SW Firepower debate on SB.com

[sonofccn]

So what did he/she say? I'm not asking for an exact quote

In essence he argued that the plasma torpedo

A). Vaporized an asteriod about 2 miles in diameter and therefor was in the gigaton range in terms of yield

B). Could travel at warp speed, fast enough to keep up with the Enterprise, and therefor could strike an IOM ship 100% without fear of being intercepted.

C).Had light minutes range based on it running at full warp for a minute or so before dissolving.

Now all of this is displayed in the actual episode and while obviously should be open to debate,while I agree the weapon had those ranges I don't think the Romulans could target at such extreme range, what he got instead nitpicks and mental gynmanstics to deny what happened onscreen. My faveriot is when one suggested during the chase scene that the Plasma torpedo was hitching a ride on the Enterprise's warp field despite no suggestion or remote hint that such a thing was occuring.

I've noticed good points are often ignored based simply on who made them.

Such is life. Its not what you know but who you know. :)

[Mike DiCenso]

A). Vaporized an asteriod about 2 miles in diameter and therefor was in the gigaton range in terms of yield

This is actually incorrect as the the plasma torpedo did not vaporize the 2 mile wide asteroid, but enveloped, and then crushed it down to dust and the outpost inside it to debris. However, that still requires gigaton range energy to do that much mechanical work within seconds.
-Mike

[Lucky]

So what did he/she say? I'm not asking for an exact quote

In essence he argued that the plasma torpedo

A). Vaporized an asteriod about 2 miles in diameter and therefor was in the gigaton range in terms of yield

B). Could travel at warp speed, fast enough to keep up with the Enterprise, and therefor could strike an IOM ship 100% without fear of being intercepted.

C).Had light minutes range based on it running at full warp for a minute or so before dissolving.

Now all of this is displayed in the actual episode and while obviously should be open to debate,while I agree the weapon had those ranges I don't think the Romulans could target at such extreme range, what he got instead nitpicks and mental gynmanstics to deny what happened onscreen. My faveriot is when one suggested during the chase scene that the Plasma torpedo was hitching a ride on the Enterprise's warp field despite no suggestion or remote hint that such a thing was occuring.

I always find it odd that debaters will go out of their way to nerf Star Trek when such feats make perfect sense in the setting, but then bend over backwards to argue for capabilities that make no sense for the setting, and are contradicted in that setting(Halo, Star Wars, 40K for example). Heck it makes a certain amount of sense for trek powers to be able to perform a Wong/Saxton DBZ

Trek from TOS on has always had the ability to track, and target things light years away for just about every power. Light speed to FTL weapons just make sense in Trek

I've noticed good points are often ignored based simply on who made them.

Such is life. Its not what you know but who you know. :)

You are not suppose to ignore a counter argument when debating someone.

[Mr. Oragahn]

A). Vaporized an asteriod about 2 miles in diameter and therefor was in the gigaton range in terms of yield

This is actually incorrect as the the plasma torpedo did not vaporize the 2 mile wide asteroid, but enveloped, and then crushed it down to dust and the outpost inside it to debris. However, that still requires gigaton range energy to do that much mechanical work within seconds.
-Mike

Trek weapons, most of the time, odd, sometimes normal, other times, totally WTF. :)

Do you have a link to a youtube clip by chance showing this happening?

I'm not sure what to understand by the description here, and it happens that asteroids can very well be lobes of rock or "sticky" dust loosely held together by minute gravity, so disrupting that...
However, if there was a base on or inside it, it should have been fairly sturdy imho. But then, again, fragmentation is something different.
The ADC gives a yield of 32.8 megatons for fragmentation of rock, with an explosion inside a 3200 meters wide asteroid, and generally I multiply yields by 3 to 4 for surfacic explosions.
Then again if it's a magic weapon that turns stuff to pebbles without any considerable thermal effect...

[Mike DiCenso]

Look up the episode. The weapon is never shown in action beyond the energy blob flying towards the camera of the target outpost or the Enterpise due to the limitations of the special effects possible at the time. What we have are all character descriptions of results and how the weapon works. Spock describes the remains of Outpost two and then three:

"Sweeping the area of Outpost two. Sensor reading indefinite. Double-checking Outpost three. I read dust and debris. Both Earth outposts gone, and the asteroids they were constructed on, pulverised."

