Reliability Issues With The Star Trek Technical Manuals

[Lucky]

No, they would not have needed to view the field as a danger, they in fact viewed the satellites as a danger.

Dax: "Maybe they [the satellites] had something to do with our missing runabout."
O'Brien: "Exactly..."

Also, we don't know how far they pulled up, they could have moved several hundred thousand km, which would still be in orbit and be out of range of a low-orbit satellite system using some of the greater weapons ranges.

Satellite=Damping Field

It says what I used it to claim, when in a damping
field they tend to notice.

Chain of events from the two episodes:
VOY: enter damping field -> done unto by field -> (officers:) Hay! Somethin' is not working! -> Notice damping field
DS9: notice lack of transmission -> leave area -> Notice damping field.

The difference being that in DS9: "Battle Lines" they never indicated anything to be wrong with the runabout. In every other instance with a damping field, they tend to notice and go 'Hay! Somethin' is not working!'

But the treated the damping field as the only threat.

Maybe they use them to bull's-eye wamp rats?

They expect phaser rifles to damage shuttles which have both navigational deflectors and shields.

Yeah, it means that weapons with a greater yield do more damage.

No it does not. It means weapons of the same yield will be effective against different things. It's no different then in the real world.

So, were you being shot at would you say:
a)OMG! I'm being shot at with a M-16!
b)OMG! I'm being shot at with bullets carrying 6 kJ of K.E. (made up a number here)
c)none of the above.

(Hint: the answer is (a); and definitely not (d), even though there is still a circle on your answer sheet you can fill in.)

So, from this mental exercise we can conclude that you get the general gist of the weapon's danger/power based on what weapon it is.

This doesn't support your claim that all that matter is the yield. Saying something is an M-16 or even just saying assault rifle gives at least a general idea of the weapons capabilities. I except your concession since you have no counter argument..

Saying something is a L.A.S.E.R. tells us nothing about its destructive capabilities beyond the fact if shoot photons. There is no upper limit to the yield of a L.A.S.E.R., and the focus is equally important, but Worf stating a ship was armed with L.A.S.E.R. was enough to make Picard laugh at them, and not consider them a threat. It is also child simple to create a perfect defense against photons with gravity conturing technologies we see in Star Trek. L.A.S.E.R. can't penetrate the navigational deflector.

No... A phaser rifle is expected to leave similar burns to what would occur through a shuttle's shields when struck by capital ship scale phaser fire.

Where does it say capital ship?

Yep, I do.

That would of course be the default assumption, so as there is nothing to contradict it, it stands.

Yes, ignore all the torpedos used, and the self replicating mines.

Let's take a look at these "unfounded assumptions" of mine, shall we?

1)The runabout was hit with a _GJ weapon.
____Odd, that's in the episode. Maybe the others are what are unfounded.

But wait, I've run out of things I originally assumed. Of course after your reply I must have come up with some "unfounded assumptions" to counter your argument, right?

1)The runabout was hit with a _GJ weapon.
____Wait... Already did that one.
2)O'Brian was concerned that: satellites - runabout - transponder < good.
____Funny, that seems to be right there in the episode as well.
3)...I think I ran out again. Oh well.

It's never stated to be a gigajoule weapon.

THe only thing Miles and Dax are shown to be worried about is the damping field. If they were worried about weapons on the satellites then they would have moved farther way because just about every weapon in Star Trek has ranges in thousands of Kilometers at least. Heck, we see weapons that can reach from one planet to another with FTL beams, and they consider being off the mark by a few hundred meters to be bad.

So? Humans aren't walking around generating billions of gigawatts, nor do we cary large quantities of antimatter in our pockets.

Which is why it is strange that the Runabout didn't explode, but instead lost power to all systems at once.

There is no mention of such a thing being used in the episode.

The type of energy collects seen in Booby trap fit with the events in Battle Lines.

Doesn't the Whale Probe disable everything with a damping feild in the movie?

[359]

Satellite=Damping Field

No,
Satellite = Satellite
and
Damping_Field = Damping_Field

But the treated the damping field as the only threat.

No, they treated the satellites as the treat, the damping field was just another thing there.

They expect phaser rifles to damage shuttles which have both navigational deflectors and shields.

No, the expected a hit from a phaser rifle to create the appearance (burns) of being hit by a capital ship weapon with shields and navigational deflectors.

No it does not. It means weapons of the same yield will be effective against different things. It's no different then in the real world.

No,

This doesn't support your claim that all that matter is the yield. Saying something is an M-16 or even just saying assault rifle gives at least a general idea of the weapons capabilities.

Exactly. "OMG! I'm being shot at with phasers!" gives you a general feel of how powerful the weapon is. Of course there are exceptions, such as Dukat's freighter in DS9: "Return to Grace", but for the most part all of the powers are of technological parity.

I except your concession since you have no counter argument.

Want a different style counter argument? Go back a few posts and you're bound to bump into one.

