Speculative Trek Weaponry

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 04:39pm

If you were a Starfleet research scientist tasked with developing new weaponry based on existing Federation technology, what could you come up with?

My first idea: Soliton Wave Cannon. -- it fires a focused Soliton Wave at enemy ships (or battlestations, lol) accelerating a portion of the target to FTL speeds, essentially tearing the target to pieces.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-10-08 05:01pm

As soon as the shields fail, a weapon that will beam a torpedo inside the ship.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-10-08 05:05pm

A. We've never seen a soliton wave do anything. For all we know, their sensors were simply going haywire. The fact that no huge amount of energy was released when the soliton wave was stopped indicates that it couldn't have contained all of the energy it was said to contain (see First Law of Thermodynamics).

B. Cyril, your idea is just silly. If you can stop the enemy ship's shields, you should be able to destroy it easily, in a variety of ways that don't involve dropping your own shields in order to transport a bomb over.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-10-08 05:07pm

Just fuck around with the deflector until you can get it to cut ships in half through shields.

Evil Jerk · Post by **Evil Jerk** » 2002-10-08 05:17pm

Manufacture smallish computer driven ships with multiple Feddy Style Ultra Unstable Warp Cores(tm) and ram them into the enemy = Kaboom!

Not a really new weapon as such, but..

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2002-10-08 05:23pm

For transporters to be viable as weapons, Starfleet must first devise a means by which they can go through the home ship's own shields without being disrupted. For some reason, they've managed to successfully do this before, yet at other times they consider it an impossibility. It boggles the mind why it would work one time, and not the other.

Hmm...

Really, conventional methods are really the best. Just jam more antimatter into a torpedo, bigger boom. Is there any reason why they can't just make larger torpedoes to hold, say, 10 kilograms of antimatter, instead of just 1.5?

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2002-10-08 05:23pm

A photon(or Quantum if you prefer) launcher that has 10 tubes mounted in a gatling comfigureation. It loads the tubes as is rotates firing a torpedo as soon as new launcher reaches the fire position. If the tubes have to cool down before fireing again they can be reloaded after it turns several times. This would raise the fire rate 10x without taking up too much extra space(needs only 1 releading system).

A Gatling Pulse Phaser cannon

yes I like gatling guns

greenmm · Post by **greenmm** » 2002-10-08 05:32pm

torpedo equipped with a close-range scanner that can detect an enemy's shield frequency, so that it can readjust its shields and pull off a Generations-style trick and slip through the enemy shields.

Now that's what I call a "golden BB"...

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2002-10-08 05:34pm

greenmm wrote:torpedo equipped with a close-range scanner that can detect an enemy's shield frequency, so that it can readjust its shields and pull off a Generations-style trick and slip through the enemy shields.

Now that's what I call a "golden BB"...

add that to my Gatling torpedo launcher and ohh watch out!

Failed Glory · Post by **Failed Glory** » 2002-10-08 05:40pm

A torpedo armed to produce those crazy "omega" particles near another vessel.

You could launch one, go to warp and watch your poor enemy spend the next ten years getting out of a Warp-impossible area.

This weapon would have little use in-system, but sounds like a good idea when being pursued at Warp.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 06:08pm

Failed Glory wrote:A torpedo armed to produce those crazy "omega" particles near another vessel.

You could launch one, go to warp and watch your poor enemy spend the next ten years getting out of a Warp-impossible area.

This weapon would have little use in-system, but sounds like a good idea when being pursued at Warp.

Actually, from what I recall of the Omega Particle, it destroys everything.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 06:12pm

SPOOFE wrote:For transporters to be viable as weapons, Starfleet must first devise a means by which they can go through the home ship's own shields without being disrupted. For some reason, they've managed to successfully do this before, yet at other times they consider it an impossibility. It boggles the mind why it would work one time, and not the other.

Hmm...

Really, conventional methods are really the best. Just jam more antimatter into a torpedo, bigger boom. Is there any reason why they can't just make larger torpedoes to hold, say, 10 kilograms of antimatter, instead of just 1.5?

Actually, there's good reason to believe that transporters would make decent weapons even through shields if enough power is routed to them... keep in mind that the big operational objection to transporting through shields/jamming/radiation/whatever is in transporting living objects. Say you were to transport a couple hundred pounds of solid lead? It might not rematerialize in a coherent shape, but so what? A dense enough materialization of particalized lead could still prove quite lethal...

