10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

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McAvoy
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Re: 10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

Post by McAvoy »

Figuring out the yields on torpedos or even beam weapons is hard as it's in consistent as hell.

Star Trek 5 had a torpedo that had a yield of a balloon. You would have done more damage if they just dropped it from orbit.

Then you got TOS which a ship can destroy worlds. Whereas you needed 20 ships and some free time to do in DS9.
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Re: 10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

Post by Atekimogus »

bladela wrote:
Graham Kennedy wrote:I'd settle for just outlining how powerful the weapons and shields are.

"A photon torpedo at maximum power is the equivalent of the largest hydrogen bomb. It could be expected to completely destroy a whole city."
"The shields of the ship could be expected to withstand approximately a dozen photon torpedoes. Once the shields fail, even a single photon torpedo hit would vapourise the entire ship."
we should also expect that torpedoes and shields are upgraded almost in sync, so a 23th century torpedo shouldn't be a so big problem for a Galaxy class starship and a 24th century torpedo should take out a constitution almost at the first blow ...
Do we though?

I mean when it comes to photon torpedos....when do you reach the practical limit of needed destructive power? Since they operate on the same principel the only way to make them more powerfull would be making them bigger. They seem to have the same size from the TMP to TNG area.

Indeed what we do see are ships with two launchers capable of launching one torpedo each going to ships being able to launch 10 torpedoes at once. Hence I would assume that the TMP area torpedo has roughly the same punch as a TNG area torpedo, the difference being mostly in targeting electronics and what have you.


I always assumed (though it has never been confirmed afaik, mostly because they were just used simultaniously) that Quantum Torpedoes are - for example - not stronger than Photon Torpedoes. Maybe even quite less powerfull. Their thing being that it is impossible for the Borg to adapt to because of Quantum....hence their usefullness.


So..I think we might be suprised to learn how much the development of photon torpedoes stagnated in Star Trek when it comes to yield.
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Re: 10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

Post by bladela »

Atekimogus wrote: Do we though?

I mean when it comes to photon torpedos....when do you reach the practical limit of needed destructive power? Since they operate on the same principel the only way to make them more powerfull would be making them bigger. They seem to have the same size from the TMP to TNG area.

Indeed what we do see are ships with two launchers capable of launching one torpedo each going to ships being able to launch 10 torpedoes at once. Hence I would assume that the TMP area torpedo has roughly the same punch as a TNG area torpedo, the difference being mostly in targeting electronics and what have you.
Not necessarily

Two factors can mainly intervene in explosive power: the amount of reagent and the reaction efficiency.

given the amount of matter and antimatter in a photon torpedo according to current physics a torpedo has a maximum power of about 60 megatons, but this imagining a efficiency of the reaction of 100%, which is theoretically impossible (and we can imagine it is also in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth century).

You can think for example that the first models of photon torpedo had a maximum efficiency of 1%, so the photon torpedo would have a maximum power of about 600 kilotons, later models have gradually increased this efficiency to bring it (I'm inventing numbers, mind you) 90% at the time of TNG, here that we have reached over 50 megatons, and a power increase of 90 times without changing the amount of reagents, but only the technology with which they are built.

Obviously this means that in TNG there is little room for improvement for photon torpedoes without increasing in size (which can lead to costs ... for example in terms of the ability to engage fast targets ... or some other tecnobabble ...), here are the quantum torpedoes ... that using zero point energy are no longer subject to this limitation ... and the first model has a power of 100 megatons, 50 from antimatter and 50 from new system ... and the limitation is exceeded.

I do not say that this has happened, but that, in my opinion, seems to me to be a logical progression of the technology in question.

Then mind you ... I do not think to remember an explosion of torpedoes in ST that gives the (visual) idea of being of tens of megatons, at least in ship-to-ship combat.
I always assumed (though it has never been confirmed afaik, mostly because they were just used simultaniously) that Quantum Torpedoes are - for example - not stronger than Photon Torpedoes. Maybe even quite less powerfull. Their thing being that it is impossible for the Borg to adapt to because of Quantum....hence their usefullness.
the DS9 TM (not canon, of course!) explicitly contradicts this, and nothing in the canon seems to confirm it (but as we have already said about it the canon is very inconsistent, think of the Mark VI of Voyager)
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Re: 10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

Post by McAvoy »

You can definitely make a case in efficiency of the torpedo of even how much the torpedo carries in the warhead. Or how fast it is.

One big thing is that for something that is as powerful as the most powerful nukes, it doesn't create a nuke type of explosion. I have had this idea in my head that the warhead when the torpedo hits a shield or the hull of the enemy ship, the energy is focused at a nanosecond into the front, directing all energies at that point.
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Re: 10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Atekimogus wrote:Do we though?

I mean when it comes to photon torpedos....when do you reach the practical limit of needed destructive power? Since they operate on the same principel the only way to make them more powerfull would be making them bigger. They seem to have the same size from the TMP to TNG area.
As best we can tell there is no theoretical limit to the power of a photon torpedo. The Dreadnought on Voyager had a 2 metric ton M/AM warhead, and there's no reason I know of that it couldn't be 20 tons or 20,000 tons.

And it's not necessarily the case that you can't fit more AM into a casing. Antimatter is as varied in form as matter is - there's no reason you couldn't switch to a denser warhead material and thus fit more material into the casing. And a good deal of the casing is filled with electronics, sensors, etc to drive the torpedo - there's no reason to think that those systems couldn't shrink as technology advanced, allowing for a larger percentage of the casing to be taken up by the warhead.
Indeed what we do see are ships with two launchers capable of launching one torpedo each going to ships being able to launch 10 torpedoes at once. Hence I would assume that the TMP area torpedo has roughly the same punch as a TNG area torpedo, the difference being mostly in targeting electronics and what have you.
Whereas I would assume that the TNG weapon had a significantly larger/more powerful warhead, as well as the ship being able to launch 20 at a time.

In passing, by the way, the "ten at a time" is from the TNG tech manual, but I believe canonically we've never seen a tube launch more than five at a time.
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Re: 10 Flaws Star Trek - USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D

Post by bladela »

Graham Kennedy wrote: As best we can tell there is no theoretical limit to the power of a photon torpedo. The Dreadnought on Voyager had a 2 metric ton M/AM warhead, and there's no reason I know of that it couldn't be 20 tons or 20,000 tons.
In fact every starship could be as powerful as the Dreadnought if used at the same way.
And it's not necessarily the case that you can't fit more AM into a casing. Antimatter is as varied in form as matter is - there's no reason you couldn't switch to a denser warhead material and thus fit more material into the casing. And a good deal of the casing is filled with electronics, sensors, etc to drive the torpedo - there's no reason to think that those systems couldn't shrink as technology advanced, allowing for a larger percentage of the casing to be taken up by the warhead.
Density and efficiency for me are the two main variables that affect the power of the weapon

In passing, by the way, the "ten at a time" is from the TNG tech manual, but I believe canonically we've never seen a tube launch more than five at a time.
I think the maximum has been seen in Yesterday's Enterprise and they launched five torpedoes at the same time.
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