How much more powerful are Quantam Torpedoes?

[Graham Kennedy]

No it wasn't. We first saw then in the DS9 episode "Defiant", two years before First Contact.

The usual justification is that we saw them first on the Defiant, which Sisko says was built "for one purpose - to fight and defeat the Borg".

While it's possible that quantum torps just happened coincidentally to be first deployed on the Borg-slayer, personally I think the most sensible idea is that quantums were indeed designed as anti-Borg weapons.

[Duskofdead]

No it wasn't. We first saw then in the DS9 episode "Defiant", two years before First Contact.

The usual justification is that we saw them first on the Defiant, which Sisko says was built "for one purpose - to fight and defeat the Borg".

While it's possible that quantum torps just happened coincidentally to be first deployed on the Borg-slayer, personally I think the most sensible idea is that quantums were indeed designed as anti-Borg weapons.

If we take the backstage info into account... that quantums were designed for more penetration and to be partially phased and all that, I agree. I'm simply willing to concede that no such distinction about their design was mentioned in canon, to the best of my knowledge anyhow. Photons though are rather old weapons, being a primary Starfleet weapon since well... since nearly before Starfleet existed, right? It would make sense that, in addition to anything perhaps "aimed" at the Borg or Borg preparedness, quantums were the result of a very long development towards a more sophisticated or more efficient warhead delivery system that could have been in development for decades, a century even.

[Graham Kennedy]

Personally I think that it's pretty much a no brainer that quantums are more powerful than photons, though you can certainly argue that they aren't. People got pretty excited when they first appeared and some started claiming them as uber weapons thousands of times more powerful - essentially they would be to photons what nukes are to conventional weapons.

That went by the wayside, which I was both glad and sad about. I used 2.7 times more powerful based on the figures given in the DS9 TM, as I recall, on the basis that anything official was better than just pulling a number out of my ass.

[Thorin]

While it's possible that quantum torps just happened coincidentally to be first deployed on the Borg-slayer, personally I think the most sensible idea is that quantums were indeed designed as anti-Borg weapons.

I find it just as believable that it was coincidental. Just as how the anti-Borg ship was coincidentally the most powerful ship in SF, it's quite believable that more powerful quantum torpedos were coincidentally anti-Borg, or vice-versa.

[Graham Kennedy]

Er, are you actually saying that you think it was a coincidence that a ship designed to fight the Borg was the most powerful ship around?

[Duskofdead]

By the way I do think quantums are significantly more powerful, and dialogue canon backs that up time and again. I also think their relative rarity bespeaks an intensive or expensive production process which makes it prohibitive to (at this time) deploy them on the whole fleet, or even all new designs. I'm just of the opinion that photons being somewhere in the neighborhood of two centuries old, it would not make terribly too much sense for an all new replacement torpedo technology to be whipped up in a couple of years after Wolf 359. Probably the development was a much longer time coming, albeit accelerated by the need to get new weapons systems into service against the Borg.

[Thorin]

Just as coincidental as people's reasoning that quantums aren't as powerful because they were designed to fight the Borg (even though there is no such statement) means they aren't any more powerful.

You say that, for the Defiant itself, Anti-Borg = Most Powerful
But then others have said, for quantums, Anti-Borg = Not most powerful

What is the difference, precisely?

[mlsnoopy]

Aginst the Keldons wich weapon was used the phasers or torpedos.

[Tsukiyumi]

Personally, I've never heard or seen anything to suggest that quantum torps were designed as specifically anti-Borg weapons. I do recall a discussion we had on here a while back about Transphasic torps being somehow optimized to destroy Borg ships, a theory I still support.

[Graham Kennedy]

it would not make terribly too much sense for an all new replacement torpedo technology to be whipped up in a couple of years after Wolf 359. Probably the development was a much longer time coming, albeit accelerated by the need to get new weapons systems into service against the Borg.

First off, Starfleet's anti-Borg systems began development after Q Who? in 2365, not after best of Both Worlds at the end of 2366. In fact I always took the line about Defiant being mothballed after the Borg threat "became less urgent" to mean that development was suspended after Wolf 359 rather than begun then.

Second, in best of Best of Both Worlds I, Geordi comments that "I can't believe any of these new weapons systems can be ready in less than eighteen months, Commander," prompting Shelby to respond "We've been projecting twenty-four."

So clearly new weapons systems were in development after the first contact with the Borg, and those systems were projected to be starting to enter operation around the end of 2368. That makes quantums appearing in 2371 perfectly in line with their being an anti Borg weapon.

[Thorin]

So, they expected a new Anti-Borg weapon in 2368.

We see a new weapon in 2371.

I'm thinking the correlation is weak, at best.

[Graham Kennedy]

So, they expected a new Anti-Borg weapon in 2368.

We see a new weapon in 2371.

I'm thinking the correlation is weak, at best.

No, they were expecting the first of several new weapons to arrive in 2368. No reason to suppose that others would not follow after that.

[Thorin]

Okay, they expected the first of 'some' anti-Borg weaponary in 2368.

A new weapon shows up in 2371.

The correlation is still horribly weak.

[Duskofdead]

I don't think there is any reason both theories can't be true. It is perfectly plausible that Starfleet had been working on an improved torpedo system for years, with or without the Borg. In fact it would be incomprehensible if they didn't given that photons are standard fare in the 24th century, and are two centuries old. Quantums showing up when they did was certainly tied in with the Borg threat and the need to get new weapons up and deployed vs. Borg threats as soon as possible, and certainly quantums could have been both tweaked and deployed selectively on designs which were anti-Borg in the beginning.

I have no problem seeing both lines of thought meeting in the middle.

[mwhittington]

According to Star Trek Encyclopedia, which I know isn't canon but still gives a decent explanation, quantum torpedoes use artificially constructed quantum filaments, a.k.a. cosmic string filaments, as its warhead, like the one the E-D smashed into in Disaster. They are usually no thicker than a proton, but are composed of almost infititely dense matter, and have strong gravitational fields as a result.