Rebel Alliance and Federation

[Master of Ossus]

Sean, how can you assume that the limiting factor on the firepower of a phaser is its power generation? It could much more easily be a problem with cooling the system, or even with scaling such a structure up to accept TL-magnitude power. Do you have a source for this assumption?

[Mr Bean]

I didn't say it would not. All I said was, a phaser fed by billions of terawatts would chew through ISDs left and right. Given the EFFECTS of phasers
at output powers some billion, trillion, and quadrillion times less, I'd think
this was pretty damn straight forward.

Except we know Phasers are TERRIBLY inefficent aginst shields

Sure its a nice Anti-Hull weapon but guess what? When you have the Shields down its does not matter much WHAT weapon over 100 Megatons you fire now does it?

[Evil Jerk]

Sufficient quantities? So they're simply going to use them according
to some ad hoc "all or nothing" principle? Why? They might simply
use them for replicating foodstuffs for the troops. No one ever
said they had to use them for EVERYTHING.

Cost vs. gain, if replicators do not demonstrate an ability to make more products for less cost then they might as well stick with what they have and not induldge themselves with gimmicks.

Clarify.

That high power phasers will be able to instantly fell ISDs is pure assumption.

I didn't say it would not. All I said was, a phaser fed by billions of terawatts would chew through ISDs left and right. Given the EFFECTS of phasers
at output powers some billion, trillion, and quadrillion times less, I'd think
this was pretty damn straight forward.

Assuming that they can be used at these higher powers, assuming that if they can that Rebel and Starfleet engineers will be able to utilise them this way in short order.

Conclusion? Simple. Phasers' effects increase drastically as one pumps
more power into them. At one megawatt, you can "vaporize" a humanoid,
but at just short of a terawatt, you can "vaporize" a large city's worth of rock.
That's not a mere million-fold increase in volume or mass, I assure you.

Pump a billion TW behind that phaser, and watch the fuck out. The
ratio of equivalent effects seems to be roughly several million or more
against rock, several thousand against shields, and perhaps 2-10x
more against heavy armor.

So, yeah, I think a huge Rebel phaser would blast through an ISD
in short order.

First of all, I've never seen over half the capabilities of a phaser you claim exist, secondly it's still an assumption that you can just pump more power into it and go.
Frankly this notion that the only thing Treknology needs to work well is more power is rather baffling.

Did I say you could slap it on and be ready to go? No, nor did I imply
as much. I said a phaser with a HTL's power would be a VERY useful
weapon to the Rebels. I didn't say it'd be easy, though there's no
reason to think that it'd be especially difficult for the Rebels to build
a ship capable of using phasers. Even if they had to compromise
the amount of power fed to the things by several orders of magnitude,
they'd still have weapons easily capable of threatening an ISD's shields.
They might need a few HTL batteries to knock out the hull, but those
batteries could be potentially far more powerful given the energy savings
had with anti-shield phaser cannons.

Refitting such ships would take time and money, researching how to safely apply SW power levels to phasers would take time and money unless you want to gamble on the ships going boom as soon as they fire.
The Rebels need tried and tested weapons, not new toys.
Furthermore I still find your conclusions completley exagerrated, we don't even know if more power will multiply it's effect.

[Mr Bean]

Yes a point about Phasers, Why then don't we see Ship Killers? Mounting nothing but Phasers strips with a small crew but 2 or 3 of the most powerful Engine Cores you could mount?

SW has such a thing never built thanks to the fall of the Empire but the *Plusar Station mounts the Eclipse size Superlasers(Basicly 3/4 of a Single DS Beam) Except all over

If I remeber corretly its 40 KM in size in a Sphere with Superlaser Emitters of the Enitre Sphere so the Beam can be focused and fire at any number of sections with roughly 100 times the shielding of an ISD(Meaning either 1.56 Petatons or 27.86 Exotons(Low and Mid number set)

And the Superlaser had a VERY fast firing rate(Less that eight seconds if I remeber right)

Never got built but would have been NASTY aginst fleets

[seanrobertson]

Not necessarily. Replicators are necessarily more energy-demanding than what they probably do. Once food is grown, it must be processed into ingots (or something) of food aggregate. It must then be combined in the replicator. These are both energy-demanding processes, and would necessarily require energy in order to work.

Grown?

