Transphasic Torpedoes?

[seanrobertson]

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

Hmm...maybe. Only Borg systems, though? As I said, it was expected
to be ineffective against the transwarp hub's shields, yet we know what
it did to cubes. Both are Borg systems.

I think we're in agreement on the fact that it's probably not just
a high yield weapon, though I'll reiterate that I think yield is
certainly important here. We've seen photon torpedos smash
into the surface of a cube and do surprisingly little.

And again, that torpedo did hit the second cube and blow it up violently.
There wasn't much time for the torpedo to "propagate" through the cube's
highly decentralized power systems...if it simply caused a power failure
or feedback, you'd think the axis of the cube closest to the torpedo would
explode first.

[Patrick Ogaard]

My old conjectural explanation for the nature of transphasic torpedoes (as hoary oldsters on these boards may remember) was the following:

Having regular ST starship defensive shields (as opposed to navigational deflectors) brush against each other could have potentially catastrophic effects, or so I think. Therefore, normal shield generator systems have an automatic frequency matching or slipping feature that makes two overlapping shields locally cancel each other out for as long as the overlap lasts.

A transphasic torpedo has a short-lived but fully functional deflector shield generator system, so that it can slip past the normal defensive shields of a starship. Then the equally short-lived but fully functional navigational deflector dish in the nose of the torpedo overloads and punches a physical hole through the outer hull/armor of the target, followed by the torpedo zipping into the target vessel and exploding inside. The first flash would simply be the nav deflector throwing its punch to penetrate the outer hull, vaporizing a portion of that hull area. Since Star Wars shields do not appear to be frequency-sensitive (all metaphasic shields?), the shield cancellation effect likely would not take place.

If that technobabble doesn't work, the torpedo simply uses its mini nav deflector to channel the force of the payload's detonation. This would turn the torpedo from an omnidirectional explosive weapon into a directional explosive weapon. The first flash would be the torpedo vaporizing itself to generate the directional blast, the second would be the effect of the directional blast tearing deeply into the systems of the target vessel. (That could actually improve torpedo effectiveness against Star Wars ships a bit.)

A directional explosion would substantially increase the effective torpedo yield delivered to the target. It would also allow higher payloads to be used, since less of that increased torpedo payload would threaten the vessel firing the torpedo. The ridiculously low yields displayed by many ST torpedoes may be due to the ships firing them choosing low yields because of the danger to themselves in a close range torpedo fight (which begs the question: why not just use phasers or disruptors).

[Guest]

From what i could see in End Game the Torpedoes reacted with systems int he cube. Therfore i would asume that it reacteds with the Bio-Logical element of the Cube, read the Trekie books Shattney "wrote", in them he surmises that the inside of a Cube is also biological. In terms of Yield a Star Destroyer Fleet would have more mass, after all when Super Star Destroyer Wedge Antillies killed took hundreds of torpedoes yet was still salvagable. therefore i determine that these fancy torpedoes of the Feds would pose no threat