Saying something is a L.A.S.E.R. tells us nothing about its destructive capabilities beyond the fact if shoot photons. There is no upper limit to the yield of a L.A.S.E.R., and the focus is equally important, but Worf stating a ship was armed with L.A.S.E.R. was enough to make Picard laugh at them, and not consider them a threat. It is also child simple to create a perfect defense against photons with gravity conturing technologies we see in Star Trek. L.A.S.E.R. can't penetrate the navigational deflector.

The idea is that most races who have the ability to compete with the Enterprise generally abandon primitive lasers and go for phasers or disruptors. So when a ship, which in many ways is inferior flies up to you, and locks on primitive forms of weaponry do you not assume their weapon yield is on a similar scale. The point is that lasers had not been used on Federation ships for such a long time.

Yes, ignore all the torpedos used, and the self replicating mines.

What do random torpedoes and self-replicating mines have to do with Kira's sensor readings and their relation to the weapon?

It's never stated to be a gigajoule weapon.

Yes, it is. Kira reads off the build up to the discharge.

THe only thing Miles and Dax are shown to be worried about is the damping field. If they were worried about weapons on the satellites then they would have moved farther way because just about every weapon in Star Trek has ranges in thousands of Kilometers at least. Heck, we see weapons that can reach from one planet to another with FTL beams, and they consider being off the mark by a few hundred meters to be bad.

We don't know how far they moved away, if the satellites were in low 1,000 km orbit and the runabout moved up to a lunar orbital altitude of 400,000 km that would place them outside observed weapons ranges.

Which is why it is strange that the Runabout didn't explode, but instead lost power to all systems at once.

So? It got a couple bits broken but not others.

The type of energy collects seen in Booby trap fit with the events in Battle Lines.

There is no mention of such a thing being used in the episode.

[Mith]

1)The power packs storing about a kiloton actually makes sense with what is stated and shown in the shows. A Federation phaser rifle has an output of about 1 gigawatt according to Major Kira.

Major Kira stated taht a Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle ha a 4.7 MJ power capacity, not a 1 gigawatt output:

Return to Grace

KIRA: This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four point seven megajoule power capacity, three millisecond recharge two beam settings.

And no, milisecond does not mean you can take away the firing time of the weapon. If the beam takes .25 seconds to discharge 4.7 MJs, then it's not going to be a GW weapon, it's going to be an 18.8 MW weapon.

So if a phaser was able to fire a 1 gigawatt beam at its maximum setting it would be able to fire that beam for about 1 hour with a kiloton stored in its power supply.

Wrong again. At Kira's claim, it could run for ten days.

You really need to look more closely as to what is stated in the shows as to how the technology works if you think that the tech manuals resembles the shows in any way. >_<

Yeah, I've looked over it several times now...it seems pretty accurate. The only departure are typically really face-palming ones in the show or where one could see a conceivable advancement.

For Example:
Show VS Tech Manual: Phasers

At triggering, the charge barrier field breaks down in 0.02 picoseconds Through the rapid nadion effect the LiCu 521 segmented emitter converts the pumped energy into a tuned phaser discharge. As with the ship's main phasers, the greater the energy pumped from the pre-fire chamber, the higher will be the percentage of nuclear disruption force (NDF) created. At low to moderate settings, the nuclear disruption threshold will not be crossed, limiting the phaser discharge to stun and thermal impact resulting from simple electromagnetic (SEM) effects.

SULU: That's the same red rock. 


KIRK: My phaser didn't cut through it. 


MCCOY: Whatever it is, it has a mighty high melting point. 


KIRK: Eight thousand degrees centigrade. It looks like igneous rock, but infinitely denser. 

(Adjusts his phaser and tries again.) 

MCCOY: This whole planet must be made up of this substance, covered over by top soil.

So? This was made in freaking TOS. How is that even a remotely fair comparison?

RIKER: Data, tell me about noranium. It vaporises at? 


DATA: Two thousand three hundred fourteen degrees. Of course, noranium carbide 


RIKER: Thank you, Data.


LAFORGE: Setting seven ought to do it. 


RIKER: Three, two, one, now! 

(They fire at some of the metal junk, which creates a smoke screen.) 

RIKER: Enterprise, four to beam up.

I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to contradict the TM. There may be a way to determine how effective a phaser will be in regards to its NDF component.

PICARD: The good news. 


DATA: The motion of the dust has created a great deal of electrostatic energy in the upper atmosphere. With a modified phaser blast, we could create a shock front that would encircle the planet and ionise the particles. 


PICARD: That would be like striking a spark in a gas-filled room. 


DATA: With one exception, sir. The particles would be converted into a high energy plasma which our shields could absorb and then re-direct harmlessly into space. 


PICARD: Turn the Enterprise into a lightning rod? 


DATA: Precisely, sir. 


PICARD: And the bad news? 


DATA: If our phaser discharge is off by as little as point zero six terawatts, it would cause a cascading exothermal inversion. 


PICARD: Meaning? 


DATA: We would completely burn off the planet's atmosphere.

I've actually re-adjusted my calculations. I presume now that the phasers are accurate, where as I just kept the order of magnitude between the Phaser II and the element array. Since the difference was that the element was 2,805x more powerful than the phaser, the phaser array element is actually 2.805 GWs. Even multiplying it by 200 gives 561,000 GWs. Going by 900 elements, we'd get 2.524 TWs. In any case, .06 TWs is only 60 GWs, so this is something that either calculation could afford.

TORRES: Harry, I need those secondary systems back online. 


KIM: I can't. They're fried. 


SEVEN: Lieutenant, what are you doing? 


TORRES: Patching the hole before it opens. 


KIM: That'll never hold. 


TORRES: It'll hold a minute or two, and with any luck that's all we need. Seven, take over here. I need an EPS relay. 


KIM: Er, there's one in the transporter control circuitry. 


SEVEN: The panel is sealed. 


TORRES: Good. Get away from it. I need a phaser. Watch out. I don't know if this is going to work. 


KIM: Glad you decided to come along.

And this is about what?

The phaser described in the TNG Technical manual doesn't describe the phaser in the shows.

Most "inconsistencies" are simply people not bothering to look at the evidence as to how the technologies work, and what is being dealt with I find.

More like the inconsistencies are often brought upon people in the show, throwing out a figure or applying technology in a way it was never meant to be applied. For example, since we're going to start nitpicking to try and discredit the TM, why not go to Threshold? You know, where finding a new form of dylithium crystals makes the ship go faster?

This is entirely illogical. Dylithium crystals don't do that. All they do is help control and properly channel the release of high levels of matter/antimatter reactions. So according to Voyager's Threshold, Voyager could generate the infinite energy required to go at Warp 10 because their crystals are so efficient so as to allow them to do so.

Also, apparently anti-protons are the means to cure mutations. Who knew?

The shows are actually very consistent with each other with the technical manuals being the outlier much like the Incredible Cross-sections books are for Star Wars.

Ah yes, because 45.88 megatons? Totally at odds with everything Star Trek.

For as often as I hear people say Star Trek is inconsistent I have never seen examples of what they are talking about.

Have you actually watched it? What about that one episode in Voyager where if they don't pour some bullshit orange powder into the system to keep the warpcore from locking up, the ship won't be able to restart its antimatter reactor because it will lock up? Despite the fact that we see this isn't true in previous episodes of Star Trek, such in TNG, when the warpcore went offline? Or how about when Troi tells Data that an officer who is compromised will immediately have his access codes changed--and yet throughout Voyager anyone who was a member of the crew will never have their access codes changed--even months after they betrayed the crew or if the captain went aboard a Borg Cube.

Of fuck me, how about warp speeds? Those are wildly inconsistent. The TM tries to re-council them and people have pointed out the concept of subspace highways, but that would be people again, trying to cover up for existing contradictions.

You do realize that the tiny phase cannons on the NX-01 were intended to be at least terawatt weapons, and that low gigawatt weapons are consistently stated to be things like phaser rifles correct?

Since when? The yield is stated in the episode they're installed in as 500 GWs. They managed to perform a controlled overload to 5 TWs, but that doesn't suddenly changed their intended yield. And how are their weapons rated in the GWs? The only weapons of that order were stated to be the Breen anti-vehicle weapon that could penetrated 4.6 GW shielding and some weapon producer in the Delta Quadrant with a TW energy weapon.

Heck, Season 1 Episode 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation requires far higher outputs from the Phasers then the Technical Manual says is possible, and the Technical manual seems to have not been printed until season 3 or 4.

Exactly what are you referring to?

To make matters worse, the Fusion reactor is about 4 feet high, 6 feet long, and about 3 feet wide

I'm sorry, what?

But that is not how Kirk or any other character describes phasers. It makes you no better then Sci-Fi Fan.

Kirk describes phasers as DET weapons that somehow do things to safely dissipate the energy.

Which is again; bullshit. Nor does it really make sense. Why do you want to dissipate energy? Why not have means to direct said energy or only eliminate the energy that's harmful to you? You could for example, fire at a enemy and have the energy directed in the path of his allies, rather than yourself. Or at least a fraction of that energy remaining.

And how does increasing the yield actually make it more powerful? Why wouldn't you just adjust the weapon so that it allows more energy to remain rather than magically phasing it away?

If the information was not intended to be accurate then it would not have been put in a book calling itself a technical manual, but then the Star Trek The Next Generation writer's Technical Manual which the book we are talking about is based on was not written until the series was several years into production, but seems to disregard what had happened in those early seasons.

As for their reasoning, it is badly flawed.
.

Yeah, because everything that happened in Season 1 and 2 is totally flawless, right? Hell, older TNG episodes disregarded them! Like Picard chucking a book out of the holodeck, despite the fact that in an earlier episode, it allowed a snowball to fly off the holodeck, as well as Data taking a piece of paper off.

The authors having less of a sense of scale then the script writers. Federation ships need to be able to have speeds that would enable them to cross the galaxy in a few months to a few years for the series to make sense because space is big. Even if you have 100,000 ships that can travel at 100,000c, you will only be able to visit a tiny fraction of the Milkyway galaxy in the time that Star Trek humans have been in space.

