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TNG: Vengeance FactorDarth Spock wrote: As far as this evidence indicating that the armor used by Remans/Romulans, Cardassians and Jem Hadar can survive blasters... I really don't think there's any specific evidence one way or the other, although I doubt any of the typical armor employed by the military powers mentioned could tank blaster fire so as to provide a significant advantage. We've seen phasers defeat some of that armor without necessitating maximum vaporization settings, and where missed shots don't indicate power levels beyond medium settings which I believe compare reasonably well to blasters.
I'm sure they could field body armor capable of repelling blaster fire, but then so can Star Wars, as we've seen Obi Wan and Kallus use higher grade chest protectors that are probably considered too expensive for wide use on "grunts." Speaking of which, when did SW: Rebels show typical storm trooper armor resisting normal blaster fire? I must have missed that... At any rate, I figure Trek armor serves mostly the same function as storm trooper armor, it provides an intimidating, standard uniform capable of repelling injuries from under equipped civilians and superficial collateral damage.
[EDIT - fixed a typo typo]
Eh, phaser wonkyness. It's impressive, yes, but without knowing the specific heat of noranium this example doesn't provide that much helpful information. Besides, he needed a setting high enough to literally vaporize the material, but not POOC it to create a smoke screen, and how many, three or four of them fired into the pile for a several seconds. Also don't forget the poor chap in TNG S:4E17 Night Terrors. It was estimated he was hit with a phaser set on about 6 or 7. He was seriously torched, uniform included, but also very much intact. Honestly, I always thought it looked like a blow torch had been swept over him a few times...Lucky wrote:TNG: Vengeance Factor
RIKER: Data, tell me about noranium. It vaporises at?
DATA: Two thousand three hundred fourteen degrees. Of course, noranium carbide
RIKER: Thank you, Data.
LAFORGE: Setting seven ought to do it.
2314 degrees is hot enough to make iron/steel run like water, and yet Star Trek body armor doesn't melt or even soften, and it still doesn't stop a phaser, but Stormtrooper armor melts and burns rather easily in comparison.
Even the standard Federation PJs are pad and fire proof.
0) I'd actually feel sorry for anyone who had to fight this guy's species with an E-11 or a DC-15.Darth Spock wrote: Eh, phaser wonkyness. It's impressive, yes, but without knowing the specific heat of noranium this example doesn't provide that much helpful information. Besides, he needed a setting high enough to literally vaporize the material, but not POOC it to create a smoke screen, and how many, three or four of them fired into the pile for a several seconds. Also don't forget the poor chap in TNG S:4E17 Night Terrors. It was estimated he was hit with a phaser set on about 6 or 7. He was seriously torched, uniform included, but also very much intact. Honestly, I always thought it looked like a blow torch had been swept over him a few times...
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Ho ho, yeah. "Call to John. I know this hurts." Oops, wrong movie.Lucky wrote: 0) I'd actually feel sorry for anyone who had to fight this guy's species with an E-11 or a DC-15.
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True, but there is no way any alteration in the beams duration can indicate an extreme level of damage being blocked by the uniform. Looking at the consistency of the wounds between the chest, neck and face, and the damage to the uniform, a shot to the chest may have set fire to the uniform, the flames severely damaging the right side of his head, while scorching all the rest of his uniform and face. This seems unlikely given the consistent and severe, yet localized burns ranging from the chest to head, burning hair off the lower portion of his scalp, while only scorching virtually every remaining inch of the upper body.Lucky wrote:1) We don't known how long the beam was firