Starfleet military vs. RL military

For polite and reasoned discussion of Star Wars and/or Star Trek.
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Praeothmin
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Post by Praeothmin » Sun Dec 23, 2007 10:26 am

Cpl Kendall wrote:Time to fire up ROTJ, I have absolutely no memory of this.
It happens after they down some trooper, they swarm in and start clubbing them all over...
They were lifting pretty large rocks over their heads and hitting troops with enough force to at least render them unconcious.
The rocks weren't that big, perhaps between 1/2 a foot to a foot wide, but you're correct about the unconscious part, like I said earlier, the height at which they were dropping those rocks would mean "sleepy-time" for anyone, no matter the helmet you were wearing.
Safe bet that they could apply enough force with a spear to penetrate hockey kit and ruin the meaty goodness inside.
With the right angle, agreed.
I'm sorry but hockey kit is just thin plastic on the outside. Yes it's rounded but a surface has to be fairly hard even if it is rounded to deflect something.
Yup, the plastic isn't that thick, I'd say its about equal in thickness to Stormtrooper armor, but it still seems sturdy enough.
I guess we're simply running on opinions here, so I think the only way to know for sure would be to test it.

You get the spears and the Ewoks, I'll get the hockey gear... :)

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Post by Kazeite » Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:18 pm

Cpl Kendall wrote:Look, I've explained why it wouldn't work.
Sigh...

"Center of the mass, little man" is not an explanation, Kendall. It's a non sequitur. And failed insult attempt.

Let me try again - You have one guy armed with phaser, and other guy wearing body armor on his chest , which, let's assume, can actually stop stun shot.

However, other parts of his body are exposed, therefore, he will be stunned when hit by wide-beam stun shot.

Seriously, what's the deal with this "inverse square law" handwaving? We've seen wide-beam stun shots and they obviously work, so, what gives?

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Post by consequences » Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:51 pm

Kazeite wrote:
Cpl Kendall wrote:Look, I've explained why it wouldn't work.
Sigh...

"Center of the mass, little man" is not an explanation, Kendall. It's a non sequitur. And failed insult attempt.

Let me try again - You have one guy armed with phaser, and other guy wearing body armor on his chest , which, let's assume, can actually stop stun shot.

However, other parts of his body are exposed, therefore, he will be stunned when hit by wide-beam stun shot.

Seriously, what's the deal with this "inverse square law" handwaving? We've seen wide-beam stun shots and they obviously work, so, what gives?
We see individual wide beam shots, rarely, and just about never in full on combat situations where they'd be damed useful(like, oh AR-558? The episode after they crashed the captured Jemhaddar bug when Sisko was specifically trying to avoid killing the nicely bunched up JemHadar? Any other time there've been fewer shooters than targets with the targets being in a single general direction?).

If it was as simple as you are making it out to be, and there isn't some kind of practical limitation to its use, this just makes Starfleet officers a profound waste of oxygen for not using it on every reasonable occasion, starting with Heart of Glory where a security guy has to keep switching targets on two escaped Klingon prisoners rather than wide-beaming them both and just holding down the trigger, and again in Conspiracy where an infected officer fires a single narrow-focus beam when confronted by two targets. That's twice in the first season of TNG.

Then, of course there's the power consumption issue. Let's say that a normal phaser beam hits a circle of six inches diameter, for 28.27 cubic inches. To affect a ten foot diameter circle with equal intensity requires it to sustain the same energy level across 16286 square inches, or over 576 times the area of a normal power shot. This also means it has to push 576 times the normal energy through the phaser aperture. Then, of course, there's the difficulty of gauging the exact distance and therefore beam spread to saturate the desired target area that you need to use on the fly. On top of all of this, if you are fighting an enemy that's in any way competent, they'll be fighting from the best cover and concealment they can find or make, so simply ducking means that you just wasted however much energy to accomplish nothing. And, just to add a little more difficulty, the likelihood of Starfleet blue-on-blue incidents jumps through the roof.

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Post by Cpl Kendall » Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:12 pm

Kazeite wrote:
"Center of the mass, little man" is not an explanation, Kendall. It's a non sequitur. And failed insult attempt.

Let me try again - You have one guy armed with phaser, and other guy wearing body armor on his chest , which, let's assume, can actually stop stun shot.

However, other parts of his body are exposed, therefore, he will be stunned when hit by wide-beam stun shot.

Seriously, what's the deal with this "inverse square law" handwaving? We've seen wide-beam stun shots and they obviously work, so, what gives?
Myself and several people have attempted to explain this to you. In fact Typhonis and consequences explanations are excellent. You simply seem unable to grasp what's actually going on.

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Post by Kazeite » Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:28 pm

consequences wrote:We see individual wide beam shots, rarely, and just about never in full on combat situations where they'd be damed useful(like, oh AR-558?) (...)
Because of the power consumption, for example, as you've noticed.

However, it's not about whether wide-beam shots are practical or not, consequences.

And Kendall, you still don't understand what the argument was about. Allow me to refresh your memory:
Opecoiler: A modern soldier has body armor to protect himself from near-misses and shrapnel-something that Starfleet personnel lack dearly.
Roonder: Nothing a wide-beam stun won't deal with.
Opecoiler: Phasers have typically fared not so well against dense objects. Modern body armor is quite dense and thick.
Me: It also doesn't cover entire body.
And this is where Kendal comes in with: Center of mass (...), center of mass.

And thus came my next question: what does center of mass does have to do with wide-beam setting? Nothing, of course. Modern body armor doesn't cover the entire body - if you hit someone wearing such armor with wide-beam stun, he'll fall.

Now we certainly can now discuss whether using wide-beam setting is feasible or not and how does inverse square law increase power consumption, but the fact remains - your answer was incorrect, Kendall. Indeed, "You simply seem unable to grasp what's actually going on." Don't blame me for that.

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Post by Cpl Kendall » Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:41 pm

Your right, I cocked that up.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Mon Dec 24, 2007 1:51 pm

consequences wrote:Then, of course there's the power consumption issue. Let's say that a normal phaser beam hits a circle of six inches diameter, for 28.27 cubic inches. To affect a ten foot diameter circle with equal intensity requires it to sustain the same energy level across 16286 square inches, or over 576 times the area of a normal power shot.
This is a couple orders of magnitude less than the observed variation in non-negligible thermal effects of phaser shots. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a high-powered widebeam shot to consume thousands of times as much energy, and this is perfectly reasonable.

(And yes, you do get fewer shots that way... which helps explain why it wouldn't be SOP to use wide-beam for anything on stun setting for crowd control.)

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Mon Dec 24, 2007 10:51 pm

Something to note here; not all the wide beams seen are like what Tuvok used against the Voyager bridge crew. Look at the wide beam mode used by Sulu in "The Enemy Within" [TOS1] (three seperate beams), or the widebeam mode that Sisko and Kira used in "The Way of the Warrior" [DS94] during their Changeling hunt wargame (15-20 degree arc only), and Siko using a type-II phaser pistol on widespread beam mode to vaporize a section of rock wall in "Rapture" [DS95] with again what appears to be a coverage arc of 15-20 degrees or so.
-Mike

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Re: Starfleet military vs. RL military

Post by TheRedFear » Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:41 am

Opecoiler wrote:A few scenarios, to compare the quality of Starfleet personnel to RL military servicemen.

1: The Starfleet force sent to hold the communications relay on AR-558 is replaced by a company of US Marines with standard equipment. When the Defiant arrives several months later, what does it find?

2: A simple squad vs. squad battle between a Starfleet security force and a modern US army squad. Both have their standard weapons. The battle takes place in a Vietnam-esque jungle.

3: Fistfight between Starfleet security guard and American soldier.

Who wins in all of them?
1) ANY Real Life Military(And more than a few sci fi ones) is wiped out in the first Jem Hadar assault. I mean really, what are you kidding? Real life Military doesn't have a fraction of the resources needed to counter Jem Hadar subspace mines, personal cloaking, nor enough ammo to last for any length of time. By the time the Defiant arrives all that's left of the RL Military is whatever the scavenger animals havn't picked off the bones yet.

2) You're really a fan of one-sided curbstomps aintcha? One starfleet soldier with one Type-2 Handphaser wins this and the only skill he needs is knowing how to put widebeam setting on. Making it a whole unit of Trek troops is just pointlessly cruel. What have you got against the US Military?

3) Draw. Depends on the skill of the individuals involved. Some Starfleet peopel fight better than others. Some real life soldiers fight better than others.