Ah yes, so obviously its the TM that's wrong, instead of the writers--when the writers consistently portray the show as ships being unable to cross the galaxy in a matter of months or a few years.

Yeah...isn't that a sign--even a little bit, that you're wrong? Oh no, it can't be.

[Picard]

Saying something is a L.A.S.E.R. tells us nothing about its destructive capabilities beyond the fact if shoot photons. There is no upper limit to the yield of a L.A.S.E.R., and the focus is equally important, but Worf stating a ship was armed with L.A.S.E.R. was enough to make Picard laugh at them, and not consider them a threat. It is also child simple to create a perfect defense against photons with gravity conturing technologies we see in Star Trek. L.A.S.E.R. can't penetrate the navigational deflector.

Size of a ship can give you a general idea on how powerful its weapons are, and lasers are indicative of low technology level. They certainly wouldn't laugh at a laser-armed Borg cube.

[Lucky]

Saying something is a L.A.S.E.R. tells us nothing about its destructive capabilities beyond the fact if shoot photons. There is no upper limit to the yield of a L.A.S.E.R., and the focus is equally important, but Worf stating a ship was armed with L.A.S.E.R. was enough to make Picard laugh at them, and not consider them a threat. It is also child simple to create a perfect defense against photons with gravity conturing technologies we see in Star Trek. L.A.S.E.R. can't penetrate the navigational deflector.

Size of a ship can give you a general idea on how powerful its weapons are, and lasers are indicative of low technology level. They certainly wouldn't laugh at a laser-armed Borg cube.

This line of logic is flawed.

I can build a crossbow and bolt that is more advanced then some firearms in use, and the crossbow and bolt could easily be more dangerous.

A 16 inch gun on an Iowa Class battle ship is more powerful then many more advanced weapons currently in use.

The M-2 has remained virtually unchanged since its introduction in 1933.

Missiles have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years as have guns. Just because something is old technology in no way automatically makes it ineffective.

Star Fleet/Earth never used L.A.S.E.R. weapons in Star Trek. In Enterprise, they are shown going straight from plasma weapons to phase weapons.

[Mith]

This line of logic is flawed.

I can build a crossbow and bolt that is more advanced then some firearms in use, and the crossbow and bolt could easily be more dangerous.

A 16 inch gun on an Iowa Class battle ship is more powerful then many more advanced weapons currently in use.

The M-2 has remained virtually unchanged since its introduction in 1933.

Missiles have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years as have guns. Just because something is old technology in no way automatically makes it ineffective.

Star Fleet/Earth never used L.A.S.E.R. weapons in Star Trek. In Enterprise, they are shown going straight from plasma weapons to phase weapons.

Uh, the Borg do use laser weapons. We saw this in TNG's Q Who, where the Borg begin slicing into the saucer section with, and I quote "some form of laser".

[Lucky]

This line of logic is flawed.

I can build a crossbow and bolt that is more advanced then some firearms in use, and the crossbow and bolt could easily be more dangerous.

A 16 inch gun on an Iowa Class battle ship is more powerful then many more advanced weapons currently in use.

The M-2 has remained virtually unchanged since its introduction in 1933.

Missiles have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years as have guns. Just because something is old technology in no way automatically makes it ineffective.

Star Fleet/Earth never used L.A.S.E.R. weapons in Star Trek. In Enterprise, they are shown going straight from plasma weapons to phase weapons.

Uh, the Borg do use laser weapons. We saw this in TNG's Q Who, where the Borg begin slicing into the saucer section with, and I quote "some form of laser".

The Borg use a L.A.S.E.R. on naked hull.

[Lucky]

Major Kira stated taht a Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle ha a 4.7 MJ power capacity, not a 1 gigawatt output:

KIRA: This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four point seven megajoule power capacity, three millisecond recharge two beam settings.

And no, milisecond does not mean you can take away the firing time of the weapon. If the beam takes .25 seconds to discharge 4.7 MJs, then it's not going to be a GW weapon, it's going to be an 18.8 MW weapon.

Read the quote Mith, Kira instating that at full power a single pulse will be 4.7 mega joules, and there will be a .003 second pause between the pulses to charge a capacitor.

1second/.003milliseconds=333.333333333

333.333333333*4.7=1566.66666667

1567 MJ or 1.567 GJ fired every second

So where is my math wrong?

Wrong again. At Kira's claim, it could run for ten days.

You are coming off as needlessly antagonistic right in this post. Is that your intent?
-----
As per Kira's quote you provided(and I'm pretty sure I already had provided) the Cardassian phase disruptor fires a 1.567 GW beam at full power.

1 Ton = 4.184

1 Kiloton = 4184 Giga Joules

4184/1.567= 2670.07019783

The Cardassian Phase Disruptor can fire at full output for 2670.07019783 seconds.

