Poor power of photon torpedoes?

[Ted C]

While writing up a wiki article for Nomad...

http://stardestroyer.net/mrwong/wiki/index.php/Nomad

I came across this curious observation:

"Our shields absorbed energy equivalent to 90 of our photon torpedoes."
"90?"
"I may add the energy used repulsing this first attack reduced our shielding power 20%."

The Enterprise a hit from a weapon 90 times more powerful than a photon torpedo and shrugged it off with mere 20% shield reduction.

What kind of ship-to-ship weapon is a photon torpedo if it will take hundreds of them seriously affect a plausible target?

[Lord Revan]

it wouldn't how ever that is clearly an outlayer as most of the time even single photon torp is considered a signifigant threat to even a shield ship.

[Baffalo]

We're told that roughly 90 torpedoes hit the Enterprise and yet they only lost 20% of their shields. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume either Nomad intentionally diverted most of the energy away from the Enterprise but let them get a peek at the potential power it had, or it wasn't that much and someone flubbed the numbers. That's what I hope, anyway, because otherwise someone needs to re-calibrate the sensors, now.

[Ted C]

It does seem pretty damned ridiculous that the Enterprise could take the equivalent of 90 photon torpedoes at once and survive, let alone only lose 20% of their shield capacity.

And just after that...

"We can resist three more such attacks. The fourth will shatter our shields completely."

Which leads to the conclusion that it would take 450 photon torpedoes to break through the shields of the Enterprise!

And yet, just a little later the Enterprise fires back with a photon torpedo, and we get this...

"Torpedo away. Direct hit, sir. No effect."
"Target absorbed full energy of our torpedo."
"Absorbed it? There must be damage to your instruments."
"They're in good working order, Captain."
"But what could have absorbed that much energy and survived?"

Oh, I don't know... the Enterprise maybe?

Who the hell was writing this?

Ah... John Meredyth Lucas... who apparently had early-onset dementia.

[Baffalo]

Given what he wrote, he seemed to focus more on an all-powerful, central villain and just allowed the story to focus on Kirk and crew overcoming the obstacle, rather than the tech-heavy plots we got later on. His emphasis, I think, was less on the technology and more on the quandry and the mystery, since he also wrote Patterns of Force, Elaan of Troyius, and That Which Survives. So I mean... I would discount this particular instance and chalk it up to inconsistencies in translation or something when input into the Imperial data banks.

[Simon_Jester]

Another possibility is that photon torpedoes are somehow tuned, focused, or otherwise designed to destroy shielded targets such as starships. Say, by blowing a hole through the shields at a single point and causing them to 'pop' like a soap bubble, as opposed to hammering them down with massive blunt force trauma.

An attack mechanism that is not thus focused might well be less dangerous even if it s far more energetic.

The torpedo warheads don't have to just be a Big Dumb Bomb...

[Elheru Aran]

If you want an example of piss-poor photon torpedoes you don't even have to look at the non-canon novels, just check out ST V and the legendary torpedoing God scene. Somehow they managed to make a photon torpedo have less explosive power than a big dumb rock coming down out of orbit!

[Captain Seafort]

If you want an example of piss-poor photon torpedoes you don't even have to look at the non-canon novels, just check out ST V and the legendary torpedoing God scene. Somehow they managed to make a photon torpedo have less explosive power than a big dumb rock coming down out of orbit!

Given that the target of said torpedo was almost on top of Kirk, they would have had to be pretty stupid not to.

[Elheru Aran]

If you want an example of piss-poor photon torpedoes you don't even have to look at the non-canon novels, just check out ST V and the legendary torpedoing God scene. Somehow they managed to make a photon torpedo have less explosive power than a big dumb rock coming down out of orbit!

Given that the target of said torpedo was almost on top of Kirk, they would have had to be pretty stupid not to.

Not the point. This is a bloody weapon for blowing up other starships. It's not going to have a bang like a WW2 vintage hand grenade. We are talking about a weapon that uses the cataclysmic reaction of matter and antimatter as its method of inflicting damage. Sure, it blows up Sybok and the God-creature, but... that's it. Come the fuck on.

[Captain Seafort]

Not the point.