1. You assume that the phaser can accept unlimited amounts of energy.

Not unlimited. Billions of TW, as per the firepower of a heavy turbolaser.
The difference is like that of a hand phaser to that of a starship-mounted
phaser emitter.

This is almost certainly not true. Almost all weapons have a certain limit to firepower, beyond which they become unmanageable. Increasing the caliber of guns, for example, necessitates more barrel strength, which generally requires an even thicker (and heavier) barrel. It also requires more recoil.

Yes, but those are all direct energy transfer weapons. And we know of
no conceivable limit beyond which phasers wouldn't be useful anymore...if anything, we have a lot of evidence that suggests every small increase
in raw output results in dramatically greater effects.

Some weapons used during the Middle Ages could not even be fired from the shoulder due to their tremendous recoil, which would break people's bones! Also, there is a limit as to how powerful a nuclear weapon can be made with the technology we have today. Even if size and weight were not an issue, uranium simply cannot be used after a certain critical mass, and deuterium will no longer be useful in magnifying the explosive's power. Thus, the phaser is almost certainly not capable of firing with TL magnitude energy. Things like heating and size would become too unmanageable.

Why? Those weapons are nothing like phasers at all. Phasers don't output significant heat, as Michael demonstrated in his "ST: Insurrection Revelations" page (among countless others we're all aware of). You need a much bigger phaser crystal and by default, emitter to probably handle
the levels of energy I'm talking about, far beyond that which could be
generated with M/AM reactions, but even then, we could be looking
at weapons much smaller than a HTL itself.

2. You assume that phasers are more efficient than TL's, the only reason why the Rebels would install them instead of TL's.

For some things, yes, at the same outputs they'd be far more efficient.
I mean, come on ...when have we seen a bloody *terawatt* level Imperial weapon threaten to create an "exothermal inversion" of a planet's atmosphere? Billions of TW, sure, but TW (60 GW variance, to be precise)?

And I didn't say it was this false dichotomy; i.e., either phasers, or turbolasers. I said the Rebels would find very powerful phasers very useful, particularly in defeating an ISD's shields.

You also assume that the Rebel ships are infinitely modifiable in accepting structures like phasers, which almost certainly require certain ship structures to be constructed differently.

Nah, I didn't even consider that. It might be impossible for them to
accomodate such weapons--I have no clue. It shouldn't be impossible,
but I was concerned only with the potential benefit of a technology
exchange (heavy on "potential" ).

3. Further, you assume that the most important factor in a Rebel weapon system is firepower/shot (probably measured in energy). It appears it is more important to get the maximum firepower/time (probably measured in watts). There is NO evidence that a phaser with a TL power source could do more damage per time unit than a TL, which fires quick bursts instead of long beams. If the TL does more damage per time, it may still be a more effective weapon system than a phaser, as SW shields work with a limit to how much damage they can take in a unit of time (they are measured in watts by ICS, instead of joules or tons or anything like that). Thus we see that a very quick burst that is just as damaging as a longer burst will actually be MUCH harder for a SW shield to stop, because they have a limit to how many WATTS they can withstand, instead of how many joules.

Eh? A joule of phaser energy has an effect greater than a joule of
"real" energy against any material short of neutronium. I've never known phasers to be effective only given a certain duration over which they're exposed to a target (if I'm understanding you correctly...this computer virus is REALLY acting up on me and things are slow); Defiant's phasers indicate the opposite, in fact.

None of your assumptions are supported in any way. There is actually considerable evidence, as I have presented, against your theory. The phaser is likely a less efficient system both in terms of firepower/energy transfered to it and in terms of firepower/unit time. There is really no reason for the Alliance to use it. And there is considerable evidence that it would require a complete re-design of critical ship's components and designs to use the phaser on Rebel ships.

With respects, Ossus, what evidence? Phasers aren't firing bullets from
big barrels, nor is there anything to indicate that once a certain power is
fed to the phaser, no matter its size, it simply "can't take any more"
(my words).

I reiterate: if anything, there is substantial evidence that phasers
have geometrically greater effects against all targets save neutronium
as you pump more and more power into that phaser. Granted, *that*
isn't a given , but if it was, I think the Rebels could use it to great
effect as a shield-defeating technology.