Commander Hansen of Outpost four descibes the weapon:

"Outposts two, three, and eight are gone. Unknown weapon. Completely destroyed, even though we were alerted. Had our deflector shield on maximum. Hit by enormous power. First attack blew our deflector shield. If they hit us again with our deflector shield gone. Do you read me, Enterprise?"

Hansen in visual communications with the E-1701 continues after showing his wrecked command center:

"Enterprise, can you see it? My command post here. We're a mile deep on an asteroid. Almost solid iron. And even through our deflectors, it did this. Can you see?"

Hansen reaffirms the high power and describes the nature of the weapon:

"No identification. No answer to our challenge. Only a glimpse of it. Then they fired something at us, some form of high-energy plasma. Fantastic power. And then the whole vessel disappeared. But it's out there somewhere. Our sensors show that much. Enterprise, something coming on our viewing screen, coming at us fast."


Miles wide asteroids not reduced to 10 meter chunks, but down to dust and some debris by a weapon of high power, not any kind of chain-reaction or NDF. When Spock shows a piece of debris from Outpost four during the briefing session later on, it is barely the size of a notebook and Spock says this about the lab analysis of the weapon:

"From the outpost's protective shield. Cast rodinium. This is the hardest substance known to our science."
(He effortlessly crushes it with his hand)

"Lab theorises an enveloping energy plasma forcing an implosion."

So the weapon is confirmed as plasma, and it envelopes the target, then crushes it. So your 132 megaton estimate would be extremely conservative.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Look up the episode. The weapon is never shown in action beyond the energy blob flying towards the camera of the target outpost or the Enterpise due to the limitations of the special effects possible at the time. What we have are all character descriptions of results and how the weapon works. Spock describes the remains of Outpost two and then three:

"Sweeping the area of Outpost two. Sensor reading indefinite. Double-checking Outpost three. I read dust and debris. Both Earth outposts gone, and the asteroids they were constructed on, pulverised."

Commander Hansen of Outpost four descibes the weapon:

"Outposts two, three, and eight are gone. Unknown weapon. Completely destroyed, even though we were alerted. Had our deflector shield on maximum. Hit by enormous power. First attack blew our deflector shield. If they hit us again with our deflector shield gone. Do you read me, Enterprise?"

Hansen in visual communications with the E-1701 continues after showing his wrecked command center:

"Enterprise, can you see it? My command post here. We're a mile deep on an asteroid. Almost solid iron. And even through our deflectors, it did this. Can you see?"

Hansen reaffirms the high power and describes the nature of the weapon:

"No identification. No answer to our challenge. Only a glimpse of it. Then they fired something at us, some form of high-energy plasma. Fantastic power. And then the whole vessel disappeared. But it's out there somewhere. Our sensors show that much. Enterprise, something coming on our viewing screen, coming at us fast."


Miles wide asteroids not reduced to 10 meter chunks, but down to dust and some debris by a weapon of high power, not any kind of chain-reaction or NDF. When Spock shows a piece of debris from Outpost four during the briefing session later on, it is barely the size of a notebook and Spock says this about the lab analysis of the weapon:

"From the outpost's protective shield. Cast rodinium. This is the hardest substance known to our science."
(He effortlessly crushes it with his hand)

"Lab theorises an enveloping energy plasma forcing an implosion."

So the weapon is confirmed as plasma, and it envelopes the target, then crushes it. So your 132 megaton estimate would be extremely conservative.
-Mike

You won't dustify a solid iron asteroid by compressing it.
How do you turn an iron asteroid to dust? With the same technobabble that enables cast rodinium, the hardest substance known to UFP science, to be turned into brittle material.
It actually sounds like a low tech NDF, in that it doesn't turn matter to subparticles or whatever, not even to atoms, but to grains and pieces.
That's very reminiscent of Star Wars' MCPS.
How do you quantify that?

[Mike DiCenso]

You're just trying to hand wave it away now. You can crush iron into dust, but using plasma requires an immense amount of energy and power, which is why Hansen kept reiterating how powerful the plasma torpedo was. In fact this thing was so powerful that it would have utterly destroyed or seriously crippled the E-1701 within it's effective range that they ran from the thing. If it were NDF as you keep clinging to, it would be something that outpost shields and starship shields could largely ignore. The plasma torpedo is very powerful and can do a lot of mechanical work very quickly.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

You're just trying to hand wave it away now.