60 seconds in an hour
2670.07019783/60= 44.5011699638

24 hours in a day
44.5011699638/24=1.85421541516

So the Phase Disruptor would be able to fire at full power for about 1.8 days if it had a kiloton power source. I seem to have accidently confused Ton and Kiloton.

-----

YOu are confusing Joules with watts. 4.7 MJ is not the wattage of of the beam. If you're going to be an ass while telling someone they made a mistake you need to make sure you don't make a mistake as bad or worse. You're confusing watts and joules.

Yeah, I've looked over it several times now...it seems pretty accurate. The only departure are typically really face-palming ones in the show or where one could see a conceivable advancement.

For Example:
Show VS Tech Manual: Phasers

At triggering, the charge barrier field breaks down in 0.02 picoseconds Through the rapid nadion effect the LiCu 521 segmented emitter converts the pumped energy into a tuned phaser discharge. As with the ship's main phasers, the greater the energy pumped from the pre-fire chamber, the higher will be the percentage of nuclear disruption force (NDF) created. At low to moderate settings, the nuclear disruption threshold will not be crossed, limiting the phaser discharge to stun and thermal impact resulting from simple electromagnetic (SEM) effects.

SULU: That's the same red rock. 


KIRK: My phaser didn't cut through it. 


MCCOY: Whatever it is, it has a mighty high melting point. 


KIRK: Eight thousand degrees centigrade. It looks like igneous rock, but infinitely denser. 

(Adjusts his phaser and tries again.) 

MCCOY: This whole planet must be made up of this substance, covered over by top soil.

So? This was made in freaking TOS. How is that even a remotely fair comparison?

Star Trek is Star Trek, if you're going to write a tech manual for it you need to include everything that came before. They ignored entire seasons ofTNG

RIKER: Data, tell me about noranium. It vaporises at? 


DATA: Two thousand three hundred fourteen degrees. Of course, noranium carbide 


RIKER: Thank you, Data.


LAFORGE: Setting seven ought to do it. 


RIKER: Three, two, one, now! 

(They fire at some of the metal junk, which creates a smoke screen.) 

RIKER: Enterprise, four to beam up.

I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to contradict the TM. There may be a way to determine how effective a phaser will be in regards to its NDF component.

Aside from the fact that Vengce Factor shows setting 7 raised some ore's temperature thousands of degrees and caused true vaporization with no sign of a magical go away effect? Setting 7 is almost half way to 16.

Then you have Riker shooting a young woman with what appears to be setting 8 and getting a go away effect.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... tor293.jpg

PICARD: The good news. 


DATA: The motion of the dust has created a great deal of electrostatic energy in the upper atmosphere. With a modified phaser blast, we could create a shock front that would encircle the planet and ionise the particles. 


PICARD: That would be like striking a spark in a gas-filled room. 


DATA: With one exception, sir. The particles would be converted into a high energy plasma which our shields could absorb and then re-direct harmlessly into space. 


PICARD: Turn the Enterprise into a lightning rod? 


DATA: Precisely, sir. 


PICARD: And the bad news? 


DATA: If our phaser discharge is off by as little as point zero six terawatts, it would cause a cascading exothermal inversion. 


PICARD: Meaning? 


DATA: We would completely burn off the planet's atmosphere.

I've actually re-adjusted my calculations. I presume now that the phasers are accurate, where as I just kept the order of magnitude between the Phaser II and the element array. Since the difference was that the element was 2,805x more powerful than the phaser, the phaser array element is actually 2.805 GWs. Even multiplying it by 200 gives 561,000 GWs. Going by 900 elements, we'd get 2.524 TWs. In any case, .06 TWs is only 60 GWs, so this is something that either calculation could afford.

1) You seem to be leaving out words here so if I'm misunderstanding what an element array is please forgive me as there is no such thing in Star Trek as far as I can find.

3) The point that you seemed to miss is: that there is something stopping the energy delivered by the phaser beam from interacting with the planet's atmosphere. We see this pretty much every time a phaser is fired.

2) Why should we assume that the length of a phaser array has anything to do with how powerful the output is? I fail to recall any time where they couldn't just send more power through them, and you have events like Best of Both Worlds where the phasers shoot anti-matter.

TORRES: Harry, I need those secondary systems back online. 


KIM: I can't. They're fried. 


SEVEN: Lieutenant, what are you doing? 


TORRES: Patching the hole before it opens. 


KIM: That'll never hold. 


TORRES: It'll hold a minute or two, and with any luck that's all we need. Seven, take over here. I need an EPS relay. 


KIM: Er, there's one in the transporter control circuitry. 


SEVEN: The panel is sealed. 


TORRES: Good. Get away from it. I need a phaser. Watch out. I don't know if this is going to work. 


KIM: Glad you decided to come along.

And this is about what?

Much like in Matter of Time we see a phaser has a force field component to it. All Torres seems to do is feed more power through a normal hand phaser, and it reenforces a damaged hull.

The simple fact is that phasers are not simply particle beams. It seems like phasers shoot just about anything you would call a DEW(plasma, em, antimatter, etc) and then some, and phasers seem to incorporate things to limit collateral damage as NDF is extremely violent on its own.

