Phasers Now Track Orion Raider!

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 5:47 pm

2046 wrote:Egad, that's awful. How the devil is a high-warp ship supposed to be within visible range for any appreciable length of time, or even visible while it is? Even if the thing was doing warp-10 orbits around the Enterprise we shouldn't be able to see it.

I'd been pleased so far that they hadn't done anything just plain stupid with the new effects, but I have a bad feeling that line was just crossed.

Look on the bright side, Robert. The raider actually executes a sharp, high speed turn to avoid the phasers in that scene. :-)
-Mike

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:46 pm

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Gandalf · Post by **Gandalf** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:51 pm

Wal*Mart. I had to pay Canadian though.

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:53 pm

Oops! My bad, the raider actually only goes across the field of view in a straight line.
-Mike

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:25 am

Wouldn't phaser tracking against a target at warp not work very well. Phasers travel at c or slower so you would have to shoot infront of an enemy ship and they would have to run into your shots. Moving where you are shooting is good since it lets you keep you phaser on the enemy ship, but as it speeds away at warp your phaser can't catch it so the Enterprise was just waisting phaser power. The Enterprise yould have to shoot before the raider passes them in order to damage it with phasers. The Enterprise also seemed to be following the raider with its phasers, rather than leading it. So, even though the explosion was cool I have to agree with 2046.

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:25 pm

Phasers and phase cannons have been seen to work at warp speed many times throughout Trek. There is no overriding reason why you shouldn't at least try. In the case of the Orion raider here, the E-1701 is going much slower than the raider. Interestingly enough, the raider scores numerous hits while firing the slower E-1701, while firing from the slower speed will likely yeild a miss.
-Mike

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:34 pm

Yes, phasers can be fired while at warp, except for the refit Constitution class. But the phaser beam is still only going to travel <300,000 km/s faster than the ship. I don't think a ship at high warp would have an easy time of targeting a ship a low warp, because the relative velocity is going to be hugh. But a ship at high warp still has the advantage because the fast ship is causing the velocity differential and therefore will be better able to compensate for it.

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:46 pm

Actually, the refit E-1701 was able to fire at warp. The only reason it could not do so in ST:TMP was because the warp power was off-line while in the wormhole, and the refit design (at that time) channeled phaser power directly through to the warp engines to increase firepower. As for what speed the phasers leave the ship at while at warp is unknown, and we have seen various speeds for the phasers throughout all the series.
-Mike