Interphasic Torpedoes

[NecronLord]

In Starcrossed they are reluctant to use this technology for fear of polluting the timestream.

Annoyingly that isn't canon...

[Stravo]

In Starcrossed they are reluctant to use this technology for fear of polluting the timestream.

Annoyingly that isn't canon...

Considering Paramount's Canon policy Starcrossed is at least as canon as the ST Novels. Now if I could just hop the fence over at Skywalker Ranch and talk to GL....

[consequences]

They aren't changing their past, the future has already been changed, and they know that alternate universes exist, so there was a reality where Admiral Janeway tripped, hit some controls on her way down, and made the ship she was in explode before she could travel back in time. In this case, SF is just going with their kneejerk reaction to all things time travel which in this instance is clearly stupid.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Poor little ignored me.

Seriously, though, I'll try to keep this post short.

Item 1: Transphasic torpedoes.
Easy answer is they use a localized frequency cancellation effect to ignore the target's shields exactly the same way that Jem'hadar attack ships and the Enterprise-E appear to do. It should be a weaponizaton of a standard safety feature for ships capable of generating bubble shields, to avoid having the bubbles crash against each other during close range maneuvering. Give a torpedo a short-duration shield generator (which it should already have) and tie it to a high speed processor running a program to automatically cancel the frequencies of overlapping shields.

Result: torpedo (or starship) slams through the target's shields and ignores them. Against a wispy structure like a Borg cube, a fractional detonation delay means the torp smashes through to the inside and detonates there. Against layered shields, or shields designed to counter frequency cancellation, or other countermeasures, the torp should act just like a regular photon torpedo.

Item 2: Quantum torpedoes.
If they are indeed directional, or have a directional option, then how about a variation on the old deflector dish trick? A torpedo probably needs a tiny navigational deflector to avoid killing itself in flight by flying into floating specks of dust or debris anyway. The torpedo hits the targets shields or hull and, depending on how the torpedo's fuse is set, it either explodes as an overpowered photorp or pops apart in a modest explosion an instant after its internal overload channels most of its energy in a massive burst through the deflector dish, which vaporizes itself in the process. Even the differing inflight coloration of the torpedo could then be explained by the warp sustainers being replaced with a set of embedded subscale nacelles and a tiny warpcore designed for deliberate overload.

Thus, the quantum torpedo would actually a short-ranged adapatation of a warp capable probe that uses the deflector dish cannon technique to tear the target's defenses apart. (As opposed to a zero point energy bubble generation system per the goofy DS9 TM.)

[Ted C]

Item 1: Transphasic torpedoes.
Easy answer is they use a localized frequency cancellation effect to ignore the target's shields exactly the same way that Jem'hadar attack ships and the Enterprise-E appear to do.

I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say the Enterprise-E and the Jem'Hadar bugs do this. Federation shields simply had no effect on Jem'Hadar polaron beams until they did some development work to make the shields effective. I haven't seen that the Enterprise routinely does anything to cancel out enemy shields.

All ST ships can shoot through their own shields, though, and Mike was able to neatly explain how that's possible using wave mechanics. Transphasic torpedoes are probably taking advantage of the wave nature of ST shields to penetrate using the same process.

It should be a weaponizaton of a standard safety feature for ships capable of generating bubble shields, to avoid having the bubbles crash against each other during close range maneuvering.

There is no indication that any such safety feature exists on any Trek starships; ships maneuvering in a tight formation typically adjust their shields to hug their hulls.

Result: torpedo (or starship) slams through the target's shields and ignores them. Against a wispy structure like a Borg cube, a fractional detonation delay means the torp smashes through to the inside and detonates there. Against layered shields, or shields designed to counter frequency cancellation, or other countermeasures, the torp should act just like a regular photon torpedo.

All this works fine using the standard wave mechanics explanation of shields, without all the unsubtantiated "safety features" stuff that you're spewing.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Item 1: Transphasic torpedoes.
Easy answer is they use a localized frequency cancellation effect to ignore the target's shields exactly the same way that Jem'hadar attack ships and the Enterprise-E appear to do.

I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say the Enterprise-E and the Jem'Hadar bugs do this. Federation shields simply had no effect on Jem'Hadar polaron beams until they did some development work to make the shields effective. I haven't seen that the Enterprise routinely does anything to cancel out enemy shields.

All ST ships can shoot through their own shields, though, and Mike was able to neatly explain how that's possible using wave mechanics. Transphasic torpedoes are probably taking advantage of the wave nature of ST shields to penetrate using the same process.

