Warp strafing, why isn't it used more?

[Prometheus Unbound]

Isn't ST warp of the 'bubble of warped spacetime' type? And not some extra dimension like it is in Babylon 4?

This means that you can't fire from inside or from the outside.

Except you can. They've fired phasers at warp (close range only though - it's possible the two warp fields were "synchronised" but when they've tried that on purpose, it's been really difficult, and that was two ships cooperating.

Torpedoes are frequently shown to be fired and hit in warp - distances of millions of KM in which the warp fields couldn't possibly be matching - those torps go out one field, sustain it, then enter another warp field (usually of alien design) and detonate on target.

[Borgholio]

Torpedoes are frequently shown to be fired and hit in warp - distances of millions of KM in which the warp fields couldn't possibly be matching - those torps go out one field, sustain it, then enter another warp field (usually of alien design) and detonate on target.

This happens in fact in the very first episode of TNG - Encounter at Farpoint. They fire several torpedoes at Q while fleeing at high warp. The torps easily travel tens of millions of miles from the Enterprise before impact.

[LaCroix]

Cool. Thanks for the info.

[Ted C]

Isn't ST warp of the 'bubble of warped spacetime' type? And not some extra dimension like it is in Babylon 4?

This means that you can't fire from inside or from the outside.
Shooting at someone at warp is easy to explain - there is no way for the attack to transistion the distance between you an the target in realspace (sub-c or c) and have the target still there when it is a couple hundred times faster than your attack method.
For the other side -when shots were leaving your "bubble" of compressed spacetime, they would probably dissipate or in some other way cease to exist when they hit realspace abruptly, if they can even penetrate this 'wall' of spacetime compression. So you need to drop out before firing, even if just briefly.

For the same reason, apart from some ultratech that expands your own 'bubble' to touch the one of the target and synchronise spacetime between them, you can't shot at someone in warp while in warp as well.

This follows my reasoning on use of phasers at warp speed. The warp fields of the two ships have to interact to create a "warp tunnel" through which light-speed beams can get from one FTL ship to the other. This will limit the range at which ships can engage in combat with such weapons.

Torpedoes, of course, have their own "warp sustainer engines" that would give them greater range at warp speeds.

[Ziggy Stardust]

This happens in fact in the very first episode of TNG - Encounter at Farpoint. They fire several torpedoes at Q while fleeing at high warp. The torps easily travel tens of millions of miles from the Enterprise before impact.

How do you get that tens of millions of miles estimate? From my recollection of the episode, the technicolor dreamcoat Q is chasing the Enterprise with is always within visual range of the Enterprise.

[Prometheus Unbound]

This happens in fact in the very first episode of TNG - Encounter at Farpoint. They fire several torpedoes at Q while fleeing at high warp. The torps easily travel tens of millions of miles from the Enterprise before impact.

How do you get that tens of millions of miles estimate? From my recollection of the episode, the technicolor dreamcoat Q is chasing the Enterprise with is always within visual range of the Enterprise.

No - they fire off into ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdRsWzJI_zM

There u go, first few seconds


In the scene they fire the torpedoes, THEN separate (which takes omg how many fucking hours), then reverse course at 9.8, and THEN they detonate.

It's minutes of travel time at warp with them going "backwards" in warp and Q following at at least 9.9 and it takes minutes before they detonate "between us and the intruder".

Tens of millions doesn't cover it - this is light minutes or hours.


But then this was EaF. I only say semi canon as it was a "reboot" of the series in a way and everything hadn't been worked out. It's a massive outlyer as far as ranges go. All others have been millions of km or much less.

[Eternal_Freedom]

While it's a massive outlier for range, it's not impossible to reconcile with other numbers. Q was follwing the E-D in a straight line, not maneuvering or evading, so all the torps had to do was sustain flight backwards from the E-D for a while. I can buy torps traveling that far, but that doesnt mean that light-minutes is their effective range, anymore than me putting a 20mm cannon in orbit and firing on a course that, minutes later, hits a satellite on the far side of the planet gives "thousands of km" as a max range for said cannon.

[Prometheus Unbound]

P: "The photon torpedoes must detonate close enough to the hostile to blind it the moment we separate."

TY: "Understood, sir."


--

15:33

TY: Torpedoes away, sir.

Incidentally they fire 8, from the rear launcher, over 7 seconds.


First torpedo detonates at 17:16.

That's what, 1 minute 43 seconds? That's in my head but give or take?



