B5Tech: Thoughts on Treknology - Effect of Phaser...

[Mr. Oragahn]

On a kinda unrelated note i managed to somehow get into yet another pissing contest with some dude called Questor (aka "thermodynamic boy") on ASVS and any good links regarding the Episode Q-who and the firepower calculations of the photons could be useful.

He is saying that the 2 holes in the centre of the cube are just scorch marks and no dmg was done, that the photons had a max dmg of 10 kilotons oh and that the borg had no shields when the photons hit it but cos they are so weak (10kt) we could not see the damage.

Oh and he is yet another mod and has already threatened me because i called him "thermodynamic boy" after he made a insulting nickname about me ("Jason the Second" who ever jason the first was).......so as you can imagine he is a mature debter...

Kor, http://www.trekcore.com/ is your friend. You'll find lots of screencaps there to disprove that.
-Mike

There's a little trick to know about linking to their screencaps though. You must not use the links of the pictures you reach from the thumbnail panels. You must use the album in the episode summary (the frame that shows one picture at a time and has two buttons, one previous and one next), which contains the same number of pictures but is a redundant database of screencaps apparently, and link to those pictures.

[Roondar]

Q-Who is one of the most impressive (if not outright the most impressive) ship-to-ship results in TNG, visible damage wise.

It also shows of perfectly that the UFP's NDF weapons are really, really effective against materials not specifically designed to stop them. On top of that they also show that the E-D has no problems blowing really large holes into relatively dense objects in no time flat.

No wonder they consider a single starship a real threat to a planetary civilization. That phaser shot took less than a second and is offering an effective result (by destroyed volume) comparable to using nukes IRL.

In my oppinion that single scene disproves just about every 'phasers-suck' argument out there: they perform admirably against a hull type/materials they have never encountered before, working very well vs mettalic substances to boot and by the size of the hole, are not limited to a low yield (effective yield naturally). It even helps underlining that materials/technologies that work well against phasers are cleary exotic and not something everyone just has lying about.

Sure, the Borg adapted - but that is what they do. They clearly did not change the structural makeup of the cube (it's still the same material) so their newfound phaser-immunity is most likely the result of shields or forcefields.

End result: Phasers vs Dense materials: 1-0.

(With appologies for derailing the thread a bit)

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

The main advantage i see that phasers have is that they can be used at their higher power levels at close range safely compared to a DET weapon that would cause a explosion or a cloud of superheated gas that is gonna cook and kill you and your guys as well. Obviously that is ground based combat but even in space at super close range phasers could vaporise large amounts of a ship and do 0 dmg to the ship using them while DET weapons like nukes, torps ect and the explosions they cause would damage both vessels.

[Praeothmin]

The main advantage i see that phasers have is that they can be used at their higher power levels at close range safely compared to a DET weapon that would cause a explosion or a cloud of superheated gas that is gonna cook and kill you and your guys as well. Obviously that is ground based combat but even in space at super close range phasers could vaporise large amounts of a ship and do 0 dmg to the ship using them while DET weapons like nukes, torps ect and the explosions they cause would damage both vessels.

In fact Riker has specifically stated the exact same thing in Q-Who I think, when he said that a full spread at maximum yield would also damage the E-D, and thus was dangerous...

[Mr. Oragahn]

The problems arise when we have to observe things which our science can't measure, based on either what's put on screen or established by characters. When it involves an artificial system or some kind of godlike power or magic, an equally deus ex machina explanation will work well enough.
Then it gets harder when you have a phenomenon which is natural, yet does things which aren't natural by the laws we know.
Then, technobabble or magic might do, or not, but at this point, begging for a calculation is kinda absurd.

Okay: Let us assume, that you know exactly, how a turbolaser works. But you do not know, how a phaser works.
Please explain to me, how you want to compare them, if you are the opinion, that then it makes no sense to calculate anything.

I never said it makes no sense to calculate anything.
It makes sense to calculate what we can gauge with physics we know. Allocating joule and watt based figures to NDF is impossible. Al we can say, at best, is that x watts were channeled into phasers, but that's all. It's not very useful.
What could be done is trying to know that with x joules used for NDF, x cm^3 of a given matter can be disintegrated, and then work from that. I suppose it's possible for hand phasers for example. It seems possible to guage their power and how much energy you can squeeze out of them. From there, you can guess how much power one phaser/disruptor needs to use to disintegrate a person or a large boulder, when primarily using NDF and very little DET.

To me, it is simple. I look at the effects a turbolaser is doing and "calculate" how much energy is necessary to have such an impact with conventional meanings. Then I'm doing the same with phasers and compare the effects.

At best that's a way to calculate the DET part of a weapon according to principles we know. Sometimes phasers seem to be set to high NDF mode, so you can see a beam hit someone, make very little DET effects (explosion, burn) and then the person is slowly dissolved into lalaland.

It is irrelevant, how exactly each weapon has achieved its effect. Maybe the one has used some kind of chain reaction or has disrupted nuclear bonds via technobabble and the other is a raw DET weapon and has achieved its effect via simple heating. But it is more or less irrelevant. Because the only thing you are usually interested in when evaluating a weapon, is what it does to its target - not how it does it.

