Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
My ball may not be firmly clamped between my legs here, but it seems to me that, given the essence of (post-TNG) Trek combat, drop-launching torpedoes would only really be an effective method of warhead delivery if the ship firing them was at very high impulse and its target nigh-stationary.
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Not really: it's be just as effective to launch a torpedo in an attacking ship's general aproach vector (as the Centaur did) nad allow the torp's own guidence to home in on the enemy. The mag-rail thing is to give the torp the initial big thrust away from the ship so as long as it's fired in the enemy's general direction it should be fine.
Also recall that we never see onscreen the kind of extreme ranges (20,000km for the Phionex) that starships should engage each other in.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
But the pod thingy on the Centaur would have a clear line of fire aft and so could mount a proper torpedo launcher. IIRC the main reason it has geberally been presumed that it drop launched a torpedo was the lack of a clear line of fire forward. The VFX were indicative of a drop launch but by no means conclusive.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
The Centaur still could've fired forward and more downward..... Meh. I say a torp can fly wherever it wants once launched: recall the Defiant's trick with the probes inside that gas giant?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure that Rick Sternbach has said (over on TrekBBS I think) that a pho-torp can propel itself without the aid of a magnetic rail. I'll do a search and see if I can confirm this.
posted
Sure it can: the rail is just the initial push: even at the rails extreme velocities of that first "push", a torpeo on guidence would lose that velocity quickly if it's making large trjectory corections to follow a target (like General Chang's KBOP).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
A photon torpedo isn't likely to carry enough fuel to match the speeds and ranges of other starships if fired at slow speeds, is I think the point here.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Or, to go slightly Tim-al on this discussion, delta-V.
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Err... don't torpedoes only have warp sustainer engines, only capable of sustaining a warp field, and not of actually generating one itself? Or has that already gone out of fashion?
posted
I would think a torpedo's speed could be sustained (at or close to a starship's Full Impulse) even if not rail-launched if the torp used the warhead's antimatter to power it'd propulsion system: it's just make for a slightly weaker explosion.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Well as I said before, we're dealing with rather close quarters combat here so points about a torpedo's range are somewhat irrelevant to the discussion. Obviously if a torp can propell itself over long distances at high speed then they wouldn't need a rail, the fact that they do use rails is a pretty good indication that they are necessary. However the torpedos we've seen manuvering must have some way of generating thrust and there's certain details on the casing prop itself which certainly look like thrusters.
So from this evidence it appears that the Defiant's aft launcers are apparantly adapted mine launchers. Hence the absence of any obvious torpedo tubes on the aft end of the model.
As a side note; it appears that TBTB were thinking about self propelled torpedoes during the pre-production phase of ST:FC. You may recal the concept art and /or story boards showing the abandoned sequence where they were to use some pop-out launcher to detroy the borg beacon. Ok it was a Q-torp and the sequence was abandoned but the idea was still there.
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