Best of Both Worlds seems to be the best source for technical information on Shields and Phasers. It actually (tries) explain what they mean by frequency.

More like the inconsistencies are often brought upon people in the show, throwing out a figure or applying technology in a way it was never meant to be applied. For example, since we're going to start nitpicking to try and discredit the TM, why not go to Threshold? You know, where finding a new form of dylithium crystals makes the ship go faster?

This is entirely illogical. Dylithium crystals don't do that. All they do is help control and properly channel the release of high levels of matter/antimatter reactions. So according to Voyager's Threshold, Voyager could generate the infinite energy required to go at Warp 10 because their crystals are so efficient so as to allow them to do so.

Also, apparently anti-protons are the means to cure mutations. Who knew?

I suggest you check what Dilithium does in TNG: Pen Pals. Dilithium is basically fuel for for a large number of groups in Star Trek. It seems to behave similarly to the quartz only much more powerful.

If Star Trek Matter/Anti-Matter reactors were anything like those designed in the real world then there would be no need for dilithium or produce highly unstable/explosive materials.

It's kind of a plot point that the Phoenix in First Contect reach the warp threshold which is 1c before going to warp. Star Trek sub-light drives can seemingly reach at least 1c.

-----

I like to think that "Year of Hell" reconed Threshold from continuity, but at least Threshold had good acting, makeup, some good dialog, and doesn't take itself too seriously. It's certainly better then Dear Doctor.

Ah yes, because 45.88 megatons? Totally at odds with everything Star Trek.

When dealing with dial-a-yield explosive weapons that can easily create a crater larger then Chix Club you kinda do need some really big booms like we see on screen a few times.

Have you actually watched it? What about that one episode in Voyager where if they don't pour some bullshit orange powder into the system to keep the warpcore from locking up, the ship won't be able to restart its antimatter reactor because it will lock up? Despite the fact that we see this isn't true in previous episodes of Star Trek, such in TNG, when the warpcore went offline?

So no episode names even?

Or how about when Troi tells Data that an officer who is compromised will immediately have his access codes changed--and yet throughout Voyager anyone who was a member of the crew will never have their access codes changed--even months after they betrayed the crew or if the captain went aboard a Borg Cube.

Sounds like the codes need to be changed manually, or Voyager didn't have everything it was suppose to when it left. Both fit what we see.

Of fuck me, how about warp speeds? Those are wildly inconsistent. The TM tries to re-council them and people have pointed out the concept of subspace highways, but that would be people again, trying to cover up for existing contradictions.

From a big picture point of view, ship speeds are relatively consistent. Ships have no trouble getting from planet to planet in a reasonable amount of time, and can easily cross from one end of Federation space to the other.

From a specific example to specific example within episodes it gets seemingly less consistent, but then it is shown enough that travel times are more then "Distance* Light-years Per Hour".

Since when? The yield is stated in the episode they're installed in as 500 GWs. They managed to perform a controlled overload to 5 TWs, but that doesn't suddenly changed their intended yield.

You're confusing Watts and Joules. It is stated in Silent Enemy that the phase cannons are rated to have a maximum output of 500 GJ.

And how are their weapons rated in the GWs? The only weapons of that order were stated to be the Breen anti-vehicle weapon that could penetrated 4.6 GW shielding and some weapon producer in the Delta Quadrant with a TW energy weapon.

No, a terrawatt particle beam rifle is considered comparable to phaser rifles used on Voyager. Voy: Retrospect

Kira describes a Cardassian phase disruptor rifle as being a gigawatt weapon and slightly more powerful then a Federation phaser rifle. DS9: Return To Grace.

Exactly what are you referring to?

I know you play dumb from time to time, but this is rediculous.

Star Trek the Next Generation
Season: 01
Episode: 01
Title: Encounter at farpoint

Picard casually feeds a space jellyfish the size of a Borg cube and who's flesh can be mistaken for starship hull enough energy to heel it. The whole point is that all the SJ needed was the energy.

I'm sorry, what?

I provided the quotes already. If you want pictures stop being a jackass and just ask.
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It's a tiny little thing no matter how you cut it.

Which is again; bullshit. Nor does it really make sense. Why do you want to dissipate energy? Why not have means to direct said energy or only eliminate the energy that's harmful to you? You could for example, fire at a enemy and have the energy directed in the path of his allies, rather than yourself. Or at least a fraction of that energy remaining.

Phasers aren't always shown limiting collateral damage. The one time we see a NDE beam it causes the target to explode violently though. Normally people in Star Trek want to limit collateral damage for one reason or another just like in the real world.

Cost Of Living
Season: 05
Episode: 20
The only explicitly stated N.D.E. Beam blasting an asteroid
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TNG: The Vengeance Factor
Season 3
Episode 09
Violent Results
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Vaporization at setting 7
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Gentle go away beam at setting 8 which should not have happened according to the Tech manual
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And how does increasing the yield actually make it more powerful? Why wouldn't you just adjust the weapon so that it allows more energy to remain rather than magically phasing it away?

