Phaser Turrets vs Strips

[Prometheus Unbound]

I think the only advantage of a turret would be if you can somehow compress or accelerate the beam to increase it's destructive power. Although given what we see in ST, that doesn't appear to be possible under normal conditions since nobody after ENT seemed to use turreted mounts.

Well.. it's not that it isn't possible, it's that it's not needed.

A turret is a physical thing that can jam. Whatever they have in TOS (it could be turrets in those dome things for all we know - on screen canon and all) is perfectly fine firing at all angles. This is carried into the Movies with ST2 and in Enterprise in In a Mirror Darkly).

Either they took the turrets "inside" somehow or they surpassed them.

By Phaser Strip time (TNG onwards) a Turret just seems completely pointless. At no point has a strip ever "jammed" or "blocked" or anything. They just do their thing, seemingly 180 degrees (or more depending on mounting) in any direction, skipping between 0 and 180 in a single frame or two.

Strips are, in every measureable way, near as I can tell, better than a turret cannon in every single circumstance. Except...

In the TNG series finale, the future Enterprise-D had that spinal mount phaser that was incredibly powerful, but I don't know if that was due to accelerating a normal phaser beam or if it was just a very long tube with a ton of emitters in it all working together...

That and the Defiant - with its pulse canons.

Evidently you can get "more power per square inch" or whatever you want to call it, with a spinal mount or "fixed place" - but *not that much* (at least for the Defiant). And Ent-D in All good things... hmm. Powerful as fuck but it could just be 25 years of enhansed phasers rather than being spinal. We have no clue there. I would assume not full of phaser strips, though, else why spinal mount it? Why not just open it up to have that fire power from any angle? - I presume it's a cross between the Defiant and strip phasers. in my own head, i mean.

[Simon_Jester]

Defiant has phaser 'cannon' with a definite barrel too... and then you have Klingon ships and so on with barreled weapons. It's definitely possible to build weapons that fire from a linear tube and are effective in Star Trek, it's just generally not effective to mount them in turrets as a ship's main armament, apparently... and using them for point defense is equally ineffective if not more so, when a phaser strip that can do the same job is available.

[Elheru Aran]

It should be noted that Klingon weapons tend to be called 'disruptors' IIRC, not 'phasers', which suggests they may use a different mechanism entirely.

[Darmalus]

Even if "tube-type" phasers were significantly more powerful than strip-type, they still come with the huge downside of needing to be physically pointed at the target. Not so bad on the Defiant, or a fighter, where you are built around speed and maneuverability. Not so hot for a capital ship outside a surprise attack or fleet engagements where you have lots of targets and you need only a nudge to line up a hit. So the alternate Ent-D strikes me as a good design, strips for all-around fire and a single cannon for less wiggly targets, like other capital ships, ground targets, space stations, or anyone with crippled engines.

[Crazedwraith]

While still not as wide a field of fire, the Defiant's pulse phasers did have significant off-bore capability. See it's fight with the Lakota in Homefront. It's pulse drop sharply relative to the Defiant to hit the Lakota. (Though how again how much of that is intentional and how much is on the effects department is debatable...)

[Darmalus]

While still not as wide a field of fire, the Defiant's pulse phasers did have significant off-bore capability. See it's fight with the Lakota in Homefront. It's pulse drop sharply relative to the Defiant to hit the Lakota. (Though how again how much of that is intentional and how much is on the effects department is debatable...)

I guess it depends if they had switched to full CGI at that point or were still using models. I know that a lot of off-bore weapons fire was because the actors couldn't see their target properly, so I guess the same could happen when trying to do starships.

[Lord Revan]

While still not as wide a field of fire, the Defiant's pulse phasers did have significant off-bore capability. See it's fight with the Lakota in Homefront. It's pulse drop sharply relative to the Defiant to hit the Lakota. (Though how again how much of that is intentional and how much is on the effects department is debatable...)

I guess it depends if they had switched to full CGI at that point or were still using models. I know that a lot of off-bore weapons fire was because the actors couldn't see their target properly, so I guess the same could happen when trying to do starships.

I think it was models still at that point though, IIRC the reason the Lakota looks like it does was that they couldn't remove the additions made to the Excelcior model without breaking it. That said I also seem to remember that DS9 used a mix of CGI and models (IIRC it wasn't until ENT that the VFX team went fully CGI).

[Eternal_Freedom]

As I recall, the NX-01 had three cannons in the first two seasons, but had more in seasons 3 and 4, something which I can think be explained by a quick refit before she set off to hunt the Xindi at the start of season 3. We know she returned to Earth, and it would make sense for Starfleet to give the ship the most weapons possible given the long, dangerous mission she was on.

Come to think of it, isn't that when she got the upgraded "photonic" torpedoes as well?

[Lord Revan]

As I recall, the NX-01 had three cannons in the first two seasons, but had more in seasons 3 and 4, something which I can think be explained by a quick refit before she set off to hunt the Xindi at the start of season 3. We know she returned to Earth, and it would make sense for Starfleet to give the ship the most weapons possible given the long, dangerous mission she was on.