It should be a weaponizaton of a standard safety feature for ships capable of generating bubble shields, to avoid having the bubbles crash against each other during close range maneuvering.

There is no indication that any such safety feature exists on any Trek starships; ships maneuvering in a tight formation typically adjust their shields to hug their hulls.

Result: torpedo (or starship) slams through the target's shields and ignores them. Against a wispy structure like a Borg cube, a fractional detonation delay means the torp smashes through to the inside and detonates there. Against layered shields, or shields designed to counter frequency cancellation, or other countermeasures, the torp should act just like a regular photon torpedo.

All this works fine using the standard wave mechanics explanation of shields, without all the unsubtantiated "safety features" stuff that you're spewing.

Enterprise-E and Jem'hadar attack ships:
Polaron beams are irrelevant. The shields of vessels rammed by these ships do not offer any recognizable protection, not even a little pyrotechnic shield flash. Jem'hadar ramming works just fine even against warships coming into combat with obviously fresh, fully charged shields, such as those of the Klingon vessels attacking Chin'toka. On the other hand, Crushing Dyson sphere airlock doors, escape pods and assorted other bric-a-brac manage to hit the shields without slamming through.

In another example, the one option that occurred to exactly none of the Ent-D crew when the USS Bozeman repeatedly rammed the Ent-D (courtesy of yet another temporal loop), the one defensive option no one considered to avert the collision was to raise shields. Both ships were in a situation in which their shields should have logically been running at maximum (Enterprise) and at least raised (Bozeman). Yet those warp nacelles kept clipping each other.


Bubble shields and their adjustment, plus the standard wave mechanics bit:
There is no indication that Starfleet ships of the TNG era could or would set their shields to hull hugging mode. When shown, the shield was always an ellipsoid, though not always of the same size. Given that, the shields either need that safety feature (which is an application of the standard wave mechanics explanation of shields), or the shields have to be taken down when doing close maneuvering (which is quite possible, but I'm trying to give the Feddies credit even if they're not due it).

All my idea is an application of the following,to quote Darth Wong: "The same applies to torpedoes; they must incorporate some kind of device to locally neutralize an area of the shield on their way out, and it would presumably do so by producing a small mini-shield at 180 degrees out of phase to the main shield, to cancel out a small hole (this would explain how the Klingons fired through the Enterprise-D's shield in Star Trek: Generations, and it would also explain how Borg drones can walk through Federation forcefields2)."

My idea is simply that the torpedo's shield generator has a control computer hooked up to it that produces the necessary local neutralization of the shield, set to make the adjustment as soon as the leading edge of the torp's shield envelope brushes the target vessel's shield envelope.

The obvious problems there, the ones that would make (using SoD) transphasic torps difficult to implement, would the following: the torp needs extremely fast feedback from its shields, an extremely fast processor, in fact everything has to be extremely fast and efficient to avoid smearing the torp across the target's shields. And if the terminal shield penetration system used on target vessels interferes with the initial shield penetration system used to pass the launching vessel's shields, the torpedo explodes inside the launching vessel's shield envelope. And that could hurt. A lot.

[Solauren]

Oui

Okay, here's my take on the Uber Tech Janeway brough back

Ablative Armor Generators: No idea how they work, nor do I care. Slap them on your ship, and activate them, and you are armored. Works for me.

Transphasic Torpedoes
I'm guessing they are simply a new, more effective version of a Photon or Quantum Torpedoe. Higher yield through means of function and delivering.

Increased explosive yield could be accomplished by tossing in more matter/antimatter, and/or figuring out how to get 95%+ reaction out of it.

(I'll explain my theory on that below)

Or
The warheads could simply have some kinda of shielding/partial cloaking effect on them. Pushing the weapons slightly out of "phase" with Time (like a Voth cloaking device) or Matter (the Pegaus Phase Cloak) or they have shields themselves that are constantly changing frequency so that one of them chancels the Borg defenses and flys into the superstructure goes boom. If so, even one torpedoe would be sufficent to blow a Borg cube to hell, depending on where it hit.

Evidence:
Voyager beamed a freaking Photon Torpedo onto a Borg ship (the 'probe' ship) and because it was near part of the power system, when the torpedo exploded, it took the cube with it.

By pass the Borg shields, and you can blow them to hell.

Point from me: Once I found that out, I would have had Pichard and Riker up on stupidity charges. When the Borg ship was attacking in Best of Both Worlds, why didn't they just beam a few Photon's over in random places and take the cube out that way? Geez!


Possible Higher Yield by Method
According to just about ever source, canon, non-cannon, etc, Starfleet warheads are anti-matter/matter weapons (makes sense, that's the most bang for a buck you can get with current understanding of physics)
Most people have pointed out, getting 100% yield from such a weapon is not bloodly likely.

However, it might be possible.
How?
Store the anti-matter sufficiently out of phase with the matter, you can mix them perfectly without reacting. This is like tossing 10 cups of hamburger in with 10 cubs of onions into a blender and setting it to purate. You get a very even mix if you do it properly.

(Other methods might be possible, like transport beams or forcefields holding the matter and antimatter perfectly flat in atom thick layers then dropping the forcefields)

Then, when the Torpedoe hits it's target, drop the 'Phasing" of the matter, and watch the nice explosion.

Which, if you are using 1.5 kg of antimatter and matter, according to E=mc(2) would be quite the explosion

Energy release = mass (1.5 kg matter + 1.5 kg antimatter = 3.0 kg) times the speed of light squared, for those of you that don't know.

In this case (3 total kg of matter and anti matter destroyed) would produce, with 100% efficient, a maxiumum of

E (joules) = 3.0 KG * (186000 * 186000)
E (joules) = 3.0 KG * (34596000000)
E (joules) =
103788000000 joules
103788000 Kilojoules
103788 Megajoules
103.788 Gigajoules

If you want to use higher amounts of antimatter and matter, here ya go

2.5 kg each (5 total) = 172,980,000,000 (172.98 Gigajoules)
5 kg each (10 total) = 345,960,000,000 (345.96 Gigajoules)
10 kg each (20 total) = 691,920,000,000 (691.92 gigajoules)
50 kg each (100 total) = 3,459,600,000,000 (3,459.6 Gigajoules, or 3.45 terrajoules)
100 kg each (200 total) = 6,919,200,000,000 (6,919.2 Gigajoules, or 6.919 Terrajoules)
500 kg each (1000 total)= 34,596,000,000,000 (34,596 Gigajoules, or 34.59 Terrajoules)

Now, since this is a versus form, let's run this against the '20 year old' Accalamtor Transport. I'll assume a time of 1 second, 1/15th of a second, and 1/100th of a second for wattage from the Torpedoe, and we are using a 100% yield, 500 kg matter, 500 kg antimatter warhead.

Shields: 70,000,000,000,000 Gigawatts

Yield of Warhead, at 1 joule/second: 34,596 Gigawatts
Number to drop ships shields: 2,023,355,301.19 (2 billion, 23 million)

Yield of Warhead, at 1 joule/ 1/15th of a second: 518940 Gigawatts
Number to drop ships shields: 134,890,353.41 (134 million, Eight hundred and Ninety Thousand)

Yield of Warhead, at 1 joule/ 1/100th of a second: 3,459,600 GW
Number to drop ships shields: 2,023,495.67 (2 million, 23 thousand)

I say we let it be a combination of the frequency/phasing shield bypass (it would also explain why the armor technology, which is not frequency based, would would also annoy the Borg) AND the higher explosive yield. It still doesn't hurt the shields on a Star Wars war ship, and it makes for nice dead Borg at the same time.

The only question is, IF it were to bypass Star Wars shields (given we have CANON idea how Phasing would react against a Star Wars shield), would that large end explosive yield I put up do alot of damage to a Star Destroyer or not?

[Ted C]

Enterprise-E and Jem'hadar attack ships:
Polaron beams are irrelevant. The shields of vessels rammed by these ships do not offer any recognizable protection, not even a little pyrotechnic shield flash. Jem'hadar ramming works just fine even against warships coming into combat with obviously fresh, fully charged shields, such as those of the Klingon vessels attacking Chin'toka. On the other hand, Crushing Dyson sphere airlock doors, escape pods and assorted other bric-a-brac manage to hit the shields without slamming through.

All the Jem'Hadar ramming attacks you describe were executed against ships using hull-hugging shields (according to the DS9 producers and FX people who produced the scenes). All the related effects can be explained as hull-tight shields failing under a high-momentum impact.

In another example, the one option that occurred to exactly none of the Ent-D crew when the USS Bozeman repeatedly rammed the Ent-D (courtesy of yet another temporal loop), the one defensive option no one considered to avert the collision was to raise shields. Both ships were in a situation in which their shields should have logically been running at maximum (Enterprise) and at least raised (Bozeman). Yet those warp nacelles kept clipping each other.

On the contrary, it did occur to them to raise the shields (IIRC), but a plot-point-effect of the temporal distortion was keeping the shields from operating.

Bubble shields and their adjustment, plus the standard wave mechanics bit:
There is no indication that Starfleet ships of the TNG era could or would set their shields to hull hugging mode.

Funny, the FX people for DS9 said that's exactly what they were depicting for the DS9 fleet battles. They were doing it because it made the FX shots easier to produce; come up with your own explanation for why the combatants would do it.

When shown, the shield was always an ellipsoid, though not always of the same size. Given that, the shields either need that safety feature (which is an application of the standard wave mechanics explanation of shields), or the shields have to be taken down when doing close maneuvering (which is quite possible, but I'm trying to give the Feddies credit even if they're not due it).

Irrelevant, since hull-tight shields actually were used.

All my idea is an application of the following,to quote Darth Wong: "The same applies to torpedoes; they must incorporate some kind of device to locally neutralize an area of the shield on their way out, and it would presumably do so by producing a small mini-shield at 180 degrees out of phase to the main shield, to cancel out a small hole (this would explain how the Klingons fired through the Enterprise-D's shield in Star Trek: Generations, and it would also explain how Borg drones can walk through Federation forcefields2)."

This is an apparent feature of the photon torpedoes, and it doesn't require unsubstantiated safety features of the shields themselves. Quite frankly, if you ship is that close to bumping into another ship, you don't want it to negate your shielding: we've seen what a minor impact on the nacelle can do to a Federation starship.

My idea is simply that the torpedo's shield generator has a control computer hooked up to it that produces the necessary local neutralization of the shield, set to make the adjustment as soon as the leading edge of the torp's shield envelope brushes the target vessel's shield envelope.

My theory is essentially the same, except it doesn't require all the additional hypotheses about "anti-bump" safety features on the ships' shield systems.

The obvious problems there, the ones that would make (using SoD) transphasic torps difficult to implement, would the following: the torp needs extremely fast feedback from its shields, an extremely fast processor, in fact everything has to be extremely fast and efficient to avoid smearing the torp across the target's shields.

All requirements that would presumably make the "shield safety feature" you're proposing impossible with 24th century technology.

And if the terminal shield penetration system used on target vessels interferes with the initial shield penetration system used to pass the launching vessel's shields, the torpedo explodes inside the launching vessel's shield envelope. And that could hurt. A lot.

I don't see how this is an "obvious problem" at all, since there is no evidence that a target vessel can affect an enemy torpedo's shield penetration characteristics from a distance. They might put up a multi-phasic shield to keep a torpedo from using phase alignment to penetrate their defenses, but the kind of remote manipulation you're proposing is totally unprecedented.

[Patrick Ogaard]

I'll break this up into more than one part. And so, part 1 of 3.

All the Jem'Hadar ramming attacks you describe were executed against ships using hull-hugging shields (according to the DS9 producers and FX people who produced the scenes). All the related effects can be explained as hull-tight shields failing under a high-momentum impact.

The target vessel's shielding is irrelevant. So is whether or not the ship doing the ramming has its shield currently configured as a bubble or a hull hugger, so long as its shield system is set up to deal with the shield interactions, distanced from the hull, that the use of a bubble shield can bring with it. Also, the potential momentum of a Trek universe ship is limited by the mass lightening effect that impulse drives use to allow them to propel ships at substantial percentages of C. In effect, it appears to be little more than what the conventional thrusters could do. (Which would go some ways to explaining the comparatively low speed approach of the Jem'hadar suicide squadron at Chin'toka. Higher impulse speed would have reduced the accuracy of the final attack run without adding to the momentum. However, that's pretty much irrelevant here and I'm rambling in parentheses.)

In another example, the one option that occurred to exactly none of the Ent-D crew when the USS Bozeman repeatedly rammed the Ent-D (courtesy of yet another temporal loop), the one defensive option no one considered to avert the collision was to raise shields. Both ships were in a situation in which their shields should have logically been running at maximum (Enterprise) and at least raised (Bozeman). Yet those warp nacelles kept clipping each other.

On the contrary, it did occur to them to raise the shields (IIRC), but a plot-point-effect of the temporal distortion was keeping the shields from operating.

Conceded. Apparently old age is creeping up on me.

Bubble shields and their adjustment, plus the standard wave mechanics bit:
There is no indication that Starfleet ships of the TNG era could or would set their shields to hull hugging mode.

Funny, the FX people for DS9 said that's exactly what they were depicting for the DS9 fleet battles. They were doing it because it made the FX shots easier to produce; come up with your own explanation for why the combatants would do it.