EDIT: oh no, effective range is, in any other time, 6.7m km or less. One example of that, one at 300,000 and most others are at visual range. I'd assume, as you say, someone in combat would "move out of the way" heh.

I've always taken their effective "sublight" range at about 1 light second (The Wounded) as a max range - it was stated to be outside of all cardassian ranges but the federation is more advanced - but not overly so. so around that.



I just meant someone above said at all times Q was visble - he wasn't - he was in fact apparently (I guess??) light minutes away at least (remember this is super liminal). The actual sublight distance traveled (at warp 9. whatever both were going at?) could be light hours or even days.


EDIT 2: mind you, then Voyager's 6.7m km was at maximum warp, that'd be several light seconds at least?

[Batman]

What in Valen's name are you trying to say? As long as both the ship firing the torpedoes and the target are moving at the same speed in the same direction their speed is irrelevant. If the target is 9km behind you when you fire and remains 9 km behind you for the entirety of the torpedoe's travel time, it doesn't matter if you're both traveling at 9 quintillion c, the distance the torpedo has to travel is 9 km.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Yes ... But q was overtaking them - they at warp 9.8, he at 9.9 -- the torpa took nearly two minutes to do their thing.

[Q99]

Then there's the TOS-based Star Fleet Battles universe, where Warp Strafing is 100% the norm and only some can't do it (like the Romulans until they traded tech with the Klingons).

[Lord Revan]

Then there's the TOS-based Star Fleet Battles universe, where Warp Strafing is 100% the norm and only some can't do it (like the Romulans until they traded tech with the Klingons).

it's also 100% non-canon

[Tribble]

The torpedoes were travelling away from the E-D, but they were still at warp right? Torpedoes can maintain warp speeds after being fired, but they cannot generate their own warp field. If a torpedo is fired at warp in the opposite direction of the firing ship, is it actually travelling in the opposite direction, or is it still travelling in the same direction as the firing ship, just slower? If the E-D was travelling at warp 9.3 and the torpedoes were travelling at warp 9.2 in the same direction, wouldn't they appear to be moving backwards from the E-D's perspective even though that's not really the case? Were the torpedoes actually fired at Q, or were they essentially laid down as mines and Q ran into them?

[Q99]

it's also 100% non-canon

Eh, it's a completely separate canon.

[Borgholio]

The torpedoes were travelling away from the E-D, but they were still at warp right? Torpedoes can maintain warp speeds after being fired, but they cannot generate their own warp field. If a torpedo is fired at warp in the opposite direction of the firing ship, is it actually travelling in the opposite direction, or is it still travelling in the same direction as the firing ship, just slower? If the E-D was travelling at warp 9.3 and the torpedoes were travelling at warp 9.2 in the same direction, wouldn't they appear to be moving backwards from the E-D's perspective even though that's not really the case? Were the torpedoes actually fired at Q, or were they essentially laid down as mines and Q ran into them?

That...is a good question. Unfortunately it requires far more knowledge of warp-physics than currently exists to make that determination. While they do sustain the warp field of the firing ship, does that mean they would be taking a portion of the field letting them travel at warp 9.3 in any direction they choose?

[Lord Revan]

it's also 100% non-canon

Eh, it's a completely separate canon.

as per the rights holders only the 5 live-action TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT) as the 11 movies are canon and these are split into 2 seperate canons (prime and the alternative), everything else and I mean everything is non-canon and has always been.

Unless you can show a post by official sources saying otherwise.

[Q99]

as per the rights holders only the 5 live-action TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT) as the 11 movies are canon and these are split into 2 seperate canons (prime and the alternative), everything else and I mean everything is non-canon and has always been.

Unless you can show a post by official sources saying otherwise.

Hm, perhaps I should explain what I mean by canon... using the "the works of a particular author or artist that are recognized as genuine," I mean, it forms it's own continuity that has it's own guidelines.

It's a produce that has a license and always has been, but is a completely separate continuity. Meaning stuff from one is non-canon to the other, and vice-versa, of course.

There's a number of properties out there, believe it or not, that have multiple mutually exclusive continuities. It's rare in the US but is a thing.

It is not the Star Trek continuity, but it is a continuity, quite separate from the main license. And it's not hard to talk about, one just needs to make sure to specify that it is the one being discussed and separate.

[Ted C]

If you are flying by a target at light-speed, and you have weapons with a range of one light-second, you have all of two seconds to acquire the target and discharge your weapons, assuming that they can track the target for the entire pass. It's less if you can only fire while approaching, for example.