Come to think of it, isn't that when she got the upgraded "photonic" torpedoes as well?

You are correct about the Torps, there was even dialoge explaining why the photonic torps were better then their previous torps/missiles.

[Simon_Jester]

It should be noted that Klingon weapons tend to be called 'disruptors' IIRC, not 'phasers', which suggests they may use a different mechanism entirely.

Yes, but if disruptors were preferable to phasers (i.e. caused more destruction to typical targets for comparable bulk, mass, and power requirements), then the Federation would be using them too. With hand weapons I can see why the Federation uses phasers, because I'm not sure disruptor weapons have a 'stun' setting and Starfleet cares about that. But for shipboard applications? Naval phasers may HAVE a stun setting but it's hardly ever used; they don't shoot at anything they don't want dead or melted, as a rule.

So I have to assume disruptors and phasers are roughly comparably effective, all else being equal... in other words, a barreled disruptor is not better than a strip phaser built to the same scale. Otherwise it would make too much sense to build ships armed with copies of Klingon disruptors.

And a barreled disruptor is probably not superior to a barreled phaser either, though the reasoning there gets complicated... see below.*

Even if "tube-type" phasers were significantly more powerful than strip-type, they still come with the huge downside of needing to be physically pointed at the target. Not so bad on the Defiant, or a fighter, where you are built around speed and maneuverability. Not so hot for a capital ship outside a surprise attack or fleet engagements where you have lots of targets and you need only a nudge to line up a hit. So the alternate Ent-D strikes me as a good design, strips for all-around fire and a single cannon for less wiggly targets, like other capital ships, ground targets, space stations, or anyone with crippled engines.

Reasonable.

On the other hand, if barreled phasers were much superior to strips, you might well start to see ships with turret armament again. Or possibly some kind of bastardized hybrid such as building casemates into the hull to give the guns enough traverse that they can engage any target that is 'more or less' in front of the ship. And the Enterprise-D spends a loooot of time with potentially hostile alien vessels hovering in front of it, if the visuals from the series are anything to go by.



____________

*The barreled pulse phaser weapons on the Defiant-class are clearly supposed to be 'better' than strip phasers, at least for a ship with the Defiant's mission (to be a small agile combatant for attacking Borg cubes).

Now, it COULD be that barreled disruptors would be even better. But we know barreled disruptors can't be much better than strip phasers (or the Federation would have adopted disruptor weapons just like the Klingons). And we know that barreled phasers can't be much worse than strip phasers, or the Defiant-class wouldn't be armed with them. So if A isn't much better than C, and C isn't much better than B, A probably isn't much better than B.

[Batman]

Other than the lack of the stun settings, disruptors seem to do pretty much the same thing as phasers do, except in green. Given the peculiarities of Klingon (and possibly Romulan) culture the lack of the stun settings may be a deliberate design decision rather than a side effect of different operating principles. We never see a disruptor do anything a phaser didn't.

[Sea Skimmer]

I suspect the answer is simply that indeed fixed barrel weapons offer more firepower per size, making them appealing for smaller and leaner vessels. Klingon vessels are pretty low on actual volume. For Federation ships and others building bigger and bulkier ships any mass penalty for the added armament strips is probably small, and the real limitation seems to be reactor power. 'Divert all power to weapons' comes up awful often in the show! Though they also seem to often imply that phaser banks do have finite particle reserves at any given time, so lots of big strips might also be able to store more total particles, but be slower at firing them then tubes.

They could be called overgunned if this is true, but with the result that they have high beam firepower in all directions. Space being 3D that would be very appealing. High average firepower really adds up, and nobodies ships ever side step while firing.

For heavy direct firepower meanwhile everyone seems to have pretty similar ideas on missiles, with a couple of launchers pointing dead forwards, and one or two positions covering aft high/low, and similar powers on target. That suggests to me that no major phasers-disruptor distinction exists.

[Simon_Jester]

Other than the lack of the stun settings, disruptors seem to do pretty much the same thing as phasers do, except in green. Given the peculiarities of Klingon (and possibly Romulan) culture the lack of the stun settings may be a deliberate design decision rather than a side effect of different operating principles. We never see a disruptor do anything a phaser didn't.

Eh. There would be plenty of times when Klingons or Romulans would benefit from being able to set their disruptors to "hurt like hell" without actively killing people. They routinely conquer others, so having a stun setting or something like it to ensure compliance from people it would be inconvenient to kill would still make sense.

Granted that this need could also be fulfilled by designing two totally different weapons, one to kill and one to stun, like how police might carry both a taser and a handgun.

[Batman]

It would also make sense for the Klingons to rely on ranged weapons and not use what is quite possibly the most stupidly designed sword in history in infantry combat. Something making sense doesn't automatically mean people actually do it. Given the Klingon 'Waah-captured! Dishonour!' attitude in TNG I can easily see them not having a stun setting to spare their enemies that dishonour.
And that's assuming we DON'T ever see disruptor stun. I certainly don't recall it happening but we're talking an awful lot of material here.

[biostem]

I wonder if the pulsed phasers that are the Defiant's main forward guns operate on the same principle as the compressed phaser rifles, which won't appear to fire continuous beams, like the older models did.

