Transphasic Torpedoes?

[Australopithicus]

In the series finale of Voyager, 'Endgame', the technology from 2304 that admiral Janeway brings back to 2378 to bring Voyager home early seem to be hugely powerful by Star Trek terms, and may be the UFP's only hope against the empire.

Does anyone have any possible megaton/Isoton yields or compritive strengths of a transphasic torpedo? If not, how much damage do you think it would do to an Imperial Star destroyer?

As a side note, chroniton torpedoes from 'The year of Hell' go through shields due to temporal fluctuations. Do you think they could do much damage? Hurry! The future of the UFP hangs in a 1:99 balance in the empires' favour!!!

[Evil Jerk]

It should be noted that all we've really seen them do is bypass Borg shields and his critical points on Borg Cubes to make them blow up, however, they do not destroy the Cubes just because of their yield, and we don't know if they'd penetrate armour, so it's doubtful they could do anything against an ISD.

[Alyeska]

Transphasic torpedoes are likely to be powerful enough to contend with MTLs. Depends on the Federation ship strength caclulations though.

[Solid Snake]

Transphasic Torpedoes are anti-borg only, probably. If they werent designed exclusivley for use against the Borg, the Klingons wouldnt be a problem in the future.

[Anarchist Bunny]

I too am not sure about these Transphasic Torp. We've only seen them used against Borg ships, and even then, all they did was cause a warp core faliure. I'm not sure if the damage is even comparable to what the E-D did to the first cube they encountered. And we know the borg can adapt to multiple frequencies. So they are either Borg specific unadaptable torps, frequncy changing on point of impact torps, all frequencies then bypasses on the right one torps, or something eles.

Either way there are not significantly more powerful than QT and nothing to frequency-less ISD shielding.

[Alyeska]

Transphasic torpedoes killed Borg ships in 1-2 hits. People speculated they were upgraded firepower with shield penetrating capabilties. Problem is the Transwarp hub had strong enough shields it took multiple torpedoes to down the shields of the Hub. Seems to indicate the torpedoes do more damage then anything else.

[Mr Bean]

Yes execpt, exulding the people who think Borg ships have 100 Giga-ton Shielding you get down to acutal Borg shielding(2-21 Gigatons) and see at best the Transec torps either simply are anti-borg superweapon but not much else use.... Or that they are finaly upgraded torp, meaning 10-20 Gigatons, leagues above anything else the Feddys had at the time, but not that bad VS the Imperals

[SPOOFE]

I'm sure that Transphasic torps are stronger than photon or quantum torps. How much stronger, however, is anyone's guess. They might be slightly stronger, and they might be orders of magnitude stronger. On the other hand, they might also primarily utilize some sort of technobabble solution.

TP torps are lousy to use in these debates because, frankly, we know nothing about them.

[seanrobertson]

It should be noted that all we've really seen them do is bypass Borg shields and his critical points on Borg Cubes to make them blow up, however, they do not destroy the Cubes just because of their yield, and we don't know if they'd penetrate armour, so it's doubtful they could do anything against an ISD.

With respects, how could they *not* destroy cubes "just because
of their yield"?

The transphasic torpedos blew up two cubes with relative ease, but
they weren't expected to do all that great against the transwarp
hubs. Adm. Janeway said, "You might damage one [transwarp
manifold], maybe two, before the Queen adapts." The Queen
felt she/the Collective could "adapt eventually," so the question
should be one of angling shields or energy allocation, not simply
one of adjusting frequency nutation.

Therefore, transphasic torpedos *do* overwhelm cube-level shielding.
They must, then, involve a yield in excess of the deflector discharge
shown in "BOBW," or greater than the effective yield of 250 photon torpedos.

How much greater is anybody's guess.

[Alyeska]

It should be noted that all we've really seen them do is bypass Borg shields and his critical points on Borg Cubes to make them blow up, however, they do not destroy the Cubes just because of their yield, and we don't know if they'd penetrate armour, so it's doubtful they could do anything against an ISD.

With respects, how could they *not* destroy cubes "just because
of their yield"?

The transphasic torpedos blew up two cubes with relative ease, but
they weren't expected to do all that great against the transwarp
hubs. Adm. Janeway said, "You might damage one [transwarp
manifold], maybe two, before the Queen adapts." The Queen
felt she/the Collective could "adapt eventually," so the question
should be one of angling shields or energy allocation, not simply
one of adjusting frequency nutation.

Therefore, transphasic torpedos *do* overwhelm cube-level shielding.
They must, then, involve a yield in excess of the deflector discharge
shown in "BOBW," or greater than the effective yield of 250 photon torpedos.

How much greater is anybody's guess.

They are also more powerful then combined fleets of greater then 40 Federation ships.