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Post by TheRedFear » Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:44 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:Something to note here; not all the wide beams seen are like what Tuvok used against the Voyager bridge crew. Look at the wide beam mode used by Sulu in "The Enemy Within" [TOS1] (three seperate beams), or the widebeam mode that Sisko and Kira used in "The Way of the Warrior" [DS94] during their Changeling hunt wargame (15-20 degree arc only), and Siko using a type-II phaser pistol on widespread beam mode to vaporize a section of rock wall in "Rapture" [DS95] with again what appears to be a coverage arc of 15-20 degrees or so.
-Mike
Which just means the beam can be adjusted to be as wide or narrow as the shooter requires.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Dec 25, 2007 2:41 pm

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:If the beam is set to be 10 meters wide, no matter the range, then the intensity won't drop much because of the distance.
Auto-adjusting via rangefinder? While theoretically quite possible, I don't know that we've ever seen anything that would support such a setting.
So you mean it's set with an angle, and so, at higher ranges, the energy will have to be diffused over a wider area/band, making the weapon less efficient over a given range, cause it couldn't be able to compensate by pumping out more energy...

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Post by SailorSaturn13 » Wed Dec 26, 2007 2:49 am

I see alot of chain reactions with rocks and various targets, a little short on actual direct effects. Just because a rock magically gets eaten away doesn't follow that armour grade ceramic will. And buddy with the burns, that could easily caused by a few hundred degrees of heat.

Well, unless proven otherwise, we are to assume that whatever the phaser does, it works against ALL normal materials, EXCLUDING those built specifically to resist phasers. This is also logical as even IF they use a chain reaction, it must be at subatomic level (rocks don't burn chemicallly) and there all normal materials look exact;y the same , containing nuclons.


see, so the fact that the engagement range in ST is about fifty meters

Yes, as they fight aboard ships.


Regarding jamming transporters:

"We jam their signals they jam ours...
tricorders don't work'

So yes, jamming.

AS forr legacy: today Reactors have output in gigawatts. 24th century reactors of such size - tera- and petawatts. How much can today's jammers get? kilowatts?

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Re: Starfleet military vs. RL military

Post by Opecoiler » Wed Dec 26, 2007 5:17 am

TheRedFear wrote: 1) ANY Real Life Military(And more than a few sci fi ones) is wiped out in the first Jem Hadar assault. I mean really, what are you kidding? Real life Military doesn't have a fraction of the resources needed to counter Jem Hadar subspace mines,
Subspace mines are pathetic compared to real ones. A conventional 20th century minefield layed arround the array could have prevented its seizure entirely.

Subspace mines are just terror weapons, and are no better than conventional booby traps in some ways.

It should be noted that the Starfleet force suffered less than one casualty a day, from both the minefield and Jem'hadar attacks. Said Starfleet force was wearing far less protective gear than the ones that the average American soldier has on.
personal cloaking,
Which they didn't use in the final charge. Rather than cloak and infiltrate, they simply charged in. Such a charge only got as far as it did because Starfleet didn't have a weapon rapid-firing enough to gun them down as they moved through the chokepoint.

The marines will not be lacking in automatic weapons. A company will have an M240 medium machine gun and a lot of SAWs, in addition to grenades and a 60 mm mortar for indirect attacks.

And US Marines are trained to deal with stealthy enemies, so a literal cloak won't be too surprising if the Jem'hadar do use them. Jem'hadar don't strike me as too impressive up close, seeing as how baseline humans with weapons not as nasty as a bayonet can defeat them in HTH.
nor enough ammo to last for any length of time.
Typically modern armies run off a constant supply line, which was not the case on AR-558 (Otherwise the Defiant's mission would have been totally routine). I would thus give the Marines large packages of food, water, and ammunition to duplicate the circumstances of AR-558 as much as possible.

While ammo will be a problem, there is the possibility of scavenging weapons from dead Jem'Hadar.

By the time the Defiant arrives all that's left of the RL Military is whatever the scavenger animals havn't picked off the bones yet.
Or a depleted yet still fighting Marine force and a lot of dead Jem'Hadar.
2) You're really a fan of one-sided curbstomps aintcha? One starfleet soldier with one Type-2 Handphaser wins this and the only skill he needs is knowing how to put widebeam setting on. Making it a whole unit of Trek troops is just pointlessly cruel. What have you got against the US Military?
Cpl_Kendall and consequences have dealt with widebeam phasers-the fact that the wider they get, the weaker they get, and the fact that they are infrequently used. They certainly weren't used in the battle on AR-558.

On the other hand, the American soldiers have automatic weapons with far superior ergonomics than the hand phaser, grenades, body armor, and better camouflaged uniforms.