Of course, in all honesty, I must admit that it is possible phasers would not
have the sorts of low petawatt-type "effects" against Imperial shields
that they do against other Treknobabble ships. This is often overlooked,
but Trek shields might be susceptible to phasers simply because
both involve "subspace" to some extent. [shrugs]

I gotta go. Fun discussion...I knew that would generate some controversy,
mwahahahaha

[Alyeska]

I didn't say it would not. All I said was, a phaser fed by billions of terawatts would chew through ISDs left and right. Given the EFFECTS of phasers
at output powers some billion, trillion, and quadrillion times less, I'd think
this was pretty damn straight forward.

Except we know Phasers are TERRIBLY inefficent aginst shields

Sure its a nice Anti-Hull weapon but guess what? When you have the Shields down its does not matter much WHAT weapon over 100 Megatons you fire now does it?

That is not entirely true. There is plenty of evidence of Phasers being quite effective against shields. Additionally Master Osus theorized that phasers are capable of partially bypassing enemy shields and causing damage to the hull. This theory is supported a great many examples of beam weaponry causing exploding consoles when torpedo hits have not. Increase firepower behind the phasers to go against stronger shields, and you increase the amount of bleed through on the part of the shields.

[Alyeska]

Yes a point about Phasers, Why then don't we see Ship Killers? Mounting nothing but Phasers strips with a small crew but 2 or 3 of the most powerful Engine Cores you could mount?

SW has such a thing never built thanks to the fall of the Empire but the *Plusar Station mounts the Eclipse size Superlasers(Basicly 3/4 of a Single DS Beam) Except all over

If I remeber corretly its 40 KM in size in a Sphere with Superlaser Emitters of the Enitre Sphere so the Beam can be focused and fire at any number of sections with roughly 100 times the shielding of an ISD(Meaning either 1.56 Petatons or 27.86 Exotons(Low and Mid number set)

And the Superlaser had a VERY fast firing rate(Less that eight seconds if I remeber right)

Never got built but would have been NASTY aginst fleets

The reason is that phasers have less range then torpedoes and require larger amounts of power. Such a ship would be costly and could be defeated merely by staying out of its range.

[Master of Ossus]

Not necessarily. Replicators are necessarily more energy-demanding than what they probably do. Once food is grown, it must be processed into ingots (or something) of food aggregate. It must then be combined in the replicator. These are both energy-demanding processes, and would necessarily require energy in order to work.

Grown?

Grown. It has to come from somewhere.

1. You assume that the phaser can accept unlimited amounts of energy.

Not unlimited. Billions of TW, as per the firepower of a heavy turbolaser.
The difference is like that of a hand phaser to that of a starship-mounted
phaser emitter.

You just disproved your own point. Hand phasers are clearly different than starship-mounted phaser emitters, but you say that the system will be the same if they scale it up to us TL magnitude power supplies?

This is almost certainly not true. Almost all weapons have a certain limit to firepower, beyond which they become unmanageable. Increasing the caliber of guns, for example, necessitates more barrel strength, which generally requires an even thicker (and heavier) barrel. It also requires more recoil.

Yes, but those are all direct energy transfer weapons. And we know of
no conceivable limit beyond which phasers wouldn't be useful anymore...if anything, we have a lot of evidence that suggests every small increase
in raw output results in dramatically greater effects.

This is a violation of burden of proof. You made a claim that phasers can accept TL magnitude power, you have to back it up. The absence of knowing no conceivable limit is not evidence that they can. It has never come up because SF has never been able to improve their power outputs by the amount you are talking about. Further, you go on to assume that even a small increase in output yields much greater effects. This is somewhat true, but how do you know that energy at very high levels will continue to be as efficient as lower-level phaser fire? You cannot assume that patterns in things like this continue indefinitely.

Some weapons used during the Middle Ages could not even be fired from the shoulder due to their tremendous recoil, which would break people's bones! Also, there is a limit as to how powerful a nuclear weapon can be made with the technology we have today. Even if size and weight were not an issue, uranium simply cannot be used after a certain critical mass, and deuterium will no longer be useful in magnifying the explosive's power. Thus, the phaser is almost certainly not capable of firing with TL magnitude energy. Things like heating and size would become too unmanageable.

Why? Those weapons are nothing like phasers at all. Phasers don't output significant heat, as Michael demonstrated in his "ST: Insurrection Revelations" page (among countless others we're all aware of). You need a much bigger phaser crystal and by default, emitter to probably handle
the levels of energy I'm talking about, far beyond that which could be
generated with M/AM reactions, but even then, we could be looking
at weapons much smaller than a HTL itself.