Funnily enough, that's DS9 era, not TNG, though there is an overlap. One in-universe explanation would probably be that hull huggers are more efficient for warships that do not want to present an enormously oversized target aspect to multiple enemies. A bubble shield might provide greater surface area for the radiation of energy, making it potentially advantageous in the more staid and stolid one-on-one encounters typical of TNG.

When shown, the shield was always an ellipsoid, though not always of the same size. Given that, the shields either need that safety feature (which is an application of the standard wave mechanics explanation of shields), or the shields have to be taken down when doing close maneuvering (which is quite possible, but I'm trying to give the Feddies credit even if they're not due it).

Irrelevant, since hull-tight shields actually were used.

In DS9, once the realities of war (and the expenses of FX) began to sink in. As opposed to the kinder, gentler days of TNG when Picard and Riker could still complain about how irrelevant a military exercise was. That makes your objection of irrelevance irrelevant since the reference is to TNG, where the stridently non-military ships of Starfleet were equipped with bubble shields.

[Patrick Ogaard]

And part 2 of 3.

All my idea is an application of the following,to quote Darth Wong: "The same applies to torpedoes; they must incorporate some kind of device to locally neutralize an area of the shield on their way out, and it would presumably do so by producing a small mini-shield at 180 degrees out of phase to the main shield, to cancel out a small hole (this would explain how the Klingons fired through the Enterprise-D's shield in Star Trek: Generations, and it would also explain how Borg drones can walk through Federation forcefields2)."

This is an apparent feature of the photon torpedoes, and it doesn't require unsubstantiated safety features of the shields themselves. Quite frankly, if you ship is that close to bumping into another ship, you don't want it to negate your shielding: we've seen what a minor impact on the nacelle can do to a Federation starship.

It is a feature of the photon torpedoes that allows a photon torpedo's shield frequency to be preprogrammed to ignore a known shield frequency. Or, in the case of the Klingon torps that killed the Ent-D, two known shield frequencies in succession: that of the BoP, and that of the Ent-D.

Whether the shield negation/cancellation/slipping is a development of a safety feature or is the result of specific weapons technology development is ultimately irrelevant. Automatic adjustment of the torpedo's shield frequency to negate the shields of the target is the simplest explanation for the performance of transphasic torpedoes.

Also, if the feature does in fact exist, then it is one designed to "prevent" unnecessary collisions. Inertial dampers and structural integrity fields should be the better option in such a situation. A low-speed collision between a pair of Galaxies, at more than 4 million tons apiece, might well rip the shield generators and shield grid right out of the ships, doing more damage than the collision itself would have done.

Also (and apologies for using TM stuff, but it provides a ballpark, no matter how goofy), a GCS nacelle's warp coils are supposed to mass over 650,000 tons, about as much as an entire Miranda (or Soyuz), and the GCS in total is supposed to have a mass of 6.5 million tons. The minor impact was definitely not minor. A collision between two effectively solid bubble shields in that situation -- had there hypothetically been shields up -- could not have been good for the Bozeman, as it would have been flying head on into the Ent-D's shield. Being out-massed 10 to 1 in a collision is never good for the vehicle on the small end of that ratio. At close maneuvering ranges, reinforcing the structural integrity field and inertial dampers might be a better idea if the particular shields can not be switched to hull hugger mode.

My idea is simply that the torpedo's shield generator has a control computer hooked up to it that produces the necessary local neutralization of the shield, set to make the adjustment as soon as the leading edge of the torp's shield envelope brushes the target vessel's shield envelope.

My theory is essentially the same, except it doesn't require all the additional hypotheses about "anti-bump" safety features on the ships' shield systems.

The anticollision system is logical enough to me as the ultimate origin of the transphasic torpedo technology, but whether that is in fact the case is, as I've already stated above, ultimately irrelevant. I've got no huge emotional or intellectual investment in the ultimate rightness of the one true way of anticollision systems.

[Patrick Ogaard]

And part 3 (and no more instalments, I promise)

The obvious problems there, the ones that would make (using SoD) transphasic torps difficult to implement, would the following: the torp needs extremely fast feedback from its shields, an extremely fast processor, in fact everything has to be extremely fast and efficient to avoid smearing the torp across the target's shields.

All requirements that would presumably make the "shield safety feature" you're proposing impossible with 24th century technology.

Actually, no. Not all shield systems have to have that capability. Of those vessels whose shields could have that capability, all have computer cores with lots of processing power and speed. Their computers may have safeguards and user interfaces best characterized as a joke, but they are quite capable of running the inevitably complex systems of starships, runabouts, warp-capable shuttlecraft, or sublight shuttlecraft and shuttlepods. A shuttlecraft's or shuttlepod's computer core would probably be adequate to the task. It's also not as if such a safety feature should be impossible to turn off when it would be dangerous to have it activated.