You think? :)
I'm not going to take as given a yield in megatons for a weapon that is pure technobabble, if that's what you mean.

You can crush iron into dust, but using plasma requires an immense amount of energy and power, which is why Hansen kept reiterating how powerful the plasma torpedo was.

Probably through a grinder, yes, but somehow I don't think this is relatable to our weapon here.
I don't exactly see how the plasma is going to achieve anything like that with thermal energy though.

In fact this thing was so powerful that it would have utterly destroyed or seriously crippled the E-1701 within it's effective range that they ran from the thing. If it were NDF as you keep clinging to, it would be something that outpost shields and starship shields could largely ignore. The plasma torpedo is very powerful and can do a lot of mechanical work very quickly.
-Mike

I'd be more interested in seeing a figure for the mechanical work.

Eventually, I'd suggest that it creates a singularity in the middle of the field.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

The "crushing" comment did seem a little odd but then take into account the guy was inside his facility, a mile inside the asteroid.

When you consider his position and panic the comment regarding being crushed is understandable, after all a simple explosion on the surface would technically be pushing the surface down towards him. Even a subsurface explosion would push the material above it away while pushing the material below it towards the outpost.

I know if i was in the middle of a roid in a outpost getting battered id feel like it was being crushed/smashed from the outside cos it would be.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Spock speaks of an implosion resulting from the energy plasma. It's thus confirmed.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Spock speaks of an implosion resulting from the energy plasma. It's thus confirmed.

Well to be fair pretty much every hollow object implodes when force is applied to the outside of it.

[Praeothmin]

Spock speaks of an implosion resulting from the energy plasma. It's thus confirmed.

Well to be fair pretty much every hollow object implodes when force is applied to the outside of it.

But then how does the Torpedo work?
If it is simply a DET weapon, then the side it hits will get "vaporized" while pushing some of the meteorite through the other side of itself, but that other side will "explode" outward, not inward...

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Spock speaks of an implosion resulting from the energy plasma. It's thus confirmed.

Well to be fair pretty much every hollow object implodes when force is applied to the outside of it.

But then how does the Torpedo work?
If it is simply a DET weapon, then the side it hits will get "vaporized" while pushing some of the meteorite through the other side of itself, but that other side will "explode" outward, not inward...

Well it did appear to be a cloud of some sort rather than a solid missile that explodes on impact and releases all its energy on one spot/side of the target so i see no reason why it would not envelop objects it hits, the smaller the object the more surface area that gets enveloped.

The speed it was traveling would mean that smaller objects like asteroids or starships would be engulfed so quickly (a teeeeny weeeny fraction of a second) it would make it seem that they were being hit at every point it engulfed all at the same time.

Maybe im doing a crappy job of explaining it but think of it as a net flying towards its target and at every point the net touches it is like a nuke going off, now if that net was traveling at c or even faster it would envelop a 300 meter ship or asteroid instantly, (ok technically not instantly but so fast the differance would be not worth calculating) but certainly so fast it would seem like the entire ship was being hitt at all points all at the same time.

[Mike DiCenso]

We know that there has to be some kind of a controlling mechanism to the plasma torpedo since:

1.) The plasma envelopes the target.

2.) The torpedo can chase and overtake starships going full reverse at FTL.

3.) The torpedo can track it's target as seen where the torpedo is fired at the top the of E-1701's viewscreen, but as it closes in shifts downwards to the exact center of it.

So the net analogy can still work, but there is a controlling mechanism running the show once the torpedo has been fired from the warbird.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

We know that there has to be some kind of a controlling mechanism to the plasma torpedo since:

1.) The plasma envelopes the target.

2.) The torpedo can chase and overtake starships going full reverse at FTL.

3.) The torpedo can track it's target as seen where the torpedo is fired at the top the of E-1701's viewscreen, but as it closes in shifts downwards to the exact center of it.

So the net analogy can still work, but there is a controlling mechanism running the show once the torpedo has been fired from the warbird.
-Mike

Or it works along simular lines as the subspace weapon in Insurection.