StarDestroyer.Net BBS

just wondering what the official stuff is about these weapons, like if they can go through solid matter as well as shields.
Plus something like which magical element makes them work like they do, and random field babble.

Actually, they're just more powerful torpedos. Apparently, Photons had reached their limit in terms of damage and they created Quantoms. They're still put to shame by the weapons of that other scifi universe though.

According to the DS9 Tech Manual, the quantum torpedo is supposed to generate an eleven-dimensional space-time membrane that is twisted up and then isolated from the background vacuum, and then a huge flood of zero point energy is suddenly generated. And that's only part of the technobabble on the quantum torpedo.

The whole thing is obviously partially inspired by thermonuclear weapons, since the 50-odd isoton quantum torpedo actually requires an uprated 21.8 isoton photon torpedo warhead to power the zero-point initiator.

Above all, though, everything sounds cooler with quantum tacked on the front of it, and coolness increases the isoton yield.

So if you wrote "Bad Motherfucker" on the side of a Photon torpedo, would it magically destroy a Culture ship?

SPOOFE wrote:So if you wrote "Bad Motherfucker" on the side of a Photon torpedo, would it magically destroy a Culture ship?

Only if Samual "Mr. Bad motherfucker" L. Jackson was the captain of the ship that fired it.

Patrick Ogaard wrote:The whole thing is obviously partially inspired by thermonuclear weapons, since the 50-odd isoton quantum torpedo actually requires an uprated 21.8 isoton photon torpedo warhead to power the zero-point initiator.

What exactly is an isoton?

In the real world, the prefix iso means equal.

Macross wrote: What exactly is an isoton?

In the real world, the prefix iso means equal.

The dipshits that writer for ST probably don't know that!

SPOOFE wrote:So if you wrote "Bad Motherfucker" on the side of a Photon torpedo, would it magically destroy a Culture ship?

Depends, are B&B in charge?

paladin wrote:

Macross wrote:What exactly is an isoton?

In the real world, the prefix iso means equal.

The dipshits that writer for ST probably don't know that!

Gee, no shit.

Macross wrote:What exactly is an isoton?

In the real world, the prefix iso means equal.

It's a way to make the writers not look stupid by accident, the same way they started measuring computer data in "kiloquads" and "megaquads". The meaning of the prefix "iso" has changed in the 400 years between now and the TNG era. That the writers continue to look stupid, presumably by accident, is an unrelated problem.

BTW "Iso" is Finnish for "Big". Though I do doubt that the writers had that in mind when they came up with it.

SPOOFE wrote:So if you wrote "Bad Motherfucker" on the side of a Photon torpedo, would it magically destroy a Culture ship?

Sorry.

That would give us a Star Trek movie with an unacceptable audience age rating. In the US that would definitely require an R rating, or a show on cable television.

Only kewl stuff acceptable for primetime viewing is kewl enough to boost the KLF (Kewlness Lethality Factor).

But, of course, were the torpedo deployed with such undignified graffiti unworthy of cultured Federation sensibilities, it would cause an immediate quantum flux phase inversion cascade in the gridfire generating system, ripping the Culture ship apart in a titanic explosion just small enough to not blow up the Starship firing the torpedo.

RedImperator wrote:

Macross wrote:What exactly is an isoton?

In the real world, the prefix iso means equal.

It's a way to make the writers not look stupid by accident, the same way they started measuring computer data in "kiloquads" and "megaquads". The meaning of the prefix "iso" has changed in the 400 years between now and the TNG era. That the writers continue to look stupid, presumably by accident, is an unrelated problem.

That would appear to be a painfully accurate summary.

Rye wrote:just wondering what the official stuff is about these weapons, like if they can go through solid matter as well as shields.
Plus something like which magical element makes them work like they do, and random field babble.

Nobody really knows what they do and why they exist. They just seem like blue torpedoes, and I think that they move a little more slowly than the normal ones, but how they work, what they do, and what makes them better has never been resolved in canonical episodes. However, it is known that they cannot pass through solid matter or shields (ref. First Contact), and they act for all intents and purposes like more powerful torpedoes.

Master of Ossus wrote:

Rye wrote:just wondering what the official stuff is about these weapons, like if they can go through solid matter as well as shields.
Plus something like which magical element makes them work like they do, and random field babble.

Nobody really knows what they do and why they exist. They just seem like blue torpedoes, and I think that they move a little more slowly than the normal ones, but how they work, what they do, and what makes them better has never been resolved in canonical episodes. However, it is known that they cannot pass through solid matter or shields (ref. First Contact), and they act for all intents and purposes like more powerful torpedoes.

Well, there is a story going around that Quantum Torpedoes are the result of a flub by Avery Brooks. They were filming a battle scene on the Defiant, and instead of saying "Fire Photon Torpedoes", he said "Fire Quantum Torpedoes" instead. The producers liked the term so much, they made it a new Trek weapon. I dont know if this story is true or not.

Typical Trek:

Patrick Ogaard wrote:According to the DS9 Tech Manual, the quantum torpedo is supposed to generate an eleven-dimensional space-time membrane

They call it a Quantum Torpedo & then cook up a technobabble explanation apparently based on a misinterpretation of the 11-dim extension of the five 10-dim superstring theories. (membranes are <11-dim mathematical constructs in a 11-dim space in this theory AFAIK)

Apparent Trek babble-policy: If you cannot make up more quantum-babble, just borrow from another, "sufficiently advanced", theory (and hope no-one notices).

I thought they packed a bigger punch then PTorps, but that was the limit of their nature.