Non-standard ways to kill a Trek ship

[Darth Wong]

Apart from the conventional methods (lots of guns and torpedoes), what are other known ways to destroy a Trek ship?

• From "Heart of Glory", shooting a warp core with a hand phaser will destroy the ship. A rather sad statement on the construction of the warp core.
• From "The High Ground", an explosive device the size of a hand grenade, also used against the warp core. Again, one must ask what idiot would design a reactor with so much volatility and so little protection that a hand-grenade would destroy the entire ship.
• From "Contagion", infecting its main computer with a malicious computer virus.
• From "Disaster", colliding with a "quantum filament".
• From "Cause and Effect", a minor impact on a warp nacelle which is not even sufficient to breach or buckle the hull.
• From various DS9 incidents, ramming, even with a relatively puny vessel like a JH cockroach.
• From "Emergence", a "theta flux distortion".
• From Voyager's various experiments, high-speed travel. It invariably seems to stress the shields and SIF, and in one case, nearly caused a warp core breach

Any other creative methods people have tried to use, even if inadvertently? Those are the ones that come immediately to mind.

[Howedar]

Presumably a grenade or similar against the antimatter pods could destroy the ship.

[Darth Wong]

Good point. Have we ever seen those in the show? Fed ships strike me as spectacularly easy to sabotage.

[Knife]

Any hostile force over ten people seem to be enough to overwelm most SF crews, and so most commanders will activate a selfdestruct.

So I guess indirectly, ten or so people can kill a ST ship.

[Isolder74]

Presumably a grenade or similar against the antimatter pods could destroy the ship.

I think his point is that something so important should be better armored than that, and the episode showed that even with the bomb removed the ship was still in danger, and when the transporters can't lock onto the thing why couldn't they simply shoot it out of an emergency disposal hatch?

[Cpt_Frank]

It's so sad, a single person onboard can go and effortlessly destroy the whole ship.
Guess starfleet hopes they have no traitors onboard (especially ones working in engineering).

[neoolong]

Wesley's nanites would have had the capability of destroying the ship.

[BenRG]

[*]From "Heart of Glory", shooting a warp core with a hand phaser will destroy the ship. A rather sad statement on the construction of the warp core.

From a much later episode (I forget the name), Riker explains that the Phaser II pistol could pretty much demolish a building on its' maximum setting (and, before you ask, no it hasn't been shown to happen in an episode, but nor has it been shown not to happen, as far as I know). This isn't a little hand-laser here, he is pointing something with the destructive potential of an X-Wing's laser cannon at an active matter/antimatter reactor.

That doesn't mean that GCS warp cores aren't fragile. I get the impression that Star Fleet works on the assumption that its' external defences (shields, armour, structural integrity fields and ship's security corps) would be enough to stop an enemy from hitting a vital ship component. If you get through them, then there is essentially nothing in between you and a quick kill.

P.S. on phaser power settings: I don't think that they use the higher settings on phasers. The highest setting they ever seem to use is setting 6 (which is the first 'kill' setting). Bad for interspecies relations or something, I guess.

[SirNitram]

Sorry, Ben. We see a Level 16 shot in Chain Of Command...

SCREENPLAY: There is a small hole, about one foot in diameter in the wall which is directly in front of them.
PICARD: We need to get through here. This lava tube runs southwest for 70 meters before running into another chamber. The tube opens up a little more beyond this entrance. If we can widen the opening, we should be able to crawl through.
WORF: A phaser set to level 16 should suffice.
PICARD: Make it so.
(Worf fires)
SCREENPLAY: it is revealed that the phaser has widened the entrance to the lava tube by about two feet. We can now see more of the tube ...
PICARD: Very good, Mister Worf.

...Which is a water pistol compared to an X-wings guns.

The Vengeance Factor also features a shot of Riker's gun, and the setting is clearly 16 before he vaps the lady. Whoops, no 50GJ or 1kT blast.

[BenRG]

Those shots were at lv.16? Well, that comes as a shock to me. I thought that the only use of max-power was in a DS9-episode called 'The Foresaken', and that was against an armoured trekalloy blast door, so it was difficult to judget the actual power output. Well, thanks for clearing that up.

[Uraniun235]

From "Heart of Glory", shooting a warp core with a hand phaser will destroy the ship. A rather sad statement on the construction of the warp core.

This is fixed later, as it took the HoloDoctor from Voyager firing a phaser at max power continuously into the warp core for some time to threaten a core breach. (it was that crazy "am i dr. zimmerman trapped in a holodeck?" episode)

[HemlockGrey]

Heh. Drop a Spec Ops agent into the E-E, plant a brick of C4 near the warp core, get into an escape pod and you can blow the whole ship.

[Sea Skimmer]

Presumably a grenade or similar against the antimatter pods could destroy the ship.

