Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Energy weapons/transport at warp?

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

1. Do phasers, lasers, electron beams, plasma weapons, etc, have any utility at warp speeds? I assume that as soon as the particles of a beam leave the ship's the warp field, they'd drop back into normal space and decelerate back to light speed. If you're shooting straight ahead, you'd collide with your own beam! If you're firing at a ship to the side, the beam would be left behind and never hit (similar to the effect, but not the mechanism, of trying to spit out the side window of your car to the shithead driver in the next lane). But if you're firing to the rear at a pursuing ship, a phaser might do some damage (according to the TNG Tech Manual).

2. Is there any way to wrap a temporary subspace field around a beam or mass of energetic particles so they can travel at warp speeds?

3. In that TNG episode, Worf's girlfriend gets beamed over from her torpedo. Are we assuming that the torp was within Enterprise's subspace field or did the matter stream somehow cross normal space? I know about that "matching warp speed for transport" stuff, which doesn't really clear things up.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

We've seen phasers and other energy weapons fired at warp. Therefore, it must be possible.

As for three, the torpedo reached the Enterprise and stopped, no?

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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
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E. E. Cummings
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Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

I was just thinking... seeing as torps can go at warp speed... why don't we see a 'stationary'starship fire a spread of torpedoes and then watch them go to warp!?!

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Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

IIRC they can sustain warp speed but not induce it.

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And by the way, I faked all the orgasms.

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Oh

How about a torpedo that drops OUT of warp!?!

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"I threw bitter tears at the ocean
But all that came back was the tide..." 'I Will Not Forget You' Sarah McLachlan

Posted by Davok (Member # 143) on :

DS9 TM, page 84:
"Recent developments in subspace technology have pushed the phaser into the FTL [=faster than light] area, notably the ACB[=annular confinement beam]-jacketed beam device"

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Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

Yummy!

And since even Voyager's old 2369-style photon's could emulate the conditions within the stabile slipstream in "Hope And Fear" I guess it's safe to say torpedoes have a pretty high speed-limit.

[This message has been edited by Nimrod (edited October 01, 2000).]

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

So before this "ACB jacketing" ships at warp should not have been able to fire phasers? This sounds a bit fishy, as if the DS9 TM was just trying to explain away errors by the writers. Does anyone recall phasers being fired at warp in TOS or TNG? Or did ships always fly somewhere at warp 9, drop out of warp, fire their slow-ass phasers, then re-enter warp?

Regarding torpedoes, there's an equation in the TNG TM for the speed of the torpedo that involves the speed of the launching ship. I don't have my book here, so I don't know what happens if the ship's speed is less than c or even zero.

Torps fired by a ship at warp should be able to drop out of warp when its onboard "warp sustainer" runs out of fuel. It would then coast along at c?

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

The DS9 TM theory about "recent advances" is rather fishy, since TOS ships fired their phasers at warp without problems but with devastating effect. Then again, perhaps TOS ships routinely used ACB jacketing, but this was dropped after TOS because it interfered with some fancy-shcmancy improvement in phaser technology? Or because torps were considered so much better in warp combat that nobody bothered with warp phasers any more?

To grasp for a real-world analogy, think of shipboard air defence: after WW2, western ships gradually abandoned AA guns almost completely and went missile, until the eighties brought back "CIWS" with Phalanx and Goalkeeper and Zenith and similar gun systems, and marketed them as a whole new weapons system. Yet if light AA guns hadn't been abandoned, these modern radar-guided, computer-controlled guns would simply be an evolutionary step not worth writing home about.

Then again, there is no canon proof that ships between TOS and modern Trek *couldn't* fire phasers at warp. So I'd prefer to ignore the TNG and DS9 TMs on this if possible.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Davok (Member # 143) on :

The only instance I remember of a ship firing phasers at warp is the Voyager in "Basics, Pt. 1". Are you sure that we ever saw a TOS-era ship do it?

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

I doubt we even *saw* a TOS ship in warp, other than the typical 'woosh-FLASH' effects of going into warp.

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Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

Davok: Haven't you seen Voy's "Message In A Bottle"?

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Don't forget, I faked all the orgasms.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Many instances of ship-to-ship combat in TOS were at warp speeds. They didn't have the visual effects to display it like they do now, but they were definitely moving.

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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

I'm trying to think what adversary ships we saw in TOS. I can think only of the Romulan BOP, the Tholian webspinner, and the Klingon Cruiser, and the Doomsday Machine. There wasn't too much combat. In Balance of Terror, the Enterprise fired phasers (which looked like photon torpedoes) but I don't know if the ship was travelling at warp.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

The TOS warp effects did not differ from TOS impulse effects (except for the "woosh-by" in the opening credits - I don't think the ship ever went that fast at what would have been called impulse in the dialogue), so we can't visually tell if the ship is fighting at warp or not.

By dialogue, though, "Balance of Terror" had the Enterprise at warp 3 when she began firing those "ranging shots" with her phasers. The ship was also at warp speed (warp 5?) during the computerized phaser combat in "The Ultimate Computer". But IIRC, neither episode showed the typical phaser fire effect - in the former, yellow flashes were used instead of blue beams, and in the latter, I don't think we saw the phasers firing at all.

Some opponents fired their beam weapons from warp, as in "Elaan of Troyius" or "Journey to Babel", but those weren't necessarily phasers. The Enterprise fired her phasers at a supposedly high-warp target while standing still in "Journey to Babel", but the range vs. elapsed time figures given by Sulu do not really correspond to high warp in that episode.

"Basics" and "Message in a Bottle" showed warp-speed phaser battles in Voyager, and "Treachery, Faith and the Great River" showed one in DS9. In none of these cases was any special mention made of the fact that the ships were shown at warp. And the fighting distances in each case were minimal - which is atypical of Trek warp chases. At longer ranges, torpedoes have been used in warp chase battles, as in "Flashback" and "Time to Stand".

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Davok (Member # 143) on :

@Nimrod: well, yeah.. must 've somehow forgot it. good point.

But, to cut a long story short: none of the TOS battles can really prove that the good old "E" was able to fire her phasers at warp, right? So why don't we just ignore it? IMHO, the solution presented by the DS9TM sounds quite reasonable.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

"Mr. Sulu, increase to warp 4. Fire phasers."

That doesn't constitute proof?

And, as we've shown, even without TOS, phasers are fired at warp speeds all the time.

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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.