StarDestroyer.Net BBS

To beef up Fed ground combat capability, would it be feasable to take the micro torpedo launcher out of a runabout and mount it either in a pillbox-type arrangement, or even on a heavy vehicle? I'm not sure about the actual size of the thing, but given that it small enough that it can be carried on a what is basically an oversized shuttle, then at the very least it could be a decent towed weapon.

Thag wrote:To beef up Fed ground combat capability, would it be feasable to take the micro torpedo launcher out of a runabout and mount it either in a pillbox-type arrangement, or even on a heavy vehicle? I'm not sure about the actual size of the thing, but given that it small enough that it can be carried on a what is basically an oversized shuttle, then at the very least it could be a decent towed weapon.

This is like asking if you could take a Hellfire missile and mount it in a pillbox.

But... they have the Mighty Dune Buggy o'Doom™ with the rear mounted pulse-phaser.

This is like asking if you could take a Hellfire missile and mount it in a pillbox.

To be fair, they have mounted Hellfire on an M113 APC chassis as an experiment- I think it carried eight. You probably could mount the laser-guided versions on a pillbox, but it'd be a real waste of time.

I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to mount such weapons on a pillbox. RTS games notwithstanding, fixed fortifications are essentially useless today. They would be many times more useless in a situation where your enemy can easily transport his forces wherever he wants, across a planet if he so chooses.

Well, there's always the "Photon Artillery" vehicles fom that (sucky) RTS game Star Trek: New Worlds...

I'm looking at this from the standpoint of that there doesn't appear to be anything besides hand weaponry available for ground installations, and this could be a quick-and-dirty solution. Also, if you have a secured position/facility with transporters inhibited for the surrounding area, any attacking force coming overland could be engaged at longer range.

Sure you could but why do it when you could use phasers. Then again, a micro-torp launcher could be used for beyond line of sight attacks in a transporter inhibited enviroment.

They have an RPG. We saw it in Insurrection. They also have pulse phasers that can be mounted on a vehicle. But they have no tactical requirement for heavy antivehicle weapons because there are never any heavy vehicles in Star Trek ground combat. Just men on foot, charging like idiots.

Darth Wong wrote:They have an RPG. We saw it in Insurrection. They also have pulse phasers that can be mounted on a vehicle. But they have no tactical requirement for heavy antivehicle weapons because there are never any heavy vehicles in Star Trek ground combat. Just men on foot, charging like idiots.

Actualy there is the Breen CRM-114 "an extremely powerful portable hand cannon designed to destroy moving targets and surface emplacements, marketed by Quark's cousin Gaila [Business as Usual (DS9)]". So at least the Breen have a need and I belive it was once remarked that the Cardasians have tanks, can't for the life me remember where that one comes from though.

Vympel wrote:

This is like asking if you could take a Hellfire missile and mount it in a pillbox.

To be fair, they have mounted Hellfire on an M113 APC chassis as an experiment- I think it carried eight. You probably could mount the laser-guided versions on a pillbox, but it'd be a real waste of time.

Sweden and Norway use it as a coastal-defense antiship missile, though in a portable rather than fixed fashion.

Vympel wrote:

This is like asking if you could take a Hellfire missile and mount it in a pillbox.

To be fair, they have mounted Hellfire on an M113 APC chassis as an experiment- I think it carried eight. You probably could mount the laser-guided versions on a pillbox, but it'd be a real waste of time.

The hellfire has also been test fired from Humvees.

Darth Wong wrote:

Thag wrote:To beef up Fed ground combat capability, would it be feasable to take the micro torpedo launcher out of a runabout and mount it either in a pillbox-type arrangement, or even on a heavy vehicle? I'm not sure about the actual size of the thing, but given that it small enough that it can be carried on a what is basically an oversized shuttle, then at the very least it could be a decent towed weapon.

.

are hellfire missles 13 centimetres long?
microtorps are tiny. You could mount them in Bazooka like weapons.
This is like asking if you could take a Hellfire missile and mount it in a pillbox.

Where does this 13cm come from?

Howedar wrote:Where does this 13cm come from?

Tech manual which is non-canon now i come to thing about it.
Are micro-torps actually mentioned in the canon?