It's precisely the point. A thermonuclear detonation at that range would have killed Kirk and the others, ergo only an idiot would have hit the alien with a thermonuclear blast. We also had this exchange:

KIRK: Kirk to Enterprise. Listen carefully.

[Sybok fights the alien]

KIRK: Enterprise, ...are you ready?

[Enterprise-A bridge]

SULU: Enterprise. Torpedo armed.
CHEKOV: But Captain, we're firing directly on your position.

[Sha Ka Ree crater]

KIRK: Send it down Mister Chekov. ...Now! ...Run!

"Listen carefully" strongly implies that Kirk was about to give detailed and unusual instructions, not just "fire a torpedo at it". It might have been set for minimum yield (just as the NX's proto-PTs could "knock the comm. array off a shuttlepod without scratching the hull "), or it might have had no warhead at all and been programmed for a kinetic strike at less than terminal velocity.

[Simon_Jester]

If anything, the trend in weapons technology in real life is away from things that can only be used indiscriminately. The idea that a torpedo can be modified to cause relatively low-level damage in a small area may seem strange to us, but there are plenty of reasons they might want things to work that way.

[Eternal_Freedom]

For that matter, in today's world "torpedo" is a very wide category, ranging from fairly small anti-sub aerial torpedoes to big half-ton monsters designed to break big ships in half. I see no problem with Starfleet having one torpedo that can do several roles, rather than one for each job, it fits with their entire design philosophy for starships after all.

[APlayerHater]

Really missed a clear opportunity for "Got your starship right here" quip before they blasted him (God).

Anyway, maybe glancing hits? Although they said the shields absorbed the energy. Maybe the weapon had no explosive yield but somehow was aimed at overloading shields instead of blasting through them, so they absorbed more energy(?) but without the actual effect of tanking 90 PTs.

[bilateralrope]

Another possibility is that photon torpedoes are somehow tuned, focused, or otherwise designed to destroy shielded targets such as starships. Say, by blowing a hole through the shields at a single point and causing them to 'pop' like a soap bubble, as opposed to hammering them down with massive blunt force trauma.

An attack mechanism that is not thus focused might well be less dangerous even if it s far more energetic.

The torpedo warheads don't have to just be a Big Dumb Bomb...

Maybe the weapon was intentionally designed to be useless against shields. From memory alpha, is sounds like the weapons came from Tan Ru, a probe sent out to sterilize soil. So whoever sent it might have considered the possibility of it going after another world and decided that having it be easily stopped by shields would be better than it sterilizing an inhabited planet.

That or Nomad was just unlucky to run across shields that were accidentally tuned to its weapon in the same way the Borg adapt their shields.

[Baffalo]

Maybe the weapon was intentionally designed to be useless against shields. From memory alpha, is sounds like the weapons came from Tan Ru, a probe sent out to sterilize soil. So whoever sent it might have considered the possibility of it going after another world and decided that having it be easily stopped by shields would be better than it sterilizing an inhabited planet.

That or Nomad was just unlucky to run across shields that were accidentally tuned to its weapon in the same way the Borg adapt their shields.

I'd normally dismiss the idea that the tool sterilizing soil was ill-equipped against shields on the grounds that it would be proactive thinking, but then again it was designed by someone other than Starfleet.

In all seriousness though, it does sound like something someone would at least (hopefully) think of before unleashing an automated probe out into an unsuspecting galaxy. It's sort of like the Grey Goo scenario when someone releases an imperfectly programmed nanite swarm that just consumes all carbon-based life on Earth.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd normally dismiss the idea that the tool sterilizing soil was ill-equipped against shields on the grounds that it would be proactive thinking, but then again it was designed by someone other than Starfleet.

In all seriousness though, it does sound like something someone would at least (hopefully) think of before unleashing an automated probe out into an unsuspecting galaxy. It's sort of like the Grey Goo scenario when someone releases an imperfectly programmed nanite swarm that just consumes all carbon-based life on Earth.

Or the sterilizing tool might well have been designed negligently- but just happen to not work well against shielding because it wasn't designed to do so at all, so why bother giving the weapon any tunability or features that make it shield-piercing?