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Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-05 10:13pm
by JasonB
In practice UFP gravitate torpedoes strength need blow smell world accord smell planet.

What this video form 11 minute and 14 seconds to about 11 minute and 26 seconds

Across that only one example another tricobalt device again another example weapon we never seen the UFP us other then USS Voyager once.
Across anti matter pod every starship carry why that not normal used weapon is beyond me can someone here please explain.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-05 10:23pm
by Batman
Because depla prufogle qwofty means they can't as tropl snorly transmopulism?
And I positively fail to see how a planet being smelly or not figures into it.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-05 10:37pm
by Enigma
Another fucked up idea. Tricobalt devices? They can disrupt subspace and that is a no-no.

Do you really want to have Starfleet strand their ships by tossing their fuel pods and destroying subspace while attacking their enemies?

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-05 10:46pm
by The Romulan Republic
Enigma wrote:Another fucked up idea. Tricobalt devices? They can disrupt subspace and that is a no-no.

Do you really want to have Starfleet strand their ships by tossing their fuel pods and destroying subspace while attacking their enemies?
Is it just me, or do a lot of this guy's ideas seem to be borderline suicide attacks?

However, I will point out that tricobalt devices have been used in canon without destroying subspace. Maybe if they were used in large numbers though...

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-05 11:58pm
by Jawawithagun
JasonB wrote:In practice UFP gravitate torpedoes strength need blow smell world accord smell planet.
Just cutting off their noses would be easier but someone removed the slice-n-dice mode from the phasers again.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 01:01am
by Enigma
The Romulan Republic wrote:
Enigma wrote:Another fucked up idea. Tricobalt devices? They can disrupt subspace and that is a no-no.

Do you really want to have Starfleet strand their ships by tossing their fuel pods and destroying subspace while attacking their enemies?
Is it just me, or do a lot of this guy's ideas seem to be borderline suicide attacks?

However, I will point out that tricobalt devices have been used in canon without destroying subspace. Maybe if they were used in large numbers though...
It can cause subspace ruptures but it isn't classified as a subspace weapon. But to lob them like photorps would greatly increase the risks of rupturing subspace.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 02:36am
by Darth Tedious
Wasn't the whole 'small planet' thing hyperbole anyway? I'm sure this has come up several hundred times...

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 06:11am
by Serafina
Darth Tedious wrote:Wasn't the whole 'small planet' thing hyperbole anyway? I'm sure this has come up several hundred times...
"what is she planning to do? blow up a small planet?" (or was it moon?)
Compare that to, say, someone hoarding lot's of ammo and someone else saying "what is he planning to do, take out a whole army?"
Yes, it is clearly hyperbole.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 02:30pm
by JasonB
You guys right According Star Trek alpha 25 isoton is enough take city because twice that amount enough take out 2 cities I guess. How come UFP does not normal armed photon torpedoes with 80 insoton punch.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 02:35pm
by Metahive
Do you think "iso" ton is more than "mega" ton? Do you know what "iso" actually means?

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 03:44pm
by Connor MacLeod
Obvious Answer: The Federation has mastered the Illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator, thereby giving them the means to blow up planets.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 03:48pm
by Eternal_Freedom
Damnit Connor beat me to it. Grrrrrrrr.

Clearly that small planet Kim refers to is spoiling Janeway's view of something.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 08:41pm
by Ahriman238
Do you think "iso" ton is more than "mega" ton? Do you know what "iso" actually means?


International Standardization Organization? Perhaps Janeway is getting ready for a management-practices review. Ah, but there simply isn't a big enough warhead to save her.

But if this is supposed to be Greek iso then it means "equal to." So clearly the special super-torpedo they're making is equivalent to eighty tons of TNT. Fairly impressive, to get such a small non-nuclear bomb with such a yield. Fairly unimpressive in absolute terms.

