Phasers as a torpedo defense

[Mark]

No no, its the inverse tachyon emissions. Silly silly people 8)

[Vic]

D'oh! Sorry Admiral, I didn't do to well in my 'Use of Technobabble 101' class at the Academy.

[Reliant121]

This thread has now ruptured my spleen due to its ludicrous, and yet...realistic, portrail of treknobabble.

[Mikey]

No worries - we'll just set you up with a quantum subspace surgical suture, combined with inverse tachyon anti-rejection therapy.

[Mark]

Don't forget the transphasic nanoprobes.

[Mikey]

Oh, indeed. And how could I forget the isomagnetic antiproton EM rectifier?

[Mark]

Or the microatomic holographic scanner/imager/projecter!

[Sonic Glitch]

Or the microatomic holographic scanner/imager/projecter Swedish salt shaker!

[Reliant121]

[sunnyside]

Heh. I'm reminded of:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sc ... attributes
I forget the actual in universe technobably, but there is a fair bit of it that goes along with q-torps.

Over just a "conventional" antimatter explosion, I would think it's effectivness should go down roughly as r^2, as the various destructive elements and energies spread out as the surface of a sphere.


As for point defenses, I'm guessing "it looks cool" is pretty much the whole story. And in TOS I remember a quote from one of the writers that, origionally, the photon torpedos were supposed to be a blob of energy not solid matter. That got written in later.

However in universe photon torpedos would be a relatively new development over the spatial/photonic torpedos, and early generation photorps might not have been well shielded or had other defensive measures. Therefore weak but rapid firing point defenses might make sense, while in the future it could take up too much energy to reliably counter incoming fire, especialy when you could be firing back yourself.

Actually does anyone remember how effective those things actually were? I remember seeing a lot of blasts put in the air, but obviously it wasn't stopping them all. Also the Narada wasn't a true warship. They may well have been firing what would be considered ridiculously outdated torpedos by military standards. We do know that torp design varies, for example I seem to recal Quark and some other alien attempting to disarm a very different sort of torp lodged in the ship they were in.

In any case the whole operation of the Narada's torp system was different from anything we'd seen in the origional universe, even from previous ships hailing from the future, and as I recal single torp hits on the then unshielded kelvin weren't enough to more than cause localized damage. Far less efficacy than what one would expect from even TNG and certainly DS9 era torps.

[Tyyr]

(4/3)r^3 actually.

[Tsukiyumi]

(4/3)r^3 actually.

Hey, man.

Watch the language.

[sunnyside]

(4/3)r^3 actually.

That would be the volume of a sphere, not the surface area.

[Sionnach Glic]

IIRC, surface area is 4pir².

[sunnyside]

Well, it's been a while since I've done a parametized double integral in spherical coordinates, but assuming I didn't screw up, if we assume:

-For a contact detonation half the energy of the photorp goes into the shields
-The damage done is directly proportional to the surface area of the sphere that covers the target, with the origin of the sphere being the point of explosion
-Take the simplification that the ships shields are spherical, and that the blast occurs one shiplenth away from the ships center

Than the ships shields only take ~4.5% the damage they would from a contact blast. They would also take that damage shooting a target at that range.

That's still a chunk of damage, but a great reduction