You expect 1 joule to have the same effects as 1 megajoule? Sorry, but even the Tech Manual gives higher yields for more powerful weapons, and if you control how much collateral damage there is you can also adjust the amount of collateral damage you create. The fact you assume there will always be as little as possible is silly. Spock still nearly died do to collateral damage in Omega Glory even with the gentle go away effect.

Yeah, because everything that happened in Season 1 and 2 is totally flawless, right? Hell, older TNG episodes disregarded them! Like Picard chucking a book out of the holodeck, despite the fact that in an earlier episode, it allowed a snowball to fly off the holodeck, as well as Data taking a piece of paper off.

You really are as stupid as you seem if you think that is an argument for the tech manuals. Every season ignores the tech manuals.

Ah yes, so obviously its the TM that's wrong, instead of the writers--when the writers consistently portray the show as ships being unable to cross the galaxy in a matter of months or a few years.

Yeah...isn't that a sign--even a little bit, that you're wrong? Oh no, it can't be.

What the writers might do years into the future is irrelevant. The Tech Manual had 2 or 3 seasons to draw from, but ignored them.

Your example is rather poor given how easy it would be to make it so things can't leave the holodeck.

-----

Actually the writers do consistently show star ships in Star Trek do have the speed to cross the Milky way within maybe 15ish years easily every time they have ships criss crossing the Federation. You see it in every season.. Heck, in The Chase we have a clear example of the E-D traveling a good 20,000 to 50,000 light years in about a week.

Look at it this way Mith, In season 4 they cross the Federation something like two or three times without spending most of their time on screen stopped at a planet. Between 04X01 and 04X14 they have been sitting still for about 59 to 80 days out of the year, and in 04X15 they are secretly studying a planet on the verge of its first warp drive, and could have been there for weeks if not months, and there are still 11 more episodes in the season, and they all take at least a days time.

[Lucky]

Setting 8: Disruption Effects; discharge energy 15,000 for 1.75 seconds, SEM:NDF ratio 1:3. Cascading disruption forces cause humanoid organisms to vaporize, as 50% of affected matter transmissions out of the continuum. The damage index is 120; all unprotected matter is affected and penetrated according to depth/time.

NEW ANGLE (OPTICAL)

as Yuta whirls, reaches to touch Chorgan -- and Riker
FIRES.

The stun charge shakes Yuta up -- but she remains
conscious, recovers her footing. Riker changes the
phaser setting, FIRES again. It knocks Yuta back. But
she keeps coming.

Riker has no choice. He adjusts the phaser --

RIKER
Don't --

Yuta reaches for Chorgan again --

And Riker FIRES. Setting eight. Vaporize.

And Yuta's gone.

Screen Captures That Support The Script
DVD
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HD
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A picture showing what the various settings look like. The problem is this appears to be a Deep Space Nine prop.
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[Lucky]

No,
Satellite = Satellite
and
Damping_Field = Damping_Field

You can't separate the satellites from the damping field as they will always be in the same place, and the satellites will always be where the damping field is strongest.

No, they treated the satellites as the treat, the damping field was just another thing there.

Please provide quotes that the satellites posed any threat aside from the damping field when Dax and Miles ran from them.. The only quote concerning the satellites being armed that i can find is Sisko telling Dax and Miles they are armed, but no one ever notices weapons on the satellites.

There are no sees weapons on the satellites, but the satellites are armed. That sounds like a weaponized damping field. THis is supported by Dax and Miles only leaving the damping field.

No, the expected a hit from a phaser rifle to create the appearance (burns) of being hit by a capital ship weapon with shields and navigational deflectors.

Except capital ship weapons aren't going to leave marks a few inches across. The cross-section of a capital ship phaser beam is the size of the bleeping shuttle at the very least.

JULIANA: I'm going to monitor the density of the rock layers and adjust the strength of the particle beam as we go. That should minimise the seismic stress that we generate while we're drilling. 


LAFORGE: Data, I reconfigured the phasers to create the most highly focused particle beam possible.

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No,

You need to do more research my friend

You can have the same gun fire bullets that are of different designs because some configurations are better for doing somethings then others. Little changes to a bullet can make large changes to its effectiveness at doing certain things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet

Different forms of radiation react differently when hitting the same object. This is why you need different forms of protection for dealing with.

LAFORGE: The Tanugans are right. Something was fired at the reactor core just before transport. 


DATA: The energy signature would seem to indicate a phaser-like blast. 


WESLEY: Well, it wasn't the commander's phaser. It couldn't have been. There's another answer. We're just not seeing it. 


DATA: Was there anything else in the lab capable of creating this kind of energy discharge? 


LAFORGE: Not that I saw. Besides, how do you account for the fact that it came from Commander's Riker's exact position. Damn it, I should have stayed with him. 


WORF: Commander, sensors indicate a radiation burst on deck thirty nine, outside cargo bay twelve. 


DATA: Source? 


WORF: Unknown, sir. 


DATA: Computer, identify type of radiation. 