So, if you are greatly increasing the size of the weapon, how do you know that it will still be useful as a weapon? It may grow so much that it can no longer be mounted on a starship, a concern you appear to ignore.

2. You assume that phasers are more efficient than TL's, the only reason why the Rebels would install them instead of TL's.

For some things, yes, at the same outputs they'd be far more efficient.
I mean, come on ...when have we seen a bloody *terawatt* level Imperial weapon threaten to create an "exothermal inversion" of a planet's atmosphere? Billions of TW, sure, but TW (60 GW variance, to be precise)?

So would it be worth the specialization required for such a weapon to operate? Incidentally, an exothermal inversion does not appear to make any sense. It is just a technobabble term. We may very well have seen such effects EVERY TIME a TL fires!

And I didn't say it was this false dichotomy; i.e., either phasers, or turbolasers. I said the Rebels would find very powerful phasers very useful, particularly in defeating an ISD's shields.

But how can you mount such large weapons on a ship like the ones the rebels have? You would need to specialize the ship to accept such structures. It's more complicated than merely gluing on additional weapons wherever there's space. Phaser strips require LOTS of hull area.

You also assume that the Rebel ships are infinitely modifiable in accepting structures like phasers, which almost certainly require certain ship structures to be constructed differently.

Nah, I didn't even consider that. It might be impossible for them to
accomodate such weapons--I have no clue. It shouldn't be impossible,
but I was concerned only with the potential benefit of a technology
exchange (heavy on "potential" ).

Okay, so you assumed that they would be able to do this?

Eh? A joule of phaser energy has an effect greater than a joule of
"real" energy against any material short of neutronium. I've never known phasers to be effective only given a certain duration over which they're exposed to a target (if I'm understanding you correctly...this computer virus is REALLY acting up on me and things are slow); Defiant's phasers indicate the opposite, in fact.

Conceeded.

With respects, Ossus, what evidence? Phasers aren't firing bullets from
big barrels, nor is there anything to indicate that once a certain power is
fed to the phaser, no matter its size, it simply "can't take any more"
(my words).

I reiterate: if anything, there is substantial evidence that phasers
have geometrically greater effects against all targets save neutronium
as you pump more and more power into that phaser. Granted, *that*
isn't a given , but if it was, I think the Rebels could use it to great
effect as a shield-defeating technology.

Things like metal seem highly resistant to phasers. So do shields. Shields seem to be very effective in stopping phaser fire. I think you might have gotten this reversed.

Of course, in all honesty, I must admit that it is possible phasers would not
have the sorts of low petawatt-type "effects" against Imperial shields
that they do against other Treknobabble ships. This is often overlooked,
but Trek shields might be susceptible to phasers simply because
both involve "subspace" to some extent. [shrugs]

I gotta go. Fun discussion...I knew that would generate some controversy,
mwahahahaha

We assume, due to parity principle, that the shields of both universes will have the same EFFECT on the weapons of another, and vice versa. My concerns with this theory is your assumption that the phaser is almost infinitely scalable.

[seanrobertson]

Cost vs. gain, if replicators do not demonstrate an ability to make more products for less cost then they might as well stick with what they have and not induldge themselves with gimmicks.

Sure, but might this gimmick give them greater bang for their buck
in the production of certain materials?

That high power phasers will be able to instantly fell ISDs is pure assumption.

I understand that; I want to know why it's purely assumptive. And I
was a bit more specific than that: I said something to the effect
of a phaser with the power of a heavy turbolaser behind it. Granted,
I said "destroy ISDs left and right," which smacks of hyperbole,
but there's every reason *to* think a phaser of such power would
be very nasty. The only potential drawback I know is somehow
tied into "subspace," Trek's first truly bastard concept.

Assuming that they can be used at these higher powers, assuming that if they can that Rebel and Starfleet engineers will be able to utilise them this way in short order.

Sure. I never said anything to that end--just that if it was possible
the effects should be as I described.

First of all, I've never seen over half the capabilities of a phaser you claim exist,

Please clarify. You've no doubt seen the so-called "vaporization" of
humanoids. The rock bit is from any description or expectation of
results with orbital bombardment (which, incidentally, isn't internally
contradicted by "TDIC"...since it's not DET, we needn't necessarily
see lots of fireworks).

secondly it's still an assumption that you can just pump more power into it and go.
Frankly this notion that the only thing Treknology needs to work well is more power is rather baffling.