If the concept bothers you, ignore it. It's not sufficiently relevant to the core of my argument, that being: transphasic torpedoes probably analyze the target's shields at the moment of impact, change shield frequency appropriately, and slip right through.

And if the terminal shield penetration system used on target vessels interferes with the initial shield penetration system used to pass the launching vessel's shields, the torpedo explodes inside the launching vessel's shield envelope. And that could hurt. A lot.

I don't see how this is an "obvious problem" at all, since there is no evidence that a target vessel can affect an enemy torpedo's shield penetration characteristics from a distance. They might put up a multi-phasic shield to keep a torpedo from using phase alignment to penetrate their defenses, but the kind of remote manipulation you're proposing is totally unprecedented.[/quote]

You're not paying attention. The torpedo needs TWO shield penetration systems, even if all that amounts to is two different subprograms of the torpedo's computer system using the same hardware.

System number 1 shakes hands with the launching ship's systems to get the current shield frequency data that will allow the torpedo to pass through the launching ship's shields. This would be the initial shield penetration system.

System number 2 registers the frequency of the target ship's shield envelope at the instant of contact and switches the torpedo's shields to pass through the target ship's shields. That would be the terminal penetration system.

If the two subprograms should interfere with each other, as would almost certainly happen more than once in prototype testing, the shield penetration systems may not work properly. If the initial penetration system fails, the torpedo slams into the launching ship's shielding from the inside, or explodes at the muzzle of the torpedo launcher if using a hull hugger.

A possible counter by the target vessel would be for its own shield system to automatically switch frequencies as soon as the torpedo tries to pass through the shield. The torpedo's system can attempt to match the new frequency, the ship's shield blocks again, and then that split second of time passes and either the shield keeps the torpedo out or the torpedo slips through.

A suitably prepared vessel from a force familiar with how transphasic torpedoes work could therefore easily block the phasing effect, since the ship's computers will probably have a processing speed advantage and will be able to host more effective electronic warfare program. This would then explain why transphasic torps did not show up in Nemesis: they may have been there, but since the Romulans probably had the blueprints stolen before Starfleet built the first prototype (and even the most secret of weapons never remains a secret for long), the transphasic torpedoes would have been indistinguishable from regular torpedoes in action against warships prepared for them.

[Darth Wong]

Oui

Okay, here's my take on the Uber Tech Janeway brough back

Ablative Armor Generators: No idea how they work, nor do I care. Slap them on your ship, and activate them, and you are armored. Works for me.

Why not simply build the ship with a heavier armour layer to begin with? What is the particular benefit of using the ship's replicator stores to manufacture a temporary armour layer?

Transphasic Torpedoes
I'm guessing they are simply a new, more effective version of a Photon or Quantum Torpedoe. Higher yield through means of function and delivering.

Then why don't they necessarily do massive surface damage on impact?

The warheads could simply have some kinda of shielding/partial cloaking effect on them. Pushing the weapons slightly out of "phase" with Time (like a Voth cloaking device) or Matter (the Pegaus Phase Cloak) or they have shields themselves that are constantly changing frequency so that one of them chancels the Borg defenses and flys into the superstructure goes boom. If so, even one torpedoe would be sufficent to blow a Borg cube to hell, depending on where it hit.

Except that they're visible and they always explode on contact with the outer surface of the ship, so they aren't passing through matter.

Evidence:
Voyager beamed a freaking Photon Torpedo onto a Borg ship (the 'probe' ship) and because it was near part of the power system, when the torpedo exploded, it took the cube with it.

By pass the Borg shields, and you can blow them to hell.

Dig a mid-sized pit in the surface of a Borg cube, and you can blow them to hell (see STFC). We saw how vulnerable Borg cubes are when their defenses are down in "Q Who", where the E-D took a huge chunk out of a cube with a single phaser blast. If this thing has a way of bypassing a cube's defense systems, it can kill it.

Point from me: Once I found that out, I would have had Pichard and Riker up on stupidity charges. When the Borg ship was attacking in Best of Both Worlds, why didn't they just beam a few Photon's over in random places and take the cube out that way? Geez!

It would have detracted from the dramatic suspense

Possible Higher Yield by Method
According to just about ever source, canon, non-cannon, etc, Starfleet warheads are anti-matter/matter weapons (makes sense, that's the most bang for a buck you can get with current understanding of physics)
Most people have pointed out, getting 100% yield from such a weapon is not bloodly likely.

