Mike DiCenso wrote:Several major problems here with this.
- The phasers in "Mask" were stated as being set to widespread, and that is what we see as the phasers first fire in the normal narrow beam, then within a couple seconds widen out many times this and were continuing to widen even when the scene cut. I know Oragahn doesn't like this fact as it goes against his whole thesis, but it was stated and shown, and would allow for even heating of the comet's outer layers as well as reduce fragmentation from rapid thermal expansion.
I'm curious as to how you're going to prove that spreading near exawatt firepower over a wide arc is not going to pulverize the ice faster than you can actually melt it.
We already see the oddity of a concentrated petawatt firing (10% of max) isn't already breaking the ice but niftly makes it disappear, or shrink downwards.
It mostly looks like it's being NDFed with residual heat that piles up. And eventually, if you argue that ice doesn't break because they're not already at 10% of max firepower, then what's the level, and how do you expect ice not to crack and the comet to break apart, and why do you think the comet fragmenting wouldn't actually help making the process much faster?
They wouldn't even need to melt all the ice, not because as I pointed out they had planned to melt only half of it since they'd stop as they'd have reached the core, but because the station was right under the surface of the comet, and so there was no point even attempting vaporizing all the ice of the hemisphere they faced. They sheer application of energy would act as a thruster to the block of ice and propel it away after the entirety of the station would be dislodged.
That's going by visuals of course, but going with dialogue will certainly not help either, since without visuals we have absolutely no time frame at all.
Note that I don't deny the widening. There's no allusion to that in my post because I don't see how relevant it is.
- Captain Tracy's killing of the Yangs is also somewhat flawed as we see thoughout the episode that the guy loved running around firing his phaser on full disintegration mode. He uses this several times on-screen when he vapes Lt. Galloway, the redshirt of the week, then a computer Spock was trying to rig to send a message for help to the Enterprise (Spock suffers life-threatening injuries since he was next to it clearly indicating whatever it is phasers do on this setting is not completely without dangerous effect to those nearby), and then when chasing Kirk through the streets of the village, Tracy fires and misses Kirk, hitting a rain barrel, and making it vape away.
Prior to the final Yang attack, and before Kirk and company arrived on the scene, he had killed hundreds of Yang raiders, which did leave bodies, or some remains behind that Spock and Galloway while out scouting the area could find along with abandoned phaser power packs. Tracy may still have tried to scare them off with a massive show of force at that time, leaving bodies as a warning, but when push came to shove, he opened up with everything he had.
That you don't know.
I did consider attempts at scaring them off with big booms and other impressive displays of firepower, although nothing says this happened, but obviously the awesome display of firepower didn't stop the Yangs from sending thousands of men at his group, and therefore Tracy would have had to quickly rethink his position and it's quite obvious that against large numbers he had to settle on the levels which would be good enough to kill and that's all, considering that they were stuck there with very limited ammo.
His tendency to use disintegration later on can be entirely related to the arrival of new ammo packs and UFP officers threatening his power.
In this context, two to three digit kilojoule shost per Yang is damn logical and reasonable, and 1 MJ is really pushing it, although that's the figure I went with, which kinda makes it a high end.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the Kohm henchmen probably only had minimal training with the phasers they had stolen from the Enterprise landing party, so we cannot expect them to use the phasers properly as a trained Starfleet captain or other personel would.
They don't auto-aim anymore? Not to say that they'd be settled to what's considered good enough for them. You wouldn't want these guys to start firing modern anti-tank levels of firepower when they have minimal training. Not that it would take much training either: shorts burts, aim in the direction, press button. Nothing fancy. It's probably even easier than using a modern firearm by a long margin.
- One the "The Pegasus", the E-D and
Pegasus were far more than 2 km below the surface of the asteroid as once the cloak engages and the E-D stars moving, it takes several seconds for them to reach the still glowing plug and then a second or two passing inside the rock that Worf reports that they have passed through 2 kilometers of the asteroid and are within a kilometer of the surface. Thus three km total. You can see the entire scene
here from 1:00 onward. The total depth into the asteroid teh two ships were at is probably closer to 4 km given the time it took the E-D to reach the rock.
-Mike
I already stated three kilometers, and it's obviously not really "far more" than two, especially at the scale of a ship such as the E-D.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Mr Oragahan wrote:The most amusing aspect of this is that the tritanium has been melted, yet the vegetation around the plank
You can't be serious. The planet had been rendered lifeless for some time given how some many of the structures were buried or looked serverely uncared for. What you were seeing was probably relatively recent planet growth. You can see in the video
here that the weapon and equipment was completely covered in vines and other growth. Given the rather tropical forest type vegetation, this is not suprising as it only takes months or a few years to get overgrown like that. So no big suprise in that we do not see any scorched trees or plants.
-Mike
You could be right. I was under the impression that this happened earlier but I missed Picard's suggestion that this may have taken place during the Romulan wars. A while back, in other words.
It's a secondary observation though, nothing important in regards to my arguments.