I think it works pretty well as is, save for the exploding warp core stuff
and technobabble.

But I digress: sure, the problem in giving the Rebels this technology is,
how do we build a phaser big enough and capable of using teraton levels
of energy per second? As I've said a few times, I didn't really care whether or not it was feasible, just that if it was, it'd be nice

Refitting such ships would take time and money, researching how to safely apply SW power levels to phasers would take time and money unless you want to gamble on the ships going boom as soon as they fire.
The Rebels need tried and tested weapons, not new toys.
Furthermore I still find your conclusions completley exagerrated, we don't even know if more power will multiply it's effect.

With all respects, Mr. Evil Jerk, offer me a counterexample. I think phasers work pretty much the way I described, even though that wasn't my most
eloquent expression of thought ever [groan].

Let me offer this up once more before I run for the night. Increased
power dramatically increases a phaser's effects--that is, for every
increase in energy, you have a geometric increase in effect. That is
applicable to everything short of neutronium, to which phasers appear
to be limited to their initial outputs ("Think Tank," "The Doomsday
Machine").

Example? A hand phaser "vaporizes" a humanoid, approx. 80 kilos,
avg. density around that of, say, water. That's max power.

This is accomplished at an actual output of 1.05 MW at most (see
Mike's comments on "The Mind's Eye"). Thus, we have a ~100 to
fold increase in effects on a MW-level phaser.

Then we go up to a larger phaser, like on the E-D. They drilled
a tunnel in "Inheritance" that was 1.6 km deep and maybe 20m wide.
That's a volume of around 503,000 m^3. If it's something like SiO2, we'd be looking at a density much greater than that of our humanoid subject at around 2300 kg/m^3. It'd take 10.58 MJ to vaporize each kilo, so the should be around 13,000 terajoules for "vaporization."

This phaser must output less than a terawatt to fit Riker's statement
in "The Dauphin." Therefore, this more powerful phaser has an effect
some 13,000x plus its initial output against a material even *more dense* than that which we used for the hand phaser. (I would've used rock for
it, too, but I can't recall a time in which hand phasers made any rocks
actually "disappear.")

< 1.05 MJ = FX equivalent to 200 MJ
< 1 TJ = FX equivalent to 13,000 MJ

That's non-linear. The effects should remain constant if increased power
didn't result in radically greater effects.

That might be too small a sample, but that's what I had in mind when
I said the bit about Rebel Alliance Phasers of Doom.

[seanrobertson]

Grown. It has to come from somewhere.

Hmm...yeah. I must admit I've never given a lot of thought to
transpo, err, replicators. I thought they could make food out of
virtually anything, like ordinarily non-food materials.

You just disproved your own point. Hand phasers are clearly different than starship-mounted phaser emitters, but you say that the system will be the same if they scale it up to us TL magnitude power supplies?

Are hand phasers different? I'm not being sarcastic; I've never noticed
the difference between the two, except for scale of course. And along
with scale would come the different "system" as such, which would
be unavoidable even if the phaser isn't a direct heat transfer weapon
(a billion TW can't just go nowhere, LOL).

But no, that's not what I meant. I'll get to this in just a second--

This is a violation of burden of proof. You made a claim that phasers can accept TL magnitude power, you have to back it up. The absence of knowing no conceivable limit is not evidence that they can.

Yes, I know. It'd be an appeal to ignorance to say, "Well, we don't
know that they *can't*; therefore, they CAN!" I simply don't know
anything intrinsic to a phaser that limits it being used at that scale,
whatever that might be. I'm not claiming anything where that's
concerned; again, all I was really interested in was saying that such
a phaser could be a great asset...if it could be done. More on that in
a moment.

It has never come up because SF has never been able to improve their power outputs by the amount you are talking about. Further, you go on to assume that even a small increase in output yields much greater effects. This is somewhat true, but how do you know that energy at very high levels will continue to be as efficient as lower-level phaser fire? You cannot assume that patterns in things like this continue indefinitely.

Well, I have to take issue here...there's no reason to think that the
ratio of output to effect would go up, then suddenly drop at a given
level of power (or gradually drop--not trying to straw man you here).
It appears that the greater the power, the greater the efficiencies
are, though I guess it's conceivable the disparity between cost and
effect might taper off. We already know it does in a sense, given
that neutronium seems to inhibit NDF.