[Mr Bean]

Of course consider the Worf 359 attack one must remeber all they had to do was wade through 2-20 ships at a time, at 60 Megatons a pop, 5 Gigaton shielding is sufficent to hold you for the 5 seconds or so it takes to blow a Feddy ship up then switch targets even with the idiotic abilites of the Borg

Or of Course unless Alyeska wants to make the case that there is no such thing as Shield Recarge(One of the reasons why the E-D does so bad aginst the typical ISD is thier shields recharge faster than the E-D can do damage...)

[Darth Wong]

Therefore, transphasic torpedos *do* overwhelm cube-level shielding. They must, then, involve a yield in excess of the deflector discharge shown in "BOBW," or greater than the effective yield of 250 photon torpedos.

How much greater is anybody's guess.

They are also more powerful then combined fleets of greater then 40 Federation ships.

Could someone refresh my memory as to why we are assuming that transphasic torpedoes are simply a brute-force enhancement rather than a defense-screen penetration enhancement? The fact that Janeway figured the Borg would eventually adapt to them obviously indicates that they could be stopped by their defense systems given analysis time, whereas brute force is not so easily dealt with.

[seanrobertson]

I too am not sure about these Transphasic Torp. We've only seen them used against Borg ships, and even then, all they did was cause a warp core faliure. I'm not sure if the damage is even comparable to what the E-D did to the first cube they encountered. And we know the borg can adapt to multiple frequencies. So they are either Borg specific unadaptable torps, frequncy changing on point of impact torps, all frequencies then bypasses on the right one torps, or something eles.

Either way there are not significantly more powerful than QT and nothing to frequency-less ISD shielding.

The damage they did is far greater than what the E-D did to a cube
in "Q Who?". In the latter, the E-D blew small chunks out of the cube's
superstructure. Worf said they "sustained damage to 20% of their vessel."
The two cubes in "Endgame" were totally blown apart; therefore, they
sustained damage to 100% of their vessels, arguably far greater damage
than of the context used in "Q Who?" ("Destroy" can mean a lot of things, and the word itself isn't often used to mean the very same thing in sci-fi.
The Death Star's destruction of a world, for example, could be said to
"destroy a world," yet the total amount of E involved is staggering beyond
that of almost anything else.)

So, I disagree that they're not significantly more powerful than quantums...they are, probably by a factor of something around 100x.
I figure a quantorp has an effective yield roughly 3x that of a max.
yield photorp, correlating to about 10 megatons. 100x that is 1 gigaton.
As doomsday weapons, that's not so unreasonable...the Cardassians
fielded a fleet of automated missiled that rated about 19 gigatons apiece
("Dreadnought"). Given almost 40 years of weapon miniaturization and
better power sources to draw from, that transphasics would have much
larger yields shouldn't be a big surprise.

As for why they weren't used against Klingons...why WOULD they be
used? Killing one of the members of the High Council (remember,
he was on one of those two Negh'Var variants) wouldn't be
such a great idea...and we don't know that transphasic torpedos were
in regular circulation even in the early 2400s. Even then they might've
been considered doomsday weapons, standard issue only when such
threats as the Borg materialized.

This is purely a qualification of intra-Trek abilities, however. I like
to get that straight before I compare it to anything else.

[Mr Bean]

The damage they did is far greater than what the E-D did to a cube
in "Q Who?". In the latter, the E-D blew small chunks out of the cube's
superstructure. Worf said they "sustained damage to 20% of their vessel."
The two cubes in "Endgame" were totally blown apart; therefore, they
sustained damage to 100% of their vessels, arguably far greater damage
than of the context used in "Q Who?"

Acutal this is pretty easy to answera, in Endgame the Torps pentrated the Cube(The delay inbetwen striking and exploding makes it obvious it pentrated first) compared to the E-D's Torp which simply stuck the surface and exploded

[Darth Wong]

The damage they did is far greater than what the E-D did to a cube in "Q Who?".

Why are you assuming the difference is due to yield rather than a more penetrative warhead or output that triggers internal failures? A Borg cube is not an inert piece of metal; its explosion was obviously caused by internal failures (note that the TP torpedoes explode against its surface and then the cube explodes shortly afterwards; it is NOT obliterated by the sheer yield of the weapon).

[Evil Jerk]

It should be noted that all we've really seen them do is bypass Borg shields and his critical points on Borg Cubes to make them blow up, however, they do not destroy the Cubes just because of their yield, and we don't know if they'd penetrate armour, so it's doubtful they could do anything against an ISD.

With respects, how could they *not* destroy cubes "just because
of their yield"?

<snip>

Simply because they appear to bypass their shields and detonate near the surface of the Cubes, which then results in a secondary explosion which destroys the Cube.

[seanrobertson]

Could someone refresh my memory as to why we are assuming that transphasic torpedoes are simply a brute-force enhancement rather than a defense-screen penetration enhancement? The fact that Janeway figured the Borg would eventually adapt to them obviously indicates that they could be stopped by their defense systems given analysis time, whereas brute force is not so easily dealt with.

