The type 2 phaser - what were they thinking?

[Mikey]

So, when I imagine a future, I find it appealing to see one without greed, poverty, militarism, civil wars... And Roddenberry did and that's why I watched Star Trek.

Same here. I never said I had an issue with Roddenberry's vision - it's the application to details where it doesn't make sense (like the original topic of this thread) which sometimes irritates.

[Johnny Starfleet]

I would have even been OK with the wierd design if the phaser had been shown being used as a "tool" more often. I agree with the whole deception thing. They are weapons that can also heat rocks in an emergency once in a while and be set to explode.

I don't really like Andromeda (and I'm not sure how much of it GR really thought up), but IIRC they could set down their little gun sticks to be used as point defense mechanisms. The phaser should have had this. It would explain why the crazy, off angle shots happen (computer targeting) and show that they are very useful in a fully defensive role.

[Mikey]

Hmmm... one would think automation would be up to it. I like that idea.

[Sionnach Glic]

The problem is that if they do have some sort of auto-target feature, then it's practicaly useless. I've seen some damn blatant misses that shouldn't have happened with an auto-target feature.

[Graham Kennedy]

The problem is that if they do have some sort of auto-target feature, then it's practicaly useless. I've seen some damn blatant misses that shouldn't have happened with an auto-target feature.

Hmmm, really?

What fraction of shots hit the target, in modern warfare? One round in 50,000 or so, isn't it?

What fraction of phaser shots hit the target, in TNG? I could barely hazard a guess, but I'd imagine it was something in the region of 1 in 5, perhaps 1 in 10. Certainly it was less than 1 in 50.

If a targeting system of whatever kind allowed even one in 50 phaser beams to hit their target, it would be an absolutely vast improvement on modern weaponry wouldn't it?

[Sionnach Glic]

My point was that said targetting system, if it exists, has made some tremendous misses that real soldiers with proper guns wouldn't have.
Just off the top of my head, take a look at Riker in Nemesis who misses a guy about two metres away from him when neither of them are moving.

As for how Trek accuracy stacks up to modern accuracy, you'd be better off asking Kendall or Seafort than me. I have no idea how accurate they are. Though the fact that they're able to hit anything with those guns is a freaking miracle.

[Graham Kennedy]

My point was that said targetting system, if it exists, has made some tremendous misses that real soldiers with proper guns wouldn't have.
Just off the top of my head, take a look at Riker in Nemesis who misses a guy about two metres away from him when neither of them are moving.

Yes, but if the system is more accurate by far overall then it's still a win as a weapon. If a phaser has a hit rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than an M-16 you can't reasonably point to a few glaring misses and say it's a useless weapon. I might as well say that the US air force's bombers are useless because of a few examples where they have hit the wrong target.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Agreed. I liked the concept, but the implementation was absolutely absurd. Make it more realistic, and actually include human nature in it, then you got a true representation of a positive future.

Well, we can't say what human nature is today and we certainly can't tell what it will be in 2363 and I daresay that present day humans are quite different from those in the 1600s. Don't you think so? So, when I imagine a future, I find it appealing to see one without greed, poverty, militarism, civil wars... And Roddenberry did and that's why I watched Star Trek. Not to see realistic weaponry, I can watch that every day as I am living in the neighbourhood of three army bases (if you consider our "Bundesheer" an army ).

It wasn't that bad, IMHO. and even so, a hell of a lot better than the billion dystopian futures out there. I think there might be only one or two other franchises I'd rather live in.

I agree.

Not quite all there. If you think about it what are three things that have not changed throughout human history: sex, greed and war. These arent the only three things, but three important ones. For humanity to change so sudden;y (in comparison), we have fundamentally alter our very psychological and to some extent biological make-up.

World War III, FTL travel and alien contact occur within the same decade. Pretty mind-altering, there. And sex... *Looks at Kirk* That hasn't gone away!

[Sionnach Glic]

Yes, but if the system is more accurate by far overall then it's still a win as a weapon. If a phaser has a hit rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than an M-16 you can't reasonably point to a few glaring misses and say it's a useless weapon. I might as well say that the US air force's bombers are useless because of a few examples where they have hit the wrong target.

I agree with you completely. I'm not arguing that such a system, if it exists, would be a massively helpful feature on the type 2 (particularly since it'd be almost impossible for a human operator to aim properly).
What I was asking is why it makes these incredibly bad misses at times.

[Mikey]

Rochey raises a good point. It may be a system that requires an operator to turn it on, in which case there may be a reason not to do so - it may impair ROF, it may have diffculties under a certain range, etc. Howevver, having such a mechanism would certainly help explain the VFX weirdnesses of having type-II phaser beams firing at an angle from the axis of the weapon.

[Teaos]

Be a good way to mess with someone, point the phaser at them, fire it, and have the beam go 12 feet to the right... April fools!

[Reliant121]

]

World War III, FTL travel and alien contact occur within the same decade. Pretty mind-altering, there. And sex... *Looks at Kirk* That hasn't gone away!

What i'm saying is you cannot change what makes us human in the space of 3 centuries. We've come through two world wars, and they have not either of the three mentioned have done nothing. If anything, the Alien contact probably strengthened our ways because we would feel slightly threatened by the alien concepts.

[Graham Kennedy]

What I was asking is why it makes these incredibly bad misses at times.

I don't think it's really knowable. Some random glitch in the system, some little bit of interference. Why does any sophisticated system screw up occasionally? It happens.

[Sionnach Glic]

True enough. Just seemed rather odd.

[Graham Kennedy]

One could suggest that Starfleet and Romulan/Reman uniforms are smart cloth, designed with jamming/stealth properties built in. And that as a result sometimes the weapon manages a lock, and sometimes it doesn't.

That would be pure random speculation, though.