics when they were first on the Ultimate Database

I did some hasty measurements. The beam is 7 pixels wide, and from the center of the BoP's glowing engine area to the extreme-most point of the wing/disruptor is 154 pixels. The asteroid pixeled is ~30 pixels wide.

As best as I can determine, the scout Bird-of-Prey's wingspan is 128 meters in the attack position based on a 109m length*. Half that represents 154 pixels, so one pixel is equal to .41m.

The beam width is therefore 2.87m, and the asteroid is roughly 12 meters wide.

Ugh.

As I recall, the planetary disruptor didn't emit a giant blast either. We could measure it right before it nails the Bird I guess, then compare that to the second asteroid test...I don't think the results would be much more encouraging, though.

*Unless someone can give me good reason to think otherwise, I'm quite sure THAT particular Bird was one of the smallish scouts. The big cruisers always had their wings swept up slightly above parallel, even when they fired on enemy ships. Furthermore, we see Dukat's Bird and the Groumall very close to one another, and the latter looked bigger even when it was well into the background.

There's also the fact that Dukat's stolen Bird had a pretty small crew complement. I don't want to dig out the transcripts or wade through Google to check, but it wasn't tons more than the "dozen officers and men" on Kruge's ship.

Anyway, I figured I'd mention that before someone else brought it up.

TurboPhaser wrote:I know that sounds ridiculous, but bear with me.

In 'Return to Grace' DS9, the crappy Cardassian freighter that Dukat was in command of fired on an asteroid and a BoP. Both times, the ship experienced recoil. Something that Fed ships never have. I read somewhere that due to no recoil, the max phaser power was something like 3 MT/sec.

The Groumall does (or did) not have bad Inertial dampners because they were warping along just fine. Does that mean that the Groumall puts out more firepower than the Feds? Even though they obviously did not.

A peculiar contradiction.

It could be that the Groumall's computer for some reason or another was not able to adjust the inertial dampers to compensate for what is apparently a jury-rigged weapon.

The BoP in question is no doubt of the B'Rel class and is therefor aproximately 120m in length.

If it's 12m that would put it about 2KT if it is a nickel iron asteroid? Which means a BoP hull can withstand at least 2KT without any damage.

Ironically enough, if we assume that the two asteroids were of approximately the same size, then the phaser seems to have done a lot MORE damage than the disruptor. Nothing that Mike's NDF theory can't fix, but it's kind of funny given the context of the events.

Master of Ossus wrote:Ironically enough, if we assume that the two asteroids were of approximately the same size, then the phaser seems to have done a lot MORE damage than the disruptor. Nothing that Mike's NDF theory can't fix, but it's kind of funny given the context of the events.

Indeed, which is why it might just be better to consider the size of the second asteroid unknown.

Though IIRC we can compare the planetary disruptor to the BoP as well.