brianeyci wrote:Thanks for missing the point. The violent shaking suggests more likely than not that the neutronium hull is not densely packed neutrons. And at the end Costanza was pissed. Anybody who watched that episode could tell the primitives were a threat to the TT, unlike Enterprise to the Doomsday machine.
Because of course, the TT must have absolutely every part of its hull covered in thick plating, just like real tanks have no weak points and are solid boxes of armour pla- oh wait... Just like the Doomsday machine did, and the Iconian Ziggurat... Oh wait, neither of those were entirely covered, and the Think Tank wasn't either. And oh look, here's a shot of the primatives actually firing on it, going for where its armour is thinnest and changes colour.
To use an analogy, if Richard the Third fell down paralysed by a freak stroke and I jabbed him through the visor with a butterknife and killed him, you'd claim my knife would be able to penetrate his plate armour. And
even then there's no evidence that they actually destroyed it
or harmed its armour which is composed of the same stuff - regardless of whether or not you think it's the same as real neutronium - that could easily withstand the entire weapons loadout of the
Defiant.
And no, camera shake in Star Trek rarely if ever actually matches the visuals of attacks. It could just as much be due to the limitations of artificial gravity and SIFs as it is due to momentum imparted (by
beam weapons no less) You'll note that the camera shake on Starfleet vessels is pretty much the same, regardless of what hits them, and a Romulan Warbird pummelling the
D from upper-aft generates the same kind and degree of camera shake as a teensy B'rel doing so from fore.
As for the one hundred megatons, I was about to disagree, then I remembered that it was an impulse engine explosion so 100 megatons is a lot. So you're right about that. But for weapons in science fiction in general, in space 100 megatons is not a lot,
Why? A 100 Mt blast inside (as I recall, it was piloted into the maw) a goa'uld ha'tak, starfleet vessel, colonial battlestar (either type), and the vast majority of other starships in science fiction would result in total destuction.
because if you're going to have something as exotic as a photon torpedo or phasers, it's got to be more effective than bog standard thermonuclear weapons, or why the switch.
Oh I don't know. Cost, fallout concerns, speed (Especially with fucking beam weapons, moron), reliability, political concerns (nukes are bad, mmkay, but MOABs are good), danger to manufacturers, ease of access for modification, tolerance of high accellerations? Gods, there's oodles of reasons. I've barely scratched the surface.
Your argument works just as well for 'why aren't all torpedos used by the US and USSR nuclear tipped?' which is to say, not at all.
EDIT:
Balance of Terror makes it quite clear that in-universe, portable nuclear weapons capable of threatening capital ships - capable of crippling one from a proximity blast, no less - exist.
