Conjectural Star Trek Tech Analysis

[CJvR]

IMHO they would be a good suppliment at the very least because they are a much smaller target than a phaser array while being of similar firepower.

This isn't a turret like a Iowa Battleship style turret, it's the 1/2 recessed ball turrets from TMP era ships. All that gets steered is the final end product of the PPC, not the entire canon.

Im not sure that you could direct PPC fire in the manner you do normal Phasers. PPC are much more intensive, packing all it's power in a beam only a few meters long instead of a few miles as an array does, you will probably need a fairly massive turret able to hold the entire weapon if you want to aim it. The Defiant isn't equiped with a system to direct the PPCs despite the obvious advantage such a system would have over it's present forward fire only cannons.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I'm pretty sure the whole point of PPCs is they are have a long, linear accelerator to pack all that phaser power into a quick punch instead of the long slow stream.

The whole weapon would have to rotate with the turret.

[BenRG]

The whole weapon would have to rotate with the turret.

It depends. If the phaser burst is a charged particle, it could be 'bent' around a corner through a series of ring electromagnets from the emitter to the small, rotating turret appature.

[CNS Sarajevo]

In case of Borg, break glass.

Slug throwers and "plasma" grenades to kill Borg with. Y'know, EMP should work on the Borg too.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The whole weapon would have to rotate with the turret.

It depends. If the phaser burst is a charged particle, it could be 'bent' around a corner through a series of ring electromagnets from the emitter to the small, rotating turret appature.

Which would defeat the whole point.

Phaser strips do exactly that, an as a consequence fire the weaker, longer streams.

[BenRG]

Phaser strips do exactly that, an as a consequence fire the weaker, longer streams.

Are you sure about that? I got the impression that each phaser emitter in the strip discharged into the next one to create a more powerful blast. While the phaser blast can be angled along one axis (elevation), any blast from a strip will come from the emitter on a radial line to the target. I might be wrong, but that is my understanding of the technology.

Why should a 'buried' emitter firing through a small turret be defeating the point?