With regard to phaser turrets' volume - it is never clear how much of that volume would have to be in the actual turret/barrel area, and how much could be kept internally. If, for instance, any sort of turreted phaser would require a significant barrel to amp up the power, then could the resulting projectile/bolt simply be fed through some kind of channel/tunnel and fired that way.

I'm also imagining that it may actually take up less physical area to simply add a turret that can rotate and traverse, in order to cover the same area as the phaser strips. The biggest advantage the phaser strips seem to have is that they can take up that volume on the outer skin of your vessel, as opposed to having to take up internal space...

[Batman]

Not to mention fire on anything within their line of sight immediately. No having to physically slew the turret around, no having to make sure it's properly aligned, if a target is in the strip's field of view you get a lock and fire.

[SpottedKitty]

And that's assuming we DON'T ever see disruptor stun. I certainly don't recall it happening but we're talking an awful lot of material here.

I remember coming across mentions, but I'm not sure now if it was one of the Pocket books, fanfic, or what. Almost definitely not an actual episode. And I do remember part of it was noting that, as it's a Klingon weapon, "stun" actually meant "doesn't kill you immediately".

[Prometheus Unbound]

And that's assuming we DON'T ever see disruptor stun. I certainly don't recall it happening but we're talking an awful lot of material here.

I remember coming across mentions, but I'm not sure now if it was one of the Pocket books, fanfic, or what. Almost definitely not an actual episode. And I do remember part of it was noting that, as it's a Klingon weapon, "stun" actually meant "doesn't kill you immediately".

Spock said in Unification when holding a disruptor to Sela, "I'm afraid I don't know too much about Romulan disruptor settings". I don't know what that implies or doesn't.

I think the popular fanon is that disruptors may be more powerful, pound for pound, but aren't as useful (i.e. no "heat" or "stun" settings).

[Lord Revan]

I seem to remember Krugde (the Klingon commander from ST3) ordering his men to set their disruptors to stun when boarding the Enterprise, I could be mistaken though.

[biostem]

Not to mention fire on anything within their line of sight immediately. No having to physically slew the turret around, no having to make sure it's properly aligned, if a target is in the strip's field of view you get a lock and fire.

Well, there seems to be some disparity with regards to how long the process of the phaser beam sort of "streaking across" the array before it fires, takes. In some scenes, it can be a second or so, surely equal to or longer than what 24th century technology could do with a turret...

[Prometheus Unbound]

I seem to remember Krugde (the Klingon commander from ST3) ordering his men to set their disruptors to stun when boarding the Enterprise, I could be mistaken though.

Nothing about stun I'm afraid. He says something like take every last man and form a boarding party, heavily armed... we will take their command and plant our flag there. His lower says "they outnumber us my lord" and then he just yells WE ARE KLINGONS!.


Then later he says in Klingon something and then Kaplah! (the second Kaplah on screen btw - first was Valcris at the start of the movie) ). Nothing about stun, although the intent was to keep the Enterprise crew alive. I'm not really sure on his entire plan though as he was under the assumption that the Enterprise had it's normal crew compliment at that point. How he expected to keep the crew alive and take the ship I have no idea.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

In Star Trek XI, if I recall correctly the phasers that we see were apparently turret-mounted...

Looking again at one of the videos posted previously: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDLjtp2Ummw[/youtube] At 1:37 ("Way of the Warrior"), we see turrets being deployed.

Partly Rule of Cool, and partly necessitated by the awkward Cardassian design- not enough smooth, contiguous areas on the hull that long phaser strips require. A couple of things that I did wonder- any indications how "deep" the phaser strips are? As in, do they actually extend into the hull or are they more tacked on to the surface?

Something else that I wondered- is there any reason they don't route warp power to phasers when travelling at sublight? It might go some way towards compensating for what seems to be a serious lack of armaments in Federation starships compared to counterparts in other races' fleets.

I can see a case for torpedoes being turret mounted- because they're guided they don't need to be aimed as precisely as a beam or bolt would to hit a target. And because they're ammunition rather then energy-based they have an entirely different set of power considerations.

[SpottedKitty]

A couple of things that I did wonder- any indications how "deep" the phaser strips are? As in, do they actually extend into the hull or are they more tacked on to the surface?

IIRC from the TNG tech manual, the emitters in a strip are backed by power management and beam steering technobabble gadgets for each strip chunk, with connectors to the next chunk; the cross-section looks like a thick "Y" with the emitter at the top. The whole thing fits into a shallow trench in the hull, with only the line of emitters visible.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Something else that I wondered- is there any reason they don't route warp power to phasers when travelling at sublight?

Who says they don't? In TMP they say the phasers now are powered by the warp core for more power.

It might go some way towards compensating for what seems to be a serious lack of armaments in Federation starships compared to counterparts in other races' fleets.

I see no 1 on 1 disadvantage on the Federation's part. When have they shown to be under-armed compared to their counterparts' ships?

[Zwinmar]

My problem with a long strip is that destroying the starboard section may cause the port to be useless. If so, bad design.