Swindle1984 wrote:Stofsk wrote:I don't know about hundreds of thousands of miles away. In 'The Changeling' the Enterprise fires a photon torpedo at a small target (by small I mean has a shorter height than Kirk or Spock, considering they both pick it up later in the episode) 90,000 km away. And it hits too.
While that's certainly impressive, it's still not hundreds of thousands of miles away like was claimed.
No, that was from TNG's 'The Wounded'. IIRC the Phoenix fired on a Cardassian warship with photorps from 300K km away and struck it with a direct hit. But I wasn't claiming hundreds of thousands of kilometres anyway. I was merely pointing out one example of long range use of a photon torpedo. One thing to note is that in the episode that photorp covers 90K km in less than 10 seconds. (it was at least five seconds but certainly less than ten) They were at impulse power, Scotty diverted power from the warp drive to the shields to give the Enterprise more protection (the speed of Nomad's bolts of energy were at warp 15 so they couldn't outrun it or evade it anyway). If they can cover 90,000 km in those circumstances and in under ten seconds, then how much distance could they cover if the ship was at warp and had the ship's warp velocity added to whatever acceleration the torpedo can manage on its own? Effective range is thus not set in stone. If a ship is travelling at warp 4 and fires a photon torpedo, that torpedo would also be travelling at warp 4. If the same ship were to fire a torpedo at impulse or when its not accelerating, then the torpedo would more than likely have a less effective range than the warp-travelling torpedo.
*facepalms* Dude. The ship being invisible doesn't mean it's outside of visual range and is hundreds of thousands of miles away.
I understand that, I had a brainfart and didn't understand your concern. If you only require a single example of Trek combat ranges that approach a 100K km, then 'The Changeling' adequately answers that challenge, and 'The Wounded' does as well.
That's how fast they were traveling, not how far apart the two ships were.
Of course, though speed is an important factor to consider for who would win in a fight, as well as determining combat ranges.
'Errand of Mercy' they hit a Klingon warship that had just come into range to trigger their defensive systems.
Which says nothing about how far away it was.
Since the Klingon ship had no cloaking device, its possible it was at the outer range band of their detection radius. What that radius is is impossible to determine, but the ship did not even appear on screen when the Enterprise fires a barrage from its phaser banks. (I am going by the classic series here not the remastered series, as I have not seen the latter) So if the onscreen visual evidence shows no visual contact, I would confidently suggest that that combat example took place at BVR.
In 'Journey to Babel' they fight at warp speeds against an Orion ship.
That's how fast they were traveling, not how far apart they were.
That example was meant to illustrate how the faster and more manoeuvrable Orion ship could attack the Enterprise then quickly get out of range of its retaliation strikes. Thus the effective range of combat is a bit more complicated than simply saying 'photorps can fire at a target 90K km away and hit it' or 300K km away and so on. For that matter the 'Elaan of Troyius' example is meant to cover a similar effect in Trek combat.
Ranges are not given in the episode I don't think, I would need to rewatch it (I am a third of my way through my quest to rewatch the original series, I just finished the first disc for season two, 'Journey to Babel' is on disc three).
If ME ships don't have FTL sensors as was mentioned here (I have the second game but haven't played it yet), then this is definitely an advantage on Trek's side. But such instances of "warp strafing" are rare.
Not really relevant. Most Star Trek combat takes place whilst at warp velocities, and it's shown in two of the above examples how relative parity of speeds is crucial for winning battles. Also it doesn't have to be common for it to be effective. I personally hate how TNG and the later shows dismissed and disregarded TOS, and changed the setting too much for my liking. In TOS warp speed is a lot faster than it was in TNG - the Enterprise visited the edge of the galaxy three times throughout the course of the show.
TNG, DS9 and so on may have forgotten its roots, but as far as I am concerned TOS is the exemplar. Furthermore, I only need to provide one instance of it. And the reason why there is only one example of it is explained due to the other examples where warp drive is engaged whilst in battle. And if you count TNG, then the Picard Maneouvre is all you need to take out ME ships.
*SNIP asteroid fallacy*
Fortunately Sean Robertson has come to my rescue here and provided an example of photorps with MT yields.
Since we were discussing ground combat exclusively, why do starships come into the equation?
Generally speaking, because who ever has space supremacy can dictate the terms of whatever ground combat does occur. In Trek, they don't even need to fight on the ground if they don't want to. They can use photon torpedoes or phaser strikes for ortillery. They can even set their phasers to stun and take the entire opposing army prisoner ('A Piece of the Action') if they wished. With the transporter, they can beam ground forces to advantageous locations, which they have done in the show ('Tomorrow is Yesterday' Spock transports from one room to another to sneak up behind someone). It should be noted that in TOS, transporters were far, far far more reliable than they were in TNG and beyond. (This is to quickly dismiss the lame 'transporters are unreliable' fallacy that tends to crop up, which I think is overstated quite a bit)
And the space fascists DO have air support and used it to napalm a bunch of bugs.
Yes, but not in the form of oribital and space support. A starship in orbit over a planet can use pinpoint phaser strikes to take out such vehicles.
I haven't seen the two (even worse) sequels, but don't they introduce some shitty powered armor or something like that? We also see the dropships fire some sort of mortar as they disgorge troops in the first, incredibly fucked-up attempt to Zerg rush the bug homeworld with unsupported idiots. And they have tactical nukes carried by foot soldiers. And grenades. And frickin' machine guns; I'm picturing some really horrible surprises for the Feddies if they go up against Troopers in the open and run into a hail of bullets. We also saw some new gun that blew some chunks out of a rock outcropping at the end of the first film.
Well the Feddies have phaser artillery ('The Cage') though effectiveness is difficult to ascertain. It can punch through solid rock. The beam is also bright and landing party operators had to wear protective eyewear, which may indicate that the beam could be blinding. They also have grenade/mortars from 'Arena', even if all they do is stun the fascists then so what? They can't shoot their tactical nukes if they're lying on the ground unconscious.
Plus, the space fascists have no problem with using human wave tactics while spray-and-praying a hail of bullets, whereas the Feddies have a nasty habit of sending down a handful of guys armed with hand phasers (no rifles) along with every member of the command staff.
Probably because they were never engaged in planetary invasions at any point throughout the series. Incidentally they do have phaser rifles, but hand phasers are quite powerful weapons. I don't see phaser rifles being extremely more powerful, other than perhaps having a larger storage capacitor and thus possibly a greater number of shots available to it. It might have a longer range, but a phaser rifle is not going to literally have a rifled barrel. It's simply nomenclature.
Incidentally the fascists had difficulty with giant bugs who were restricted to melee weaponry, so I have a hard time feeling sympathetic towards them.
) if they WERE. I have NO IDEA how far mass effect kinetic barriers are from the ships. I also clearly STATED it as an assumption when I initially brought up that number.
