Building such an easy to use switch into your transporters is a tradeoff between the risks of the safeties being off (accident, hack, hostile infiltrator, etc) leading to friendly deaths vs the times when it would be useful.Patroklos wrote: ↑2021-01-14 09:54am Presumably, this is the case for every weapon system regarding a safety. If you conceive of the transporter as a weapon, it could be just as easy to switch such a safety off. We are not talking about why the transporter isn't used as an impromtu weapon, but rather why it not a primary weapons system in its own right.
And while the Federation might have a moral reason to avoid it, there are plenty of transporter capable races out there that do not.
Pick any season of Star Trek and tell me how many times in that season a weaponized transporter would have been useful. Unless you present evidence to the contrary, I will be assuming:
- If there is ship to ship combat, then the shields of either side will get in the way.
- If the ship is boarded in multiple locations, then assume that one of the off screen boarding parties was smart enough to neutralize the transporters.
- If the is any trouble tracking the threat with sensors, then you can't get a transporter lock.