COMPUTER: Emission is not consistent with any known radiation. 


WORF: It is subsiding, sir.

[Corridor]

(Wesley is scanning a blister and hole in the bulkhead) 

WESLEY: What kind of radiation could do this? Make any sense to you? 


LAFORGE: I don't recognise it. Not even the main deflector puts out that kind of spillage. 


WESLEY: Where would it be coming from? 

LAFORGE: I don't know, Wes, but whatever it is, it's capable of putting a hole in solid duranium.

Strange they are talking about radiation rather then power/energy. No, the characters expect different forms of radiation to effect shields and armor differently, and consider the form of radiation to be at least as important as the output, and this actually matches reasonably well with episodes like TNG: Survivors.

Exactly. "OMG! I'm being shot at with phasers!" gives you a general feel of how powerful the weapon is. Of course there are exceptions, such as Dukat's freighter in DS9: "Return to Grace", but for the most part all of the powers are of technological parity.

No, TNG: The Wounded makes it very clear that the Cardassians are far behind the United Federation of Planets. Cardassian ships are not on par with Federation, Klingon, or Romulan ships, and freighters are seemingly always less powerful then warships and less advanced then warships.

-----

You seem to be confusing output not being the only relevant aspect of Star Trek weapons when it comes to Star Trek shields with output not being relevant at all. You do not deal with a mote the same way you deal with a wall.

Want a different style counter argument? Go back a few posts and you're bound to bump into one.

Going back a few posts wouldn't matter. You arguments require we ignore evidence I've provided.

The idea is that most races who have the ability to compete with the Enterprise generally abandon primitive lasers and go for phasers or disruptors. So when a ship, which in many ways is inferior flies up to you, and locks on primitive forms of weaponry do you not assume their weapon yield is on a similar scale. The point is that lasers had not been used on Federation ships for such a long time.

The idea is idiotic, and was created by butt hurt verses debater who have no idea what a "no limits fallacy" actually is. It's rather easy to use NDE fields and gravity to make a perfect defense against mundane things.

The dialog says LASERs can't get through the navigational deflector, and no stipulations are given. The ships would be damaged/destroyed every time it used the warp drive if photons and other subatomic particles could get through the navigational deflector while the ship is traveling at speeds faster then light.

REED: Pardon me, but if I don't realign the deflector, the first grain of space dust we come across will blow a hole through this ship the size of your fist.

What do random torpedoes and self-replicating mines have to do with Kira's sensor readings and their relation to the weapon?

They are weapons who's yield is not dependent on how much energy is needed to launch them. It would not matter what the power buildup was if the weapon relies on an explosive warhead to damage the target, and since we never see the weapon fire, and no one even seems to see a weapon on the satellites then this is as good a possibility as any.

Yes, it is. Kira reads off the build up to the discharge.

Kira never states out the actual output is. The Satellite fires, and then all the Runabout's systems magically fail at once. We are never told the output of the satellite's weapon.

We don't know how far they moved away, if the satellites were in low 1,000 km orbit and the runabout moved up to a lunar orbital altitude of 400,000 km that would place them outside observed weapons ranges.

Observed weapon ranges are measured in AU in Star Trek.

Isn't Earth's moon about 400,00 kilometers from Earth at the farthest point in its orbit?

This seems a lot closer then ever 300,000 kilometers.
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So? It got a couple bits broken but not others.

It is consistent with energy damping weapons we later see in Deep Space Nine.

There is no mention of such a thing being used in the episode.

There is no mentioning of a lot of things in the episode, but you're assuming things even though those assumptions don't really stand up to logic.

How are the Satellites being powered? It does not seem like anyone bothers to monitor the system, and that would likely rule out something like fusion or antimatter. Something like conventional solar power seems out do to the damping field, and it would not seem to allow a sudden increase in output we see. The obvious method of gathering energy would be the damping field itself, and it would explain the sudden increase in output when the Runabout enters

Why doesn't anyone notice obvious weapons on the satellites? There doesn't seem to be a reason to hide the a weapon on the satellites, and weapons are normally visible to the naked eye in Star Trek. It shouldn't require something being charged for Kira to realize his ship in in danger.

[359]

, how about warp speeds? Those are wildly inconsistent. The TM tries to re-council them and people have pointed out the concept of subspace highways, but that would be people again, trying to cover up for existing contradictions.

If you wander on over to the thread here about warp speed you'll find that out of over fifty distinct examples only a small handful of examples fit in line with the tech manual's scale for warp, with that scale being on the extreme low-end.

[359]

Lucky,

I had started to write a reply to your post only to realize I'm not entirely in the mood to go over all of this, again. The point I was initially making was that Star Trek is internally inconsistent (if you need further proof of that take a look all the examples linked to above in the warp speed thread). In the end the argument over DS9: "Battle Lines" isn't worth further effort. We have both been making roughly the same argument for the past 2.5 pages, you haven't budged my position and I do not appear to have affected yours. So, that being the case, I will agree to disagree with you on the subject and leave it at that.