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Re: Starfleet military vs. RL military

Post by l33telboi » Wed Dec 26, 2007 11:58 am

Opecoiler wrote:Subspace mines are pathetic compared to real ones. A conventional 20th century minefield layed arround the array could have prevented its seizure entirely.
Not in a verse that employs tech the way Trek does. A modern mine-field would be too easily detected by your bog-standard tricorder and then detonated by phasers (or sweep the entire area with wide-beam setting to make them all go boom).

The subspace mines don't only hide in subspace and pop out randomly because they're meant to induce a measure of fear, they also hide so that they can't be detected and disabled.
Cpl_Kendall and consequences have dealt with widebeam phasers-the fact that the wider they get, the weaker they get, and the fact that they are infrequently used. They certainly weren't used in the battle on AR-558.
How 'weak' will they get? You do realize that even the stun setting is going to be more then enough to incapacitate a soldier.

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Re: Starfleet military vs. RL military

Post by GStone » Wed Dec 26, 2007 2:12 pm

Opecoiler wrote:
TheRedFear wrote: It should be noted that the Starfleet force suffered less than one casualty a day, from both the minefield and Jem'hadar attacks. Said Starfleet force was wearing far less protective gear than the ones that the average American soldier has on.
It should also be noted that starfleet's medical tech is far superior than ours, such as the dermal regenerator.
The marines will not be lacking in automatic weapons. A company will have an M240 medium machine gun and a lot of SAWs, in addition to grenades and a 60 mm mortar for indirect attacks.
Since it would require a huge cache of ammo for a modern military, striking the weapon depot wouldn't be out of the question to get rid of some of the heavier weapons.
Jem'hadar don't strike me as too impressive up close, seeing as how baseline humans with weapons not as nasty as a bayonet can defeat them in HTH.
Maybe not to look at. They aren't invulnerable, but they don't eat, don't drink, don't sleep, don't have sex, are stronger and have more stamina than even a soldier that can run 26 miles in less than a day and not be winded in the slightest. The only thing needed to keep them going is white.
Cpl_Kendall and consequences have dealt with widebeam phasers-the fact that the wider they get, the weaker they get, and the fact that they are infrequently used. They certainly weren't used in the battle on AR-558.
The jemmies were forced to go through a bottle neck when they attacked. Why would you set your phaser to wide beam and fire it, ensuring that you make the bottle neck wider for them? Even a kill (but, not quite disintegrate) setting would damage the bottleneck, even if it was from brute force over the long term. What they were protecting wasn't mobile as far as I know.
On the other hand, the American soldiers have automatic weapons with far superior ergonomics than the hand phaser, grenades, body armor, and better camouflaged uniforms.
That type of ergonomics is only useful, if there is no auto-adjust for targeting for off axis firing. Phasers have this. When Sisko and co were on the planet with the jemmies, he called out to the jemmies that they were targeted and they had phasers and phaser rifles. And phaser rifles have also shown the ability to fire off-axis.

The ergonomics of real life guns is also designed around being able to better take the recoil that's generated. There is no appreciable recoil shown with phasers. So, the hand can stay in a relaxed position. With the over 90 degree angle, it isn't that much different than many weapons that have such a handle, like the M1903.

Seen here:

http://tri.army.mil/LC/cs/csi/m1903.jpg

The variations seen in the handle angle of the type 2 phasers are very similar, if not the same see by rifles that are used by both civilians and military. And where is the desitination of the recoil going when you use a rifle? That's right. Into the shoulder, not the forearm or even the hand.

The point of the design of handles for handguns is so that when there is blowback, the hand is already covering a surface perpendicular to the direction of the recoil to better control it. You have some variations from straight up and down and at a small angle, as the top of the handle leans forward, but it isn't at the angle of the handle of an M1903, which (again) is designed to let the shoulder take the brunt of the recoil.

So, with the ergonomics of a type 2 phaser, it can rest comfortably and probably a little loosely. With the auto-targeting, zero appreciable recoil (though, I'd wager there is no recoil-- probably from some kind of circular particle accelerator(s) inside) and off-axis firing, there is a smaller learning curve. There's also an increased chance of hitting your target in a weaker state, where you need a certain amount of strength to keep a slugthrower from flying all over the place with the recoil. We've seen you don't even need to keep your firing arm straight.

I have a ruger P94 and I love it. But, with what's shown with the design ideas of just the type 2 phaser, those used in my P94 doesn't compare.

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