Is this what I missed by barely ever watching Voyager? Bad techno-babble and contrived plots? And are we seriosuly expected to believe that Federation Starships will just lock out the crew because of a single unconfirmed sensor reading? And that only the captain can override this? Because that just screams "easily exploitable weakness" to anyone from the Romulans/Borg/Dominon to a man who wants to bust out of jail without the nearby starship interfering.

The whole idea of a Captain's Only, conspiracy/club shits all over the ideals of TOS and TNG. Every Starfleet Officer, down to the mess hall steward is the product of an advanced liberal arts education that includes everything from classical studies to warp theory to klingon opera, and Starfleet trusts it's officers implicitly.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-06 09:02pm
by Stofsk
Ahriman238 wrote:Is this what I missed by barely ever watching Voyager? Bad techno-babble and contrived plots?
Yeah. Pretty much.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-07 03:43am
by Metahive
Even funnier there's actually something called "isoton", it's a special moniker for certain nuclides (two nuclides with same number of neutrons but diverging numbers of protons). There's also "isotonic" which is a word pertaining to muscle contraction. SCIENCE, ur doin it rong!

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-07 05:49am
by Connor MacLeod
Destructionator XIII wrote:Not only do you not know what iso means, you don't know what ton means! Taking a number as an absolute thing is super silly.
Clearly iso means ton, which is a ton of Illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator. Considering that one stick weighs what, a pound? one Isoton is enough to blow up the world 5000x over.

EAT THAT SUPER ANTIMATTTER!!!!!

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-07 06:04am
by Darth Tedious
I was wondering how long it would take before someone mentioned the ounce of antimatter...

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-07 11:31pm
by Ahriman238
Saw the episode, am even more sickened.

The sheer, arrogant conceit of it all leaves me stunned. The Federation failed to control the omega particle in it's one and only set of experiments THEREFORE no one can control the particle. The particle can disrupt Warp travel THEREFORE it is a threat to all civilization because as we all know, civilization cannot exist without interstellar travel and there is no form of FTL besides Warp Drive (hint: there is.) Combine these two facts and you have a mandate to destroy the things at any cost, up to and including dooming an entire civilization.

How can any of this be morally or logically justified? I was going to ask how any of this adds up to being so sensitive it can't be shared even with fellow officers, but I think I understand now. It's a conspiracy, and like many conspiracies, they are afraid that their objectives will be discovered by someone with a working moral compass and/or brain.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-08 01:16pm
by JasonB
Metahive wrote:Do you think "iso" ton is more than "mega" ton? Do you know what "iso" actually means?
The reason I think photon torpedo armed with 25 inston enough fire power destroy city is because of the them talking about Star Terk living whiteness this photon torpedo destroy city seconds . However for all we known he talking type ten photon torpedo most powerful one seen get used that heard them talking about or and one we never heard get used. As for other one we know even less not even stander warhead being used.
See site for yourself for information what isoton means why think enough fire power destroy smell city seconds witness.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Isoton

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-08 04:46pm
by Simon_Jester
Ahriman238 wrote:Saw the episode, am even more sickened.

The sheer, arrogant conceit of it all leaves me stunned. The Federation failed to control the omega particle in it's one and only set of experiments THEREFORE no one can control the particle. The particle can disrupt Warp travel THEREFORE it is a threat to all civilization because as we all know, civilization cannot exist without interstellar travel and there is no form of FTL besides Warp Drive (hint: there is.) Combine these two facts and you have a mandate to destroy the things at any cost, up to and including dooming an entire civilization.

How can any of this be morally or logically justified? I was going to ask how any of this adds up to being so sensitive it can't be shared even with fellow officers, but I think I understand now. It's a conspiracy, and like many conspiracies, they are afraid that their objectives will be discovered by someone with a working moral compass and/or brain.
To be fair, I can understand how the conspiracy to destroy Omega particles/molecules/whatever originated. A high-profile technological disaster of that scale is enough to convince an interstellar civilization that the things are far more dangerous than they're worth. And the Federation really would fall apart without warp travel, and many of the worlds they've settled would not have much long term viability without the Federation's warp-drive ships knitting them together. And warp drive is used so routinely, by so many different cultures, that anything which threatens to close it off is a disaster- and not just to the Federation.

While I'm not on board with destroying whole civilizations to get at the Omega molecules, the history of the things is full of research and industrial accidents, even by people who think they have the stuff under control. It is not unreasonable for the Federation to regard experiments with the Omega molecule anywhere near its space as a dangerous and provocative act- much like it would be dangerous and provocative to test "dirty" nuclear weapons upwind of another country that could be affected by the fallout.

So up to a point, I cannot criticize a conspiracy to prevent Omega technology from spreading; it really is that dangerous.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-08 10:03pm
by Enigma
There is no defined comparison between isoton and whatever real world unit but we can extrapolate at least for anti-matter.

The memory alpha link mentions that the photon torpedo's maximum yield is between 25 and 200 isotons (huge gap, go figure :roll: ).

Let's use the TM and have the photorp's yield at 64.4MT. 64.4 divided by 25 gives us an upper end of 2.576MT per isoton. At the lower end, 64.4MT divided by 200 isotons gives us 322KT per isoton.

In the case of anti-matter, isoton is just a different way of measuring its yield. This makes no sense since they've also used the Metric system.

Apparently, a few isograms of dilithium is barely enough to power Voyager's sonic showers. That means it uses somewhere around 6.74GW to 54GW of power to run them. That also doesn't seem to make sense as this would mean that they use a shit-ton of power just to keep people clean.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-08 10:14pm
by Ahriman238
To be fair, I can understand how the conspiracy to destroy Omega particles/molecules/whatever originated. A high-profile technological disaster of that scale is enough to convince an interstellar civilization that the things are far more dangerous than they're worth. And the Federation really would fall apart without warp travel, and many of the worlds they've settled would not have much long term viability without the Federation's warp-drive ships knitting them together. And warp drive is used so routinely, by so many different cultures, that anything which threatens to close it off is a disaster- and not just to the Federation.

While I'm not on board with destroying whole civilizations to get at the Omega molecules, the history of the things is full of research and industrial accidents, even by people who think they have the stuff under control. It is not unreasonable for the Federation to regard experiments with the Omega molecule anywhere near its space as a dangerous and provocative act- much like it would be dangerous and provocative to test "dirty" nuclear weapons upwind of another country that could be affected by the fallout.

So up to a point, I cannot criticize a conspiracy to prevent Omega technology from spreading; it really is that dangerous.
'Full of research and industrial accidents' meaning 'on two occasions?' Granted, the fact that the Borg couldn't make it work either is a point in the conspiracy's favor.

But this brings up another issue. The Voyager crew are not in or near Federation space. Janeway brings her crew into this because the Black Ops team Starfleet would normally use is tens of thousands of light-years away. Instead of keeping on her way, maybe altering course slightly to get away from that world quicker, she diverts course to go straight to the Particle. Apparently, destroying the Omega Particle is a greater priority than getting her crew home!

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-08 10:17pm
by Enigma
As to the VOY episode "Living Witness", if we're to take at face value that 25 isotons could level a city in seconds, then a photorp would be enough if you coose the high end figure of 25 isotons equal to 64.4MT or the low end of 8.05MT (1 isotons = 322KT).

Another reason why I don't think the writers have thought things through is that in VOY "Juggernaut", a Malon export vessel could transport 4 trillion isotons of antimatter waste. If the waste were to detonate, the low end figure of its yield would be 1.288 exa-tons and its high end figure of 10.304 exa-tons.

But of course it is all complete garbage as apparently 54 isotons is enough to blow up a small planet. (VOY: "The Omega Directive")

Too inconsistent.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-09 12:11am
by Baffalo
Enigma wrote:As to the VOY episode "Living Witness", if we're to take at face value that 25 isotons could level a city in seconds, then a photorp would be enough if you coose the high end figure of 25 isotons equal to 64.4MT or the low end of 8.05MT (1 isotons = 322KT).

Another reason why I don't think the writers have thought things through is that in VOY "Juggernaut", a Malon export vessel could transport 4 trillion isotons of antimatter waste. If the waste were to detonate, the low end figure of its yield would be 1.288 exa-tons and its high end figure of 10.304 exa-tons.

But of course it is all complete garbage as apparently 54 isotons is enough to blow up a small planet. (VOY: "The Omega Directive")

Too inconsistent.
Honestly, I would just assume that it's the fault of the writers. The writers are basically told to take a technical term and stick it in the show to try and get back in touch with everyone who thought Star Trek was meant to be about science, despite the fact that Star Trek is on par to a philosophy student in scientific insight.

My personal theory is that isoton is a standard unit of reference when it comes to explosives. I say reference in the same way that in mathematics, we have terms for units such as Siemens (1/Ohms), radians, things that we use as a reference but are in fact unit-less. Similar to the way large explosives are refered to as simply 'kilotons' or 'megatons', we know it means pounds of dynamite. It's a standard label but without knowledge of what it refers to, it's meaningless.

So if we treat it like that, let's say we reference explosives to tons of antimatter. In the case of anti-matter, the actual amount of anti-matter is meaningless, because it's not the volume or size, but the mass of anti-matter being used. And if you know how much an equivalent mass of anti-matter releases when it contacts matter, you can use that as a frame of reference. So how much would a ton (or metric ton in this case) produce in terms of power?

One metric ton is 1000 kilograms, or 1,000,000 grams of deuterium. Because the speed of light is 3x108 m/s, a metric ton of anti-matter, when converted to pure energy, releases 3x1017 Joules, or 300 Peta-Joules of energy. Because of the nature of the explosion, we have the equivilent mass in normal matter being destroyed, for a total of 600 Peta-Joules of energy. Just for reference, one ton of TNT releases 4.184x109 Joules of energy. That sounds impressive, but considering we measure nuclear weapons often in megatons, a megaton is 4.184x1015. That means that you're looking at the equivilent of 72 one megaton nuclear weapons in the same package. Forgive me, but considering that both the United States and the Soviet Union had literally thousands of these weapons and bigger, and the worst we predicted was nuclear winter, I don't think anti-matter is really that efficient.

In all honestly? I'd arm my ships with high-yield nuclear weapons if I went toe to toe with a Federation starship, because I'd be reasonably even matched in terms of firepower.

Re: Why UFP starship arm such weaken weapons

Posted: 2011-05-09 12:21am
by Simon_Jester
Ahriman238 wrote:'Full of research and industrial accidents' meaning 'on two occasions?' Granted, the fact that the Borg couldn't make it work either is a point in the conspiracy's favor.
Given the first catastrophic failure with the Federation, and the subsequent Borg failure, and the failure of every other attempt in Star Trek canon that I can find a reference to... maybe Omega molecules really are impossible to control and confine. Maybe there are theoretical problems with the idea of stabilizing them that the Federation has good reason to think are insoluble? Maybe they sought confirmation from more advanced races on this issue?

We don't know all the details. All we know is that the Federation government believes the Omega molecule to be so intrinsically dangerous to interstellar navigation that it is worth taking nearly any reasonable risk (such as the loss of a ship) to be rid of them.

Maybe they're right.

Of course, if there were any evidence in Star Trek for anyone having successfully stabilized an Omega molecule, then the Federation might want to relax its policy. Is there such?
But this brings up another issue. The Voyager crew are not in or near Federation space. Janeway brings her crew into this because the Black Ops team Starfleet would normally use is tens of thousands of light-years away. Instead of keeping on her way, maybe altering course slightly to get away from that world quicker, she diverts course to go straight to the Particle. Apparently, destroying the Omega Particle is a greater priority than getting her crew home!
If Janeway were a proper military officer, she would indeed consider standing orders such as "destroy all Omega molecules at all costs" to take precedence over getting home in a hurry. This would not be surprising.