Now need for a bomb. Just shoot the power feed to the containment field. Or know Trek ships, switch a pair of glow in the dark breadboard in a panel marked restricted but is of course unlocked and not monitored.

[Vympel]

Those shots were at lv.16? Well, that comes as a shock to me. I thought that the only use of max-power was in a DS9-episode called 'The Foresaken', and that was against an armoured trekalloy blast door, so it was difficult to judget the actual power output. Well, thanks for clearing that up.

Check the SD.net canon database. Maximum setting isn't nearly as high as Riker described it- he was obviously bullshitting- as I recall he wasn't exactly cogent.

In First Contact Picard says "maximum setting ... you would've vaporized me"

Bloody stupid NDF.

[Darth Wong]

From "Heart of Glory", shooting a warp core with a hand phaser will destroy the ship. A rather sad statement on the construction of the warp core.

This is fixed later, as it took the HoloDoctor from Voyager firing a phaser at max power continuously into the warp core for some time to threaten a core breach. (it was that crazy "am i dr. zimmerman trapped in a holodeck?" episode)

I wouldn't exactly call that "fixed". What idiot would design a ship so that one man armed with nothing but a handgun, whatever handguns are in that universe, can destroy the entire ship? And how long is "some time?"

[data_link]

Fact: Trek ships can't survive if their computers malfunction.
Fact: In the Star Trek universe, computers are unable to deal with simple logical contradictions like "Everything I say is a lie."

Therefore: You can destroy a Trek ship by telling it that everything you say is a lie.

[Typhonis 1]

*LMAO*someon hacks the ships computer from long distnce and flies it Ed Woolong 3 style into an asteroid"Opps pilot error"

[Beowulf]

Robot crawler w/ a hunk of C4 teleported into the ship.

Direct it towards the warp core. *boom*

[Kamakazie Sith]

Sorry, Ben. We see a Level 16 shot in Chain Of Command...

SCREENPLAY: There is a small hole, about one foot in diameter in the wall which is directly in front of them.
PICARD: We need to get through here. This lava tube runs southwest for 70 meters before running into another chamber. The tube opens up a little more beyond this entrance. If we can widen the opening, we should be able to crawl through.
WORF: A phaser set to level 16 should suffice.
PICARD: Make it so.
(Worf fires)
SCREENPLAY: it is revealed that the phaser has widened the entrance to the lava tube by about two feet. We can now see more of the tube ...
PICARD: Very good, Mister Worf.

...Which is a water pistol compared to an X-wings guns.

The Vengeance Factor also features a shot of Riker's gun, and the setting is clearly 16 before he vaps the lady. Whoops, no 50GJ or 1kT blast.

Where is it stated that a hand phasers max power level is level 16?

Also, there is a Voyager episode where the Doc has to use a phaser on the warp core and IIRC was stated to take several minutes to burn through and destroy the ship.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Not to mention that the Warp Core can now have a forcefield placed around it.

BTW I missed Uraniums post about the episode I mentioned above....my apologies.

However for the record the name of the episode is; Projections

[Shinova]

Hack the comp and tell it to calculate the value of PI (Done in TOS).

Or kick its warp core. Start a breach or something.

And finally, you can just come up with some technobabblish thing that disables the fed ship's shields, then projects Janeway porn on every visual display aboard the ship....Hold on...actually no, since Fed personnel may actually find Janeway porn enjoyable.

[Beowulf]

Where is it stated that a hand phasers max power level is level 16?

Visual evidence. A phaser has this lLED display on the back that quite obviously has 16 segments. In a few episodes it can be seen that increasing the power lights up and additional segment. Therefore the max power is level 16.

[The Yosemite Bear]

One team of five Cyberpunk Mercs, can take out any Startrek ship.

You get the Runner's to hack the system, while the Enhanced Reflex "Samuria" will waste the crew with their personal weapons.

[BenRG]

This is fixed later, as it took the HoloDoctor from Voyager firing a phaser at max power continuously into the warp core for some time to threaten a core breach. (it was that crazy "am i dr. zimmerman trapped in a holodeck?" episode)

I wouldn't exactly call that "fixed". What idiot would design a ship so that one man armed with nothing but a handgun, whatever handguns are in that universe, can destroy the entire ship? And how long is "some time?"

Well, this isn't a Federation warp core, but in VOY - 'Dreadnaught', B'elanna had to fire her phaser at the Dreadnaught missile's warhead for about 2 - 3 minutes to burn through its' casing and containment field, causing it to blow up prematurely. I assume that a warp core would have better protection and safeguards than a warhead which is meant to explode eventually.

[Yogi]

Heh. Drop a Spec Ops agent into the E-E, plant a brick of C4 near the warp core, get into an escape pod and you can blow the whole ship.

When the grenade that was attached to the Warp Core exploded on the outside, the size of the explosion was several "decks" wide (judging from the lights on the outside). That's a hell of a lot stronger than C-4.