So, if you are greatly increasing the size of the weapon, how do you know that it will still be useful as a weapon? It may grow so much that it can no longer be mounted on a starship, a concern you appear to ignore.

That's a possibility, I agree. And I suppose that a billion terawatt
phaser (or thereabouts) WOULD be too big to mount on a Rebel
starship, now that you mention it...

So, yeah, I actually did ignore that, and I think you have a point.
Phaser rifles are probably a kilo or two at most, and have a volume
(very rough guess) of maybe 5000 cm^3. I have no idea how big
a phaser array is other than to judge its size from the beam itself.
It's probably an underestimate to put a single emitter at 8 m^3;
200 such emitters would be, of course, 1600 m^3 (no say on the size...maybe a ton?). There are a million cubic cm/m^3, so we're looking at a volume increase of at least 320,000 to go from a megawatt phaser to one in the gigawatt or single-digit TW range (I'll just run with 60 GW from "AMoT").

Like I said, that's a callous estimate, but it shows that to get a phaser
roughly several hundred thousand times more powerful, you have
to build it about that much larger. IF it was feasible, and the ratio
was linear crude as it is, a billion TW phaser would come from an
emitter or large group of emitters with at least a volume of some
1,600 cubic...kilometers? Wow. That's a lot bigger than I bargained
for.

But how can you mount such large weapons on a ship like the ones the rebels have? You would need to specialize the ship to accept such structures. It's more complicated than merely gluing on additional weapons wherever there's space. Phaser strips require LOTS of hull area.

The cannons don't require a whole lot of area, such as those on Defiant or the Miranda variants, but given the apparent size we'd
be looking at, yeah...it'd *definitely* entail specialization! LOL.

//Nah, I didn't even consider that. It might be impossible for them to
accomodate such weapons--I have no clue. It shouldn't be impossible,
but I was concerned only with the potential benefit of a technology
exchange (heavy on "potential" ).//

Okay, so you assumed that they would be able to do this?

No, I didn't. I wasn't really speaking to the thread as a whole--that
is, in the sense that I thought it was something the Rebel Alliance
and Federation would definitely collaborate on. Before running the
nos., though, I thought such a phaser might be small enough to mount
on a starship. I have reconsidered that position, to say the least...
but prior to that realization, my concern was that, *if* the phasers
could be used, perhaps in tandem with turbolasers--and now, we'd
be looking at the smallest batteries at best, even if I was off by orders
of magnitude above--they could be very useful weapons given that
they do have some rather nifty properties. For a Rebel ship short
on power, say one that needs to route more juice to the shields or
engines, this could be a plus, but yeah, the practicality of such a weapon
is out the window. For it to slay ISDs, it'd have to be doable...and it's
not.

Things like metal seem highly resistant to phasers. So do shields. Shields seem to be very effective in stopping phaser fire. I think you might have gotten this reversed.

I probably confused myself in all that, but I typically regard phasers
as pretty decent anti-shield weapons actually. I take a very simplistic
approach to what they do, though, and I freely admit that. In short,
I look at how much energy the shields can likely handle--a few
megatons total--and divide that by the time the phaser takes to
burn through those shields (5-10 sec., since many discharges we
see don't last a full second, yet it takes more than 5 shots to
disable the shields). Essentially, it's how Michael rated phasers
as equivalent to laser weaponry.

However, that approach does seem to be missing something, since
phasers don't do hundreds or thousands of TW of damage to
a starship's hull. Why would the phaser damage the shields more
than it would the hull? Didn't you have a theory regarding this?
Alyeska alluded to it, but I can't find it.

We assume, due to parity principle, that the shields of both universes will have the same EFFECT on the weapons of another, and vice versa. My concerns with this theory is your assumption that the phaser is almost infinitely scalable.

You're certainly right, and I should've paid more attention to as much.
I knew no one would talk about phasers with me unless I made an
inflammatory statement, however (But seriously, I didn't think the
size of such a phaser through, at all.)

Speaking of parity, that's fine...and we certainly don't have any conclusive evidence that demonstrates why Trek phasers shouldn't perform as
they do against Imperial shields. I was really just spit-balling, though
I would be curious to see someone investigate the possibility that
phasers are dependent on subspace-based defensive technologies
to get some of their oomph.