Crazedwraith wrote:

Howedar wrote:Where does this 13cm come from?

Tech manual which is non-canon now i come to thing about it.
Are micro-torps actually mentioned in the canon?

They're used in the premier episode when the Defiant is introduced. While Sisko & co. are in the Dominion's mind observation thing, they take out a runabout and use it's torps to collapse the wormhole. I realize that it technically wasn't real, but the fact that the entire DS9 senior staff didn't note anything odd about it says that it's a normal loadout.

As for uses, I was thinking more along the lines of a general-purpose field gun type of thing, rather than a dedicated anti-vehicle weapon. While it could be effective against vehicles, sending a M/AM warhead into the middle of a swarm of oncoming troops isn't going make their day any bettter.

IIRC, some time ago, there was a StarTrek 3D RTS game that introduced hoover tanks.

I think the episode where Odyssey is destroyed had O'Brien saying he'd mount micro-torpedo launchers on the runabouts.

wautd wrote:IIRC, some time ago, there was a StarTrek 3D RTS game that introduced hoover tanks.

That was Star Trek: New Worlds, released in early 2001. Long story short, I liked the concept and storyline, but the gameplay and interface absolutely sucked. There were no savegames for one thing, and the pause feature could not be left on for more that a few minutes without crashing the game. Getting units to go and do what you wanted could also be a real bitch. The graphics were quite good however, and the vehicle and building models were superb (for the time).

phongn wrote: Sweden and Norway use it as a coastal-defense antiship missile, though in a portable rather than fixed fashion.

In that roles its normally hauled around by a CB-90 combat boat, with the Hellfire team landing on offshore islands and such to ambush passing ships, the things belong to the costal artillery of both nations. Though the CB-90 can also be fitted with a suitable launcher.

As for the torpedo bazooka idea, that's just stupid. Having an anti matter weapon in the hands of an individual solider is suicidal for your own troops, one burst of gunfire and the force of a nuclear bomb wipes out your whole unit. The same thing happens if the solider gets distracted or drops it and its left until the batteries run dead and the anti matter containment is breeched. And be sure to look out for EMP's and similar weapon.

Stability and long life in storage and combat is a key requirement for any weapon, as it is the worlds militaries have accepted explosives for many munitions that are less powerful then they could be, because they've had stabilizers mixed in so they resist fire and only detonate when the fuse goes off. Rather then say when a hot fragment slices through the casing.

Okay, I can understand that. Bad idea, then.

Some kind of shuttle-grade phaser would be more useful. It would presumably have the firepower to disable vehicles and overpower light shielding, and it might be possible for it to fire in "spread" mode at useful distances and still put reasonable power on the target.

Constructing anti-vehicle weapons and artillery is easily within their technological capabilities, but they apparently see so little ground combat that they feel no need for such weapons.

Thag wrote:To beef up Fed ground combat capability, would it be feasable to take the micro torpedo launcher out of a runabout and mount it either in a pillbox-type arrangement, or even on a heavy vehicle? I'm not sure about the actual size of the thing, but given that it small enough that it can be carried on a what is basically an oversized shuttle, then at the very least it could be a decent towed weapon.

geez, just bring back the photon mortar that was used (once?) in TOS. You could also use the isomagnetic disintegrator, but that seems to have more of a concussive effect than anything else (although we have no idea about settings or what-not that are so common on other Fed weapons).

Matt Huang wrote: geez, just bring back the photon mortar that was used (once?) in TOS. You could also use the isomagnetic disintegrator, but that seems to have more of a concussive effect than anything else (although we have no idea about settings or what-not that are so common on other Fed weapons).

Or better yet, just use copies of current day mortars, the Stokes 3 inch mortar from which just about all-modern infantry mortars are derived was first built out of scrap metal in WW1. If Federation forces had any brains at all they'd easily improvise all sorts of weapons they ought to have at places like AR-588.

Patrick Degan wrote:But... they have the Mighty Dune Buggy o'Doom™ with the rear mounted pulse-phaser.

That reminds me of the Warthogs from Halo only with a pulse phaser. And how the heck do you get a trademark symbol in there?