Robert Treder · Post by **Robert Treder** » 2002-10-08 06:13pm

Well, as long as it's speculative, I'm going with turbolasers.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2002-10-08 06:16pm

ISWM: Inter-Stellar Warp Missle. A missle with a large warhead of AM. It will be cloaked and capable of FTL. It will be able to blast a target like DS9 before they know what hit them.

Self Propelled torpedo: A normal torpedo that can be dropped and then travel to its target. This will eliminate the need for launchers (Year of Hell, Caretaker) It is to be used on cloaked ships that don't have the power to fire a torpedo.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 06:18pm

Robert Treder wrote:Well, as long as it's speculative, I'm going with turbolasers.

You forgot that it's speculative Trek Weaponry, didn't you?

Evil Jerk · Post by **Evil Jerk** » 2002-10-08 06:21pm

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:ISWM: Inter-Stellar Warp Missle. A missle with a large warhead of AM. It will be cloaked and capable of FTL. It will be able to blast a target like DS9 before they know what hit them.

Don't they already have that in the Cardie Dreadnaught, apart from the cloaking?

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 06:22pm

Darth Wong wrote:A. We've never seen a soliton wave do anything. For all we know, their sensors were simply going haywire. The fact that no huge amount of energy was released when the soliton wave was stopped indicates that it couldn't have contained all of the energy it was said to contain (see First Law of Thermodynamics).

B. Cyril, your idea is just silly. If you can stop the enemy ship's shields, you should be able to destroy it easily, in a variety of ways that don't involve dropping your own shields in order to transport a bomb over.

A. Yes, we have. We've seen it accelerate an object to FTL speed. That's all it has to do. Say you shot a soliton wave at an attacking ship: attacking ship goes bye-bye on a direct hit, probably killing its crew due to the fact that their inertial compensators wouldn't be expecting the jump.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-10-08 06:25pm

A deflector beam that weakens the nuclear bonding force (I think that's what it's called).

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2002-10-08 06:25pm

Evil Jerk wrote:
Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:ISWM: Inter-Stellar Warp Missle. A missle with a large warhead of AM. It will be cloaked and capable of FTL. It will be able to blast a target like DS9 before they know what hit them.
Don't they already have that in the Cardie Dreadnaught, apart from the cloaking?

Yeah well the Cardies was fucked up and didn't explode. Plus mine isn't some puny 40 gigatons.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 06:29pm

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:
Evil Jerk wrote:
Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:ISWM: Inter-Stellar Warp Missle. A missle with a large warhead of AM. It will be cloaked and capable of FTL. It will be able to blast a target like DS9 before they know what hit them.
Don't they already have that in the Cardie Dreadnaught, apart from the cloaking?

Yeah well the Cardies was fucked up and didn't explode. Plus mine isn't some puny 40 gigatons.

And hopefully yours won't have some pitiful AI that tries to make its own targeting decisions...

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2002-10-08 06:30pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:A deflector beam that weakens the nuclear bonding force (I think that's what it's called).

I'm pretty sure that's what phasers do, if I understand the whole "NDF" load correctly...

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2002-10-08 06:31pm

Raoul Duke, Jr. wrote:
Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:
Evil Jerk wrote: Don't they already have that in the Cardie Dreadnaught, apart from the cloaking?

Yeah well the Cardies was fucked up and didn't explode. Plus mine isn't some puny 40 gigatons.
And hopefully yours won't have some pitiful AI that tries to make its own targeting decisions...

True what is an AI doing on a weapon anyway?

Evil Jerk · Post by **Evil Jerk** » 2002-10-08 06:34pm

Isolder74 wrote:
Raoul Duke, Jr. wrote:
Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:

Yeah well the Cardies was fucked up and didn't explode. Plus mine isn't some puny 40 gigatons.
And hopefully yours won't have some pitiful AI that tries to make its own targeting decisions...
True what is an AI doing on a weapon anyway?

Typical Trek style over-complication of an otherwise simple device..

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2002-10-08 06:42pm

Evil Jerk wrote:Typical Trek style over-complication of an otherwise simple device..

only a reason to write a long drawn out episode where the almost kill B'Lanna. The fact that the Cardie version had a AI too makes it even worse. A simple deadmans switch if anyone plays with it is enough for security. What's all that empty space doing inside a weapon anyway? Why would a weapon intended to not to get intercepted even have life suffort either?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-10-08 06:43pm

Raoul Duke, Jr. wrote:
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:A deflector beam that weakens the nuclear bonding force (I think that's what it's called).
I'm pretty sure that's what phasers do, if I understand the whole "NDF" load correctly...

No, I think NDF turns matter into Neutrinoes. Mine would turn anything into atom-sized sand or some kind of a fluid.