We know what it does, but what we really want is to attach a power or energy figure to that.

Stargate's zatnikatel gun is quite a perfect example. The yield of each shot is not particularly high. It acts like an electrical current. First stuns the nervous system, second shot generally kills if it's fired not too far in time after the first shot, but suddenly the third shot, if the target has already been hit twice in a short time, is disintegrated.
You have what's essentially an efficient taser, because the energy spreads all over the body and would probably have a very, very low current and a high voltage to allow the energy to reach far through the whole body. The power could be a very few watts. Then somehow the weapon "charges" the target, so the next shot is sure to kill it, even if it's a Jaffa (stronger than humans).
But then how do you go from that to a weapon which, if it were to literally break all atomic bonds, would rate in high megajoules?

Now hand phasers seem to be able, at times, to make bigger bangs, but not by much really, so the problem is similar. That's why all we are stuck.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The main advantage i see that phasers have is that they can be used at their higher power levels at close range safely compared to a DET weapon that would cause a explosion or a cloud of superheated gas that is gonna cook and kill you and your guys as well. Obviously that is ground based combat but even in space at super close range phasers could vaporise large amounts of a ship and do 0 dmg to the ship using them while DET weapons like nukes, torps ect and the explosions they cause would damage both vessels.

In fact Riker has specifically stated the exact same thing in Q-Who I think, when he said that a full spread at maximum yield would also damage the E-D, and thus was dangerous...

Odd. Would it mean that the E-D could only take something like one or two direct hits from her own torps before going down?

[Praeothmin]

In fact Riker has specifically stated the exact same thing in Q-Who I think, when he said that a full spread at maximum yield would also damage the E-D, and thus was dangerous...

Odd. Would it mean that the E-D could only take something like one or two direct hits from her own torps before going down?

Well, a full spread for the E-D is 10 torpedoes, and we were talking "at maximum yield", whatever it is...

[Mike DiCenso]

Four to five torpedoes are the maximum number we've canoncially seen in a spread. As per "The Nth Degree", the E-D, which was suffering from the Cytherian probe's intensifying energy output was said to be at serious risk of damage from a full-spread of full-yield photon torpedoes.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Four to five torpedoes are the maximum number we've canoncially seen in a spread. As per "The Nth Degree", the E-D, which was suffering from the Cytherian probe's intensifying energy output was said to be at serious risk of damage from a full-spread of full-yield photon torpedoes.
-Mike

Ah so something already was weakening the ship's defenses?

[Praeothmin]

Four to five torpedoes are the maximum number we've canoncially seen in a spread. As per "The Nth Degree", the E-D, which was suffering from the Cytherian probe's intensifying energy output was said to be at serious risk of damage from a full-spread of full-yield photon torpedoes.
-Mike

I thought I had seen 10 Torpedoes fired at one point...

[Mike DiCenso]

Nope. That's never been seen. Five torpedo spreads have been seen in "The Arsenal of Freedom", "Booby Trap", and "Yesterday's Enterprise". Four torpedo spreads have been observed in "Encounter at Farpoint", "Q Who?", "The Nth Degree", and "New Ground". The ten torpedo number is as far as I know strictly a product of the non-canon TNG TM.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Nope. That's never been seen. Five torpedo spreads have been seen in "The Arsenal of Freedom", "Booby Trap", and "Yesterday's Enterprise". Four torpedo spreads have been observed in "Encounter at Farpoint", "Q Who?", "The Nth Degree", and "New Ground". The ten torpedo number is as far as I know strictly a product of the non-canon TNG TM.
-Mike

Well, considering that 1 torpedo was sufficient to completely destroy the BoP in Gen, then 5 full strength torpedoes detonating in proximity of the ship may very well be a danger...

[User15068]

They never said what kind of chain reaction it is, but anything short of scientific junk is not going to cut it. Scientific junk, because it needs to deliver massive amounts of energy back into the core, and even the mantle (as it's obviously liquifying as well).

I dislike the argument "it's scientific junk but it's canon so there". It doesn't matter if it's canon, because if it's scientific junk, then you can't really calc it. It's close to pointless.

A way to begin to rationalize it a fraction of the nonsense... and that's a long way to get there, would be to argue that the core is very big and the planet rather small.
Now the Okudagram shows Data pointing somewhere halfway down the radius.
It would be just as nice as to pretend that the E-D shoved a big flashlight down the shaft (by tuning phasers), which would still dissipate over the distance, but which would still explain the light. . . . lol.

For the seismic activity, I'd say the contraction of the mantle and the core would generate a very unique kind of earthquake, with fractures running top down, from the core.

The gravity changes? That's unfortunately beyond what I know. Aside from the sudden loss of matter - WTF#1 - or a bizarre relation between the planet's geology and spacetime - WTF#2 - I just don't see what can be said.

Sure guy. That's possible too.
Or maybe they have set up - without informing us - gadgets that are expected to strengthen the base. And what we are seeing is only the mild from these gadgets.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Hi!
You mean some structural integrity strengthening device?
The possibilities are just endless as the amount of magitech needed to make that plausible.