[Master of Ossus]

Sorry, I thought you were saying that this would be a viable tactic when you were actually just mentioning a possibility. It doesn't look like we disagree on much else, but if you do have something serious I missed while reading through your post, I would be happy to discuss it to the best of my ability.

[Darth Yoshi]

Alyeska, in response to your assertion that the Rebels would use transporters for commando missions, the Rebels will probably see the transporter tech, find out how it works and turn away in revulsion, since the transporter process can be interpreted as death and cloning. Clones are taboo in the SW universe, and I doubt that any Rebel will be willing to go through one of those things, which have a horrid success/failure ratio.

[Master of Ossus]

Clones aren't really seen as being taboo in the SW universe, to the best of my knowledge. They are looked down upon, but they aren't seen as being horrible. Sometimes, in fact, they are considered necessary.

[Alyeska]

Alyeska, in response to your assertion that the Rebels would use transporters for commando missions, the Rebels will probably see the transporter tech, find out how it works and turn away in revulsion, since the transporter process can be interpreted as death and cloning. Clones are taboo in the SW universe, and I doubt that any Rebel will be willing to go through one of those things, which have a horrid success/failure ratio.

(sigh)

Transporters are nothing of the sort. The fact that Barclay remained awake durring the whole process is proof of that.

[Alyeska]

Why would the phaser damage the shields more
than it would the hull? Didn't you have a theory regarding this?
Alyeska alluded to it, but I can't find it.

Actually the basis for the theory is that phasers damage the shields "less" while partially bleeding through and causing damage against the hull of the ship.

More information behind the theory can be found in this thread.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

[Stormbringer]

Alyeska, in response to your assertion that the Rebels would use transporters for commando missions, the Rebels will probably see the transporter tech, find out how it works and turn away in revulsion, since the transporter process can be interpreted as death and cloning. Clones are taboo in the SW universe, and I doubt that any Rebel will be willing to go through one of those things, which have a horrid success/failure ratio.

(sigh)

Transporters are nothing of the sort. The fact that Barclay remained awake durring the whole process is proof of that.

Maybe.


But they're still deathtraps. Look at how many accindent those things have been responsible for. No one in their right mind would step into one of those things.

[Alyeska]

Alyeska, in response to your assertion that the Rebels would use transporters for commando missions, the Rebels will probably see the transporter tech, find out how it works and turn away in revulsion, since the transporter process can be interpreted as death and cloning. Clones are taboo in the SW universe, and I doubt that any Rebel will be willing to go through one of those things, which have a horrid success/failure ratio.

(sigh)

Transporters are nothing of the sort. The fact that Barclay remained awake durring the whole process is proof of that.

Maybe.


But they're still deathtraps. Look at how many accindent those things have been responsible for. No one in their right mind would step into one of those things.

Death traps? We have a quote from Geordi himself stating that transporters are extremely safe. The problems we see are in regards to combat, or something strange. And when you get down to it, combat isn't safe.

Has anyone bothered compiling all the times we have seen transporters used and compare the number of safe trips to dangerous ones? I bet your going to find a 90% saftey rating.

And transporters would be a hell of a lot safer then some of what they have used in the past (atmospheric rentry units, etc...). It would be an alternate means to get to place you otherwise could not. Hell, transporting bombs would be useful.

[seanrobertson]

EDIT:

Blah blah blah...

Example? A hand phaser "vaporizes" a humanoid, approx. 80 kilos,
avg. density around that of, say, water. EDIT:
That's max power, I think, as in "The Vengeance Factor," and would
require roughly 200 megajoules if actual vaporization took place.

This is accomplished at an actual output of 1.05 MW at most (see
Mike's comments on "The Mind's Eye"). EDIT:
Thus, we have a ~190 to fold increase in effects on a MW-level phaser.

Then we go up to a larger phaser, like on the E-D. They drilled
a tunnel in "Inheritance" that was 1.6 km deep and maybe 20m wide.
That's a volume of around 503,000 m^3. If it's something like SiO2, we'd be looking at a density much greater than that of our humanoid subject at around 2300 kg/m^3. It'd take 10.58 MJ to vaporize each kilo, so the should be around 13,000 terajoules for "vaporization."

This phaser must output less than a terawatt to fit Riker's statement
in "The Dauphin." EDIT: Therefore, this more powerful phaser has an effect some 13,000 times its initial output against a material even *more dense* than that from which we attribute to the hand phaser. (I would've used rock for it, too, but I can't recall a time in which hand phasers made any rocks actually "disappear.")