Yes. It's a bit difficult to explain, especially because I'm 400% more
drunk than I was earlier...

Maybe I can explain my reasoning tomorrow In short, I don't
know that they're simply a higher yield device, but ultimately they
have to be. Let me figure out how to phrase as much when I sleep
this off...

[seanrobertson]

Simply because they appear to bypass their shields and detonate near the surface of the Cubes, which then results in a secondary explosion which destroys the Cube.

I don't remember any secondary explosions, though. The second
cube hit was nailed by one torpedo, and blew up instantly.

Agh, more later on this. As I said, an unexpected bit o' alcohol induced delirium is making this far too hard to do. I've already gone back and
corrected about five bad misspellings in this post alone

[seanrobertson]

The damage they did is far greater than what the E-D did to a cube in "Q Who?".

Why are you assuming the difference is due to yield rather than a more penetrative warhead or output that triggers internal failures? A Borg cube is not an inert piece of metal; its explosion was obviously caused by internal failures (note that the TP torpedoes explode against its surface and then the cube explodes shortly afterwards; it is NOT obliterated by the sheer yield of the weapon).

I didn't. I was responding to this:

We've only seen them used against Borg ships, and even then, all they did was cause a warp core faliure. I'm not sure if the damage is even comparable to what the E-D did to the first cube they encountered.

Obviously, the "damage" done is FAR greater, regardless of its cause:
one attack scratched the cube's surface while the other blew the cube apart.
I also can't fully agree that the transphasic torpedos didn't destroy the
ships by sheer yield...admittedly, I'm a bit off my peak , but I do
remember the second cube's destruction vividly. As soon as the torpedo
hit, it exploded violently.

What all the weapon might involve is, as I said, well beyond my abilities
at the moment (if ever!). I do think raw yield is partially responsible,
though for the purposes of this thread, it's a moot point anyway.

[Solid Snake]

[quote="seanrobertson"][/quote]

The damage they did is far greater than what the E-D did to a cube
in "Q Who?". In the latter, the E-D blew small chunks out of the cube's
superstructure. Worf said they "sustained damage to 20% of their vessel."
The two cubes in "Endgame" were totally blown apart; therefore, they
sustained damage to 100% of their vessels, arguably far greater damage
than of the context used in "Q Who?"

I found this funny for some reason.

[Cpt_Frank]

Well their name already gives us a hint what makes them different it's this transphasic thingy, which probably enables the torps to bypass frequency based shields. However there's no hint that they have a higher yield, and there's no evidence they would bypass an ISD's shields (much less penetrate the armor).

[seanrobertson]

The damage they did is far greater than what the E-D did to a cube in "Q Who?".

Why are you assuming the difference is due to yield rather than a more penetrative warhead or output that triggers internal failures? A Borg cube is not an inert piece of metal; its explosion was obviously caused by internal failures (note that the TP torpedoes explode against its surface and then the cube explodes shortly afterwards; it is NOT obliterated by the sheer yield of the weapon).

Between a long day at the gym and watching the Panthers just screw
up a solid chance at a field goal against Green Bay, it took me longer
to get back to this than I realized. Sorry for the delay.

Anyway, to recap, I think transphasic torpedos do involve sheer yield to some degree. Three torpedos easily killed two Borg cubes, as previously noted. I don't remember the explosion of the first cube, but the second blew apart upon the torpedo's impact (no delay...the first cube must've
been different).

However, the torpedos weren't thought capable of getting through the transwarp hub's shields.

From the VGR script of "Endgame":


Seven of Nine: "Structure is supported by a series of interspatial manifolds."

(She pulls up an interior view of one of the conduits.)

"If we could disable enough of them, theoretically the hub would collapse."

Janeway: "This is a waste of time! The shielding for those manifolds is regulated from the central plexus by the Queen herself. You might be able to damage one of them, maybe two. But by the time you moved onto the third, she'd adapt."

Also:

Seven of Nine: "They'd [tranphasic torpedos] be programmed to detonate simultaneously. If the torpedoes penetrate the shielding, the conduits should begin to collapse in a cascade reaction. In order to avoid the shock wave, we'd have less than ten seconds to exit the hub."

And:

(Shortly after the Unicomplex is exploding) Seven of Nine: "The Admiral succeeded, Captain. The conduit's shielding is destabilizing."

Janeway: "Now, Mr. Tuvok." (Tuvok lets fly with a half dozen torpedoes. Each one does extreme damage.)

All bold text is my emphasis.

If the torpedos only involved some sort of technobabble trick with
Borg shields, why would they readily penetrate two cubes' shields
yet be dismissed as a "waste of time" against the hub's shielding, capable of only damaging a couple of these manifolds before the Queen "adapts"?