Of course, Federation starships can travel at thousands of times the speed of light, so your actual time to put a beam onto a target is probably a millisecond or less. That means that during a warp-speed fly-by, you can only use a small fraction of your firepower against the target. Against a target with defenses in any way comparable to those of a Federation starship, I can't see how that would be the least bit effective.

This is true of beams but less true of torpedoes, which lend themselves to high burst firepower even if they don't have the warp sustainers sometimes alluded to (in which case they could also be fired from much longer ranges while at warp than phasers).

This is a throwback to a much earlier post, but looking back at it, it occurred to me that while torpedoes and similar missiles will be able to deliver their full energy if they hit, the attacker still has to get close and match speeds long enough to lock onto the target, which may well take more than the tiny fraction of a second that the ship is in range during the "strafing" run. All the mechanical activities involved in actually launching the weapon also have to occur before the ship leaves range, and that also may take more time than the attacker would have.

Even with torpedoes, I think the "strafing" attacker would have to match speeds with the target briefly in order to fire with any chance of hitting and inflicting damage.

[Tribble]

The torpedoes were travelling away from the E-D, but they were still at warp right? Torpedoes can maintain warp speeds after being fired, but they cannot generate their own warp field. If a torpedo is fired at warp in the opposite direction of the firing ship, is it actually travelling in the opposite direction, or is it still travelling in the same direction as the firing ship, just slower? If the E-D was travelling at warp 9.3 and the torpedoes were travelling at warp 9.2 in the same direction, wouldn't they appear to be moving backwards from the E-D's perspective even though that's not really the case? Were the torpedoes actually fired at Q, or were they essentially laid down as mines and Q ran into them?

That...is a good question. Unfortunately it requires far more knowledge of warp-physics than currently exists to make that determination. While they do sustain the warp field of the firing ship, does that mean they would be taking a portion of the field letting them travel at warp 9.3 in any direction they choose?

Do we know of any instances where a starship was at warp and it fired a torpedo backwards towards a target that was not a warp, or was in warp travelling in the opposite direction? If so, that would suggest that a torpedo once fired could travel in any direction. If not, IMO it's more likely that the torpedo travels in the same general direction as the firing ship, just at different speeds (slower than the starship if fired backwards, faster than the starship if fired forwards).

[Batman]

Um-torpedoes being able to change direction has been canon since...forever? TUC Comes to mind.

[Darmalus]

Um-torpedoes being able to change direction has been canon since...forever? TUC Comes to mind.

True, but if the warp field is a vector, then the torpedo's ability to change direction might be limited to whatever the onboard systems are capable of.

For example (numbers straight from my butt), if you have 2 ships heading due north at warp 9.3 100km apart, and torpedo's on board engines can only do 10km per second, then it will take the torpedo 10 seconds to hit the other ship since the torpedo will be released going at warp 9.3 due north plus on board engines.

That could be completely wrong, of course, but "warp sustainer" doesn't sound like something that can do a lot of warp maneuvering. It's not very helpful when the dialog tends to unclear about absolute and relative speeds. The visuals I can recall always had the torpedoes, whatever their speed, move in a straight line. Am I forgetting one?

[Darmalus]

Missed the edit window.

I remember that in one of the movies a torpedo followed the ion trail of a cloaked ship, but I want to say it was all at sub-light speeds. This will drive me nuts until I find my DVDs to check.

[Borgholio]

Missed the edit window.

I remember that in one of the movies a torpedo followed the ion trail of a cloaked ship, but I want to say it was all at sub-light speeds. This will drive me nuts until I find my DVDs to check.

Yes, that was Star Trek 6 during the final battle scene. It was definitely at sublight.

[Tribble]

Um-torpedoes being able to change direction has been canon since...forever? TUC Comes to mind.

That was at sublight speeds.

Alright, here's another way to look at it.

Say the Defiant leaves DS9 and jumps to Warp 9. While at warp 9, it fires a torpedo from its rear launcher. If the torpedo remains at warp, would it be able to hit DS9? Or would it be still travelling in the same direction as the Defiant, and could only "slow down" over time (which would likely be based on a controlled collapse of the warp field)? I suppose if the ladder were the case the torpedo could still be programmed to allow the warp field to collapse entirely and travel back toward DS9 at sublight speeds, though that's not what I'm really getting it.

[Tribble]

Wait a minute, the Defiant doesn't have a rear torpedo launcher, I think. Make it the E-D.