More EDIT:

Output: Equivalent effects:

< 1.05 MJ 200 MJ
< 1 TJ 13,000 TJ (Earlier I wrote megajoules,
LOL. Oops...)

That's non-linear. The effects should remain constant if increased power
didn't result in radically greater effects. IF that ratio held, and I
emphasize the "if," we'd need a million-fold increase in energy to
expect results a million times that of the initial output. IOW, a
gigaton phaser might be capable of doing petaton (4E24J plus) levels of equivalent damage to rock.

That might be too small a sample, but that's what I had in mind when
I said the bit about Rebel Alliance's Phasers of Doom.

EDIT: specifically, that a phaser of that power would be rad, not that
it's feasible. From what I can tell it's probably less feasible than any
of us might've guessed! I plan to investigate some other instances
of observed phaser effects...it'd be best if I could compare the effects
of different-sized phasers against the same materials, though I don't
think that's going to be possible.


Fresh thought for me: I found it striking that hand phasers' effects are
only limited to no more than 200 times their initial output, against
a very favorable target material no less. Perhaps when phasers stun
things, what we see is actually the effects of their actual power consumption. NDF doesn't appear to begin until a certain threshold
is passed.

That's been said before, but it re-occured to me.

[seanrobertson]

Sorry, I thought you were saying that this would be a viable tactic when you were actually just mentioning a possibility. It doesn't look like we disagree on much else, but if you do have something serious I missed while reading through your post, I would be happy to discuss it to the best of my ability.

Very good I appreciate that.

One thing that did intrigue me was your thought that hand phasers
and starship phasers are significantly different. I never gave that
any thought...I always sorta assumed that they were pretty much
the same thing, just at different scales.

While we're on phasers...ah, nah. I'll start a different thread for
that one. I'm already completely talking about that as is...

[Kuja]

Death traps? We have a quote from Geordi himself stating that transporters are extremely safe. The problems we see are in regards to combat, or something strange. And when you get down to it, combat isn't safe.

Combat or something strange? And how often do we see that?

Has anyone bothered compiling all the times we have seen transporters used and compare the number of safe trips to dangerous ones? I bet your going to find a 90% saftey rating.

Considering that this is a machine that completely BREAKS DOWN YOUR particles, 90% ain't good enough!

And transporters would be a hell of a lot safer then some of what they have used in the past (atmospheric rentry units, etc...). It would be an alternate means to get to place you otherwise could not. Hell, transporting bombs would be useful.

Shields my friend. And if you get their shields down, there's no need to fuck with the transporter.

[Darth Yoshi]

Death traps? We have a quote from Geordi himself stating that transporters are extremely safe. The problems we see are in regards to combat, or something strange. And when you get down to it, combat isn't safe.

Has anyone bothered compiling all the times we have seen transporters used and compare the number of safe trips to dangerous ones? I bet your going to find a 90% saftey rating.

And transporters would be a hell of a lot safer then some of what they have used in the past (atmospheric rentry units, etc...). It would be an alternate means to get to place you otherwise could not. Hell, transporting bombs would be useful.

Well, they may not be death traps, but Tuvox and Neelix were fused, 7/9 and the Holoemitter created 1/1, Riker was duplicated, and someone died in TMP. And the Feddies still didn't revamp the system. Today, if anything happens to a ship or an airplane, the gov't starts an inquiry and if there's a flaw, the design is changed to compensate.

[Stormbringer]

Death traps? We have a quote from Geordi himself stating that transporters are extremely safe. The problems we see are in regards to combat, or something strange. And when you get down to it, combat isn't safe.

When something strange is also know as "weather", I'd say thats pretty damn unreliable. Not to mention nearly every rock, particle, or radiation ever encountered fuck's up the transporter.

Has anyone bothered compiling all the times we have seen transporters used and compare the number of safe trips to dangerous ones? I bet your going to find a 90% saftey rating.

So only one out of ten trips is likely to kill you? That's a safety record I wouldn't want to trust my life to.

And transporters would be a hell of a lot safer then some of what they have used in the past (atmospheric rentry units, etc...). It would be an alternate means to get to place you otherwise could not. Hell, transporting bombs would be useful.

Oh yeah that completely useless idea. Wow, I'm sold.