Initially, I thought, well, the Queen is regulating control of those things.
She might be able to "adapt" to the technobabble faster than your
average group of plodding drones (though she *is* the Collective
and all that crap...groan).

However, that explanation is not satisfactory. First, it requires that we
treat the hub's shields as somehow potentially "smarter" than a cubes,
more capable of quick adaptation or somehow more versatile in general. But shields seem to be shields...I know of no precedent that one
set of Borg shields are less "adaptable" than others.

Second, the Queen's control over a thing can't be a failsafe because she was *controlling the cubes that attacked VGR.* Before the attack, the Queen remarked that she'd handle VGR "personally," and we saw
her gestures/thoughts controlling those cubes' approach (and the
third cube's retreat). She has control over all of a cube's functions,
as we saw in "Unimatrix Zero" (forcing a no. of ships to blow themselves
up). Why couldn't she simply "adapt" these cubes' shields to handle
the torpedos, just as she was expected to do with the manifold shielding?
With a total of 47 Borg ships inside that nebula (according to Tuvok
IIRC), surely she could tweak *one* of them to "adapt" if her control
was the sole reason shields could survive such an attack.

So what's the difference? My guess is that it is power. The torpedos could overwhelm a cube's shields because they simply weren't powerful enough to stop penetration (after which technobabble takes over, perhaps). But they weren't powerful enough to take on the hub's shielding; this is said repeatedly, and evidently was true given that the old fart Janeway sacrificed herself to disable those shields. Hence, transphasic torpedos must get at least some of their oomph from a large yield. It might simply be that
which allows the torpedo to do its stuff once *inside* a shield...I'm not
suggesting that they're simply big bombs, but if they can't get through
a shield in the first place, they're not going to do anything to a cube's
power network (or what-have-you).

The only potential hang-up I see in all this is what Adm. Janewad said
regarding the manifold's "adaptability;" i.e., "The shielding for those manifolds is regulated from the central plexus by the Queen herself. You might be able to damage one of them, maybe two. But by the time you moved onto the third, she'd adapt."

That needn't infringe on my explanation, though, for the simple reason that what the Borg consider "adaptation" does not always mean so much as frequency-matching. *Sometimes* it does, but to conclude that it's always
the case is hasty generalizing.

In "Dark Frontier," for example, the Queen's diamondship faces 39
ships that've developed a "modulating phaser pulse which can penetrate
our shields." The ship gets its ass kicked, stuff starts sparking and
blowing up, and the Queen--trying to get 7of9 to go over to the Borg
side--asks how they might "adapt." Seven says something about changing
shield geometry to absorb the phasers instead of deflecting them.

The Queen thinks, it's done, and she replies, "Adaptation complete.
They are no longer a threat."

Technobabble is involved, but nothing is said of frequency. They "adapt"
by dealing with the incoming energy in a different way.

I offer that something similar is the case with the hub shielding. Its shields could be more "adaptable" not because they're smarter, but
because their power source is greater. Furthermore, one could divert
power from the several dozen "spatial manifolds" NOT under attack
to those that WERE under fire, "adapting" in a sense that involves
nothing more than using the power you have at hand.

As for the whole name of the torpedos themselves, I admit that
it's possible the things do something other than blowing up a target
with a big explosion. Other than the first cube's apparent non-instant destruction, though, I don't know of anything canon that substantiates some of the wilder Trekkie theories floating around out there. The name
could denote the torpedos' power sources or somesuch <shrugs>...and
as I've been saying, even if the things are highly penetrative or whatever
else someone takes from the names of the things alone, their *effects*
are greater than the 20 or so photon torpedos that blew up deep inside
a cube in "First Contact."

Regardless, it makes no difference in the greater thread topic at hand.

[Kuja]

Watch the sequence carefully. The 1st cube takes a pair of torps before blowing up. The 2nd cube takes only ONE. This is not a pure yield weapon.

[seanrobertson]

Watch the sequence carefully. The 1st cube takes a pair of torps before blowing up. The 2nd cube takes only ONE. This is not a pure yield weapon.

I didn't say it's a pure yield weapon, but that it must involve yield to
overwhelm shields prior to doing...whatever it does. I'm sure
I made that qualification. I emphasize the yield of the thing so much
because I feel that's been overlooked.

Also, I fail to see why the 2nd cube being blown away by one torpedo
helps the "yield isn't important for their effects" explanation. That
torpedo hit, and the whole cube blew up instantly. The torpedo didn't
appear to penetrate the cube's surface or anything similar. As soon
as it made contact with the cube, the cube went BAM!

What about the fact that the torpedos weren't used against the transwarp
hub until its shields were down? I feel that's too important to overlook,
too.

[Kuja]

that's true. That's why it's NOT a pure yield weapon. Obviously it reacts with Borg systems.