However, it might be possible.
How?
Store the anti-matter sufficiently out of phase with the matter, you can mix them perfectly without reacting. This is like tossing 10 cups of hamburger in with 10 cubs of onions into a blender and setting it to purate. You get a very even mix if you do it properly.

Except that as soon as the first tiny quantities of material come together, the heat and radiation destroys the mechanism, thus eliminating any possibility of controlling the rest of the reaction.

(Other methods might be possible, like transport beams or forcefields holding the matter and antimatter perfectly flat in atom thick layers then dropping the forcefields)

Even if you do that, there is enough inherent uncertainty that some of the atoms will react before others, thus disrupting the pattern and accelerating some of the reactant to the point that it will not react before reaching space.

I say we let it be a combination of the frequency/phasing shield bypass (it would also explain why the armor technology, which is not frequency based, would would also annoy the Borg) AND the higher explosive yield. It still doesn't hurt the shields on a Star Wars war ship, and it makes for nice dead Borg at the same time.

I think that it's easier to simply point out that Borg cubes probably have several layers of defensive system, and that ordinary weapons are extremely destructive against them if those systems are not active (see "Q Who"). The ease with which Voyager's existing torps were back-fitted with this technology screams for the explanation that it's some sort of frequency trick rather than a yield enhancement, which implies a more substantial re-engineering job.

The only question is, IF it were to bypass Star Wars shields (given we have CANON idea how Phasing would react against a Star Wars shield), would that large end explosive yield I put up do alot of damage to a Star Destroyer or not?

Since SW shields are not known to have any kind of operating frequency or phase coherence, it is highly doubtful that they can be bypassed in this manner.

[Anarchist Bunny]

In Starcrossed they are reluctant to use this technology for fear of polluting the timestream.

Annoyingly that isn't canon...

Considering Paramount's Canon policy Starcrossed is at least as canon as the ST Novels. Now if I could just hop the fence over at Skywalker Ranch and talk to GL....

Just find his coke dealer, become a drug runner, and then offer him a lifetime shipment for free if he gives you creative rights to Star Wars after he dies, kill his coke dealer, take all his coke, taint that coke and give it to him after he signs the agreement.

[Drach]

'Do you know of any weaknesses or vulnerability of the vagabond that we can exploit?'
'Yes. Blaster cannon, cruiser-weight and up. The hull's not armored, and there don't seem to be ray shields, at least not at those frequencies. You can hole it and hurt it.' [ "Tyrant's Test", p. 339 ]

According to Lando ray shields and blasters do work on frequency

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Or maybe Lando, in his exotic travels, notes that some moronic societies (maybe he's met the UFP already) have frequency based shields, so he postulates it as a possibility - they do have shields, just that they don't stop blaster cannon. Or maybe he thinks they have a frequency window right where the blaster cannon are (like the window they must have so ships can see out.)

[GeeYouEye]

I think I pointed it out before, and I still don't quite know what relevance it has, but the Borg do have shields that can prevent transporter activity, if nothing else (BOBW part II)

[seanrobertson]

Krenim torpedoes were not invisible when they were used against Voyager and they were out of phase to pass through the shields. The transphasic portion of the torpedo name seesm to indicate to me that the torpedoes bypass shields and directly effect a target.

For instance, why develop ARMOR tech unless the future feds had defeated shield tech with transphasics?

Except for the minor point that sufficently strong enough Borg shields stopped the torpedoes... Might as well have the torpedos unphase right in the bridge. These things detonated on contact. There was no phase element.

The transwarp hub's apparent resistance to these newfangled torpedoes lead me to believe the warheads were likely big fuckin' bombs at first, too.

However, like Michael said, it has to involve some kind of trick, because we saw a prepared sphere take multiple hits from these weapons IIRC.

I should note that said sphere appeared to be much bigger than the standard scouting variety, like the 410m wide version we saw in "First Contact" (which, apparently, is now 600m wide thanks to "Regeneration," meaning that the Queen's cube was over 3.04 km wide...very loose support for the idea that Borg ships "grow" as they assimilate knick-knacks).

Thus, the sphere is probably quite powerful. At the very least, the differential between its capabilities and a cube's is much smaller; nonetheless, the cube is still a couple of factors wider and, therefore, far more massive. All that mass should mean more capability.

My point?

Transphasics couldn't have overloaded two cubes' shielding with raw energy, then failed to do the same to a somewhat less powerful sphere: you cannot, after all, do much to adapt to sheer energy release.

Evidently the Queen's direct control over the TW Hub's defenses had some role in its expected resilience. Why that is the case, I don't know...she sure as hell seemed in control of the cubes that attacked VGR, suggesting one kind of Borg shield is more "adaptable" than another. I think that is kinda stupid...there's no precedent for it.

What I do, therefore, is something I'd prefer not to: ignore the line about the TW hub's super-adaptable shields idea, chalking it up to the imprecise nature of language. Instead, I observe and put my stock in the weapons' effects: they're able to destroy two cubes, perhaps with a very rapid chain-reaction that seemed to cause an effective self-destruct (?); but after the Borg adapt their defenses to stop the trick from working, a somewhat less powerful heavy sphere can take multiple transphasic torpedo hits with relative ease.

Here's another thought.

As I said, the torpedoes almost seemed to make the cubes blow themselves up. This might be owed to the fact that the big Borg ships have a highly decentralized design.

I theorize that the Transwarp Hub would be tougher because it has a more conventional power distribution network. It would probably have a central power source that one can't trigger the "self-destruct" effect in when you're targetting a remote "gate"-like structure.

With a cube, though, you only need to get your foot in the door, so to speak, inasmuch as striking ANY part of it gives you access to its reactor(s). Its power systems are so fully integrated with the entirety of the ship that the reaction could potentially propagate very fast.

Based on this theory, the TW Hub and Cube could be analogous to trying to kill a tree (Hub) vs. popping a balloon (cube). Unless you uproot the tree and thoroughly destroy its trunk somehow, it won't die. Chopping off a few twigs at the end of a limb won't cut it.

However, stick a balloon anywhere, and POP!

That's the gist of it, anyway. I just thought it up so I realize it reads very crudely, and is probably indicative of the fact that I am sorta nuts

[Howedar]

Why not simply build the ship with a heavier armour layer to begin with? What is the particular benefit of using the ship's replicator stores to manufacture a temporary armour layer?

Well, perhaps the generators began as a way to reconstruct the armor layer between battles in a long campaign. Then, if you can make the whole thing over anyway, perhaps you leave it off most of the time so that your enemies will underestimate you.


I think its stupid, but its the best that I can come up with.

[Vendetta]

Okay, here's my take on the Uber Tech Janeway brough back

Ablative Armor Generators: No idea how they work, nor do I care. Slap them on your ship, and activate them, and you are armored. Works for me.

Why not simply build the ship with a heavier armour layer to begin with? What is the particular benefit of using the ship's replicator stores to manufacture a temporary armour layer?

I think the point is that it's Ablative, when ablative armour is hit, it ablates away (partially abrading or vapourising off), taking some of the force of the impact with it, and disrupting the effect of a shaped charge, making it one of a group of armour types (reactive armour et al) slightly more effective than plain old iron plate. Presumably, the Star Trek variant works similarly, somehow disrupting weapon effects by partially ablating when struck, providing greater protection than just putting thicker layers of the same inert stuff.

Putting funky replicator tech into it can't actually be that much of a strain, nor a hard logical leap to make. If the armour's designed to come off when hit, why not design it to come back afterwards. After that, you just need one drop of Federation Overcomplication™ to make batmobile armour.

[Connor MacLeod]

Why not simply build the ship with a heavier armour layer to begin with? What is the particular benefit of using the ship's replicator stores to manufacture a temporary armour layer?

The only benefit I could think of is that it allows the Shipt to convert a portion of whatever "replicator stores" it might carry (or whaatever it carries that could be used in armor) into something usable in a particular instance (One might assume it would STILL Be carrying it even if it had heavier armor - this allows it to "save" on mass, since Replicators don't just create matter out of thin air, I believe. It does prevent the use of this mass for any other purpose, though, and its possible it may cut into their replicator stores substantially in the process.)

Thats just a wacky idea though. I still agree with you that it makes more sense to equip the armor in the first place

[SirNitram]

Why not simply build the ship with a heavier armour layer to begin with? What is the particular benefit of using the ship's replicator stores to manufacture a temporary armour layer?

The only benefit I could think of is that it allows the Shipt to convert a portion of whatever "replicator stores" it might carry (or whaatever it carries that could be used in armor) into something usable in a particular instance (One might assume it would STILL Be carrying it even if it had heavier armor - this allows it to "save" on mass, since Replicators don't just create matter out of thin air, I believe. It does prevent the use of this mass for any other purpose, though, and its possible it may cut into their replicator stores substantially in the process.)

Thats just a wacky idea though. I still agree with you that it makes more sense to equip the armor in the first place

IIRC, the fact they couldn't use shields with the armor up might explain it. Federation technology simply isn't advanced enough for armoured emittors.