My recently started blog - need suggestions

[Mr. Oragahn]

If we want to put a number on that... I don't know where to start. Beams just hit the thing on and on, until at some point it goes pop like if some barrier broke or something.
Exploding a head would probably be one order of magnitude above what a powerful sniper rifle can do at short range.

If you watch it in slow motion or find good quality screencaps, you can see what appears to be smoke or steam expanding rapidly from inside Remmick's head, again suggesting they super-heated his skull and brain.

Sure something explodes, and there is *some* vapor, but not much. The point is that the explosion doesn't take place where the beams hit, and the damage doesn't occur right off the bat.

As for how the creature disappeared, it's NDF, but I didn't notice neither Riker nor Picard changing the settings on their weapons.
Is there a "nadion part per billion" threshold, or something similar to grays (the unit), that triggers NDF or something?

No, the NDF doesn't exist, the creature burned it's way out of poor Remmick, which indicates it as the queen or whatever of the parasite creatures that was may have had some knd of light shield since it got burned away and adter it was gone there was a thick cloud of smoke coming from the hole in Remmick's torso where it was.

Well again there could be smoke, people have often considered that NDF could also come with some traditional heat effects, and sometimes not, but it's dead clear that the creature gets disintegrated. It vanishes, it's eaten away by the beams. It doesn't get vaporized literally. That would require energy levels rather vast that would have made it explode violently and quite graphically, much more than anything that happened, and at the very least in a way much closer to the way the head poped than what happened to the mother creature.

[Mike DiCenso]

Sure something explodes, and there is *some* vapor, but not much. The point is that the explosion doesn't take place where the beams hit, and the damage doesn't occur right off the bat.

Um, that's not quite correct. Picard's phaser beam (easily identifiable because it is twice the width of Riker's Type-I phaser's beam) hits about dead center of Remmick's chest, while Riker's hits him in the head, and Remmick's head explodes from the center after a couple seconds and flesh being stripped off the skull. This explosive effect is very much in line with what we saw earlier in the season with a similar phaser in "Hide and Q" as seen here where they test fire a phaser on a boulder that explodes rather spectacularly.

So it would seem to me that Riker and Picard for whatever reason had their phasers on different settings, at least initially.

Well again there could be smoke, people have often considered that NDF could also come with some traditional heat effects, and sometimes not, but it's dead clear that the creature gets disintegrated. It vanishes, it's eaten away by the beams. It doesn't get vaporized literally. That would require energy levels rather vast that would have made it explode violently and quite graphically, much more than anything that happened, and at the very least in a way much closer to the way the head poped than what happened to the mother creature.

The creature doesn't, but it was clear that it had some abilities the little parasites did not, which included the ability to burn it's way out of Remmick's chest, so I don't see that as necessarily a contradiction, and the smoke or steam that was quite evident lends itself to what happened more to DET than some magical NDF. The quote from "A Taste of Armageddon" supports not only high energies for a phaser on disruptor mode, but a substantially different disintegration mechanism from the standard SDN NDF theory.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Sure something explodes, and there is *some* vapor, but not much. The point is that the explosion doesn't take place where the beams hit, and the damage doesn't occur right off the bat.

Um, that's not quite correct. Picard's phaser beam (easily identifiable because it is twice the width of Riker's Type-I phaser's beam) hits about dead center of Remmick's chest, while Riker's hits him in the head, and Remmick's head explodes from the center after a couple seconds and flesh being stripped off the skull. This explosive effect is very much in line with what we saw earlier in the season with a similar phaser in "Hide and Q" as seen here where they test fire a phaser on a boulder that explodes rather spectacularly.

So it would seem to me that Riker and Picard for whatever reason had their phasers on different settings, at least initially.

You miss my point. I say that the beam doesn't make the head explode the moment it touches it, and the moment the head explodes, it's obvious it comes from inside, not from the point of impact.

Well again there could be smoke, people have often considered that NDF could also come with some traditional heat effects, and sometimes not, but it's dead clear that the creature gets disintegrated. It vanishes, it's eaten away by the beams. It doesn't get vaporized literally. That would require energy levels rather vast that would have made it explode violently and quite graphically, much more than anything that happened, and at the very least in a way much closer to the way the head poped than what happened to the mother creature.

The creature doesn't, but it was clear that it had some abilities the little parasites did not, which included the ability to burn it's way out of Remmick's chest, so I don't see that as necessarily a contradiction,...

Non sequitur.
The disappearance of the creature is typical of a NDF effect, down to the colour.
By all means, contrary to your claim, it is a NDF effect in action.
It certainly does not look like what happened to the chest of the man when the creature poured light or whatever to dissolve it.

... and the smoke or steam that was quite evident lends itself to what happened more to DET than some magical NDF.

On the head, yes there is DET there, obviously, and there's also some DET in the region around the chest and inside it, but it's minimal in comparison to what's needed to explode a hear.
The application of energy on the head it still weird: there's a charge effect though and the skin is dissolved away nevertheless with no steam. The skin begins to dissolve where the beam hits but that is not the case for the head.

The quote from "A Taste of Armageddon" supports not only high energies for a phaser on disruptor mode, but a substantially different disintegration mechanism from the standard SDN NDF theory.
-Mike

I'm not disputing the output we could imagine from aToA here, I'm disputing the mechanisms of destruction in "Conspiracy".

[Picard]

These are new posts/pages I made (I just obtained all six SW movies, and some of these posts benefited from that):

Proton torpedo yield
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/p ... yield.html

Sensors range
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... ished.html

Canon
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/canon.html

Turbolaser firepower
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/t ... power.html

Starship combat ranges
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/c ... ished.html

Star Wars ground combat
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... ombat.html

Star Trek ground combat
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... ombat.html

Planet Destruction
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/p ... ished.html

I also updated "Die is Cast firepower" and "Hand Phasers" pages.

[Mike DiCenso]

You miss my point. I say that the beam doesn't make the head explode the moment it touches it, and the moment the head explodes, it's obvious it comes from inside, not from the point of impact.

No, I get it all right, but I think you are wrong. The head probably got burrowed through by the beam, headting the flesh as it went, stripping off the outer layers of skin on the side of the beam impact, and sufficently heating up the skull in 2 seconds to cause it to burst.

Non sequitur.
The disappearance of the creature is typical of a NDF effect, down to the colour.
By all means, contrary to your claim, it is a NDF effect in action.
It certainly does not look like what happened to the chest of the man when the creature poured light or whatever to dissolve it.

No, the creature is of an usual nature not at all like the smaller ones, and Riker's phaser, which should not have been altered in setting should have cause the creature to burst apart as did Remmick's head, and we saw earlier that Picard's phaser was set to kill in a way that did not cause serious physical injury. Therefore the disintegration mode is not in evidence and the creature's disappearence my be due to it's own unsual nature when hit by the phasers.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Turbolaser firepower

On that subject, the scene you are refering to is the one where the ISD Avenger is chasing the Falcon out of the asteroid field, yes? If so, then look at it more closely, you will see that those are flack bursts, not hits on asteroids. If you look at the earlier scene of an ISD shooting various asteroids, you can see that those asteroid when scaled to the width of the TL beams only works out to between 1.5 to 10 meters diameter.
-Mike

[Picard]

I am currently making my estimates for Starfleet ship numbers. I will post link here when I'm finished.

[Mr. Oragahn]

You miss my point. I say that the beam doesn't make the head explode the moment it touches it, and the moment the head explodes, it's obvious it comes from inside, not from the point of impact.

No, I get it all right, but I think you are wrong. The head probably got burrowed through by the beam, headting the flesh as it went, stripping off the outer layers of skin on the side of the beam impact, and sufficently heating up the skull in 2 seconds to cause it to burst.

... and after burrowing like 10 cm beneath the skull, it magically deposits kaboom particles and the head explodes.
How exactly do you plan to ignore that? It's painfully obvious that the explosion is internal, following an equally obvious NDF dissolving of the flesh.
A burrowing beam has no reason to suddenly make stuff explode like if it obeyed different laws than DET, unless it precisely did.
Also notice that there's no ejecta despite your claim of burrowing.

As I said, we've seen phasers and disruptors fire against a target with no significant effects until the target would burst. The recent example I brought is the Jem'hadar bugs chasing Odo's Runabout in some ice asteroid field (DS9: Treachery, Faith and the Great River).
The other example is Picard ordering the projector dish of the E-D to be recalibrated in order to emit a powerful a "disruptive nuclear effect" beam: The asteroid didn't explode right when hit but with a delay (TNG: Cost of Living).

Non sequitur.
The disappearance of the creature is typical of a NDF effect, down to the colour.
By all means, contrary to your claim, it is a NDF effect in action.
It certainly does not look like what happened to the chest of the man when the creature poured light or whatever to dissolve it.

No, the creature is of an usual nature not at all like the smaller ones, and Riker's phaser, which should not have been altered in setting should have cause the creature to burst apart as did Remmick's head, and we saw earlier that Picard's phaser was set to kill in a way that did not cause serious physical injury. Therefore the disintegration mode is not in evidence and the creature's disappearence my be due to it's own unsual nature when hit by the phasers.
-Mike

And yet the same phaser did NDF-dissolve flesh a few seconds earlier.
The evidence is totally clear on that. The disappearance of the creature shows the same NDF symptoms of the disappearance of the flesh on the skull, and no similarity to the luminous acidic power demonstrated by the creature. The effects are totally different. Plus the effect continued as the phasers were still firing at the creature, while the creature was largely gone. It's harder to claim that the effect was caused by the creature, even while the very same creature was being destroyed, instead of saying that it was caused by weapons still firing at it.
The orange glowing NDF fringe-wave is also totally consistent with other NDF cases from other episodes.

[Picard]

Here is my fleet numbers page. I did numbering not only for Starfleet but for other powers too:

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... fleet.html

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Here is my fleet numbers page. I did numbering not only for Starfleet but for other powers too:

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... fleet.html

No Sovereign-class starships?.

[Picard]

Here is my fleet numbers page. I did numbering not only for Starfleet but for other powers too:

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... fleet.html

No Sovereign-class starships?.

We did not see any in Dominion War, so I could not do any numbering. But I don't think there is more than dozen-or-so Sovereign-class ships, maybe even less.

[Picard]

Newly finished post - planetary defences

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/p ... ished.html

Update to shipboard phaser firepower post

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... asers.html

[Mike DiCenso]

Star trek planetary shields

We know of theatre shields, but there is no evidence of planetary shields.

This is incorrect as planetary shields as existed in Trek as far back as TOS. The first example being the shield protecting the Tantalus penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" that at the very least blocked transporters. The second and more formidable one appears in "Whom Gods Destroy" which was projected from the Elba II Asylum dome and was powerful enough to resist the firepower of the E-1701's main phaser banks even at it's weakest point on the side of the planet opposite the asylum.

Nothng conclusive is mentioned throughout the movies, TNG and DS9, though in episodes like "Gambit, Part 1", there is at least theater coverage shielding for a small scientific outpost along with phasers and possibly photon torpeodes. However VOY's "Year of Hell, Part 2" implies strongly that even relatively primitive starfaring civilizations ought to have them, and "Nightingale" actually shows one in operation protecting the Kraylor homeworld from bombardment and invasion by the Annari fleet blockading it.
-Mike

[Picard]

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/t ... ished.html

[The Dude]

Star trek planetary shields

We know of theatre shields, but there is no evidence of planetary shields.

This is incorrect as planetary shields as existed in Trek as far back as TOS. The first example being the shield protecting the Tantalus penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" that at the very least blocked transporters. The second and more formidable one appears in "Whom Gods Destroy" which was projected from the Elba II Asylum dome and was powerful enough to resist the firepower of the E-1701's main phaser banks even at it's weakest point on the side of the planet opposite the asylum.

Nothng conclusive is mentioned throughout the movies, TNG and DS9, though in episodes like "Gambit, Part 1", there is at least theater coverage shielding for a small scientific outpost along with phasers and possibly photon torpeodes. However VOY's "Year of Hell, Part 2" implies strongly that even relatively primitive starfaring civilizations ought to have them, and "Nightingale" actually shows one in operation protecting the Kraylor homeworld from bombardment and invasion by the Annari fleet blockading it.
-Mike

Theres a "planetary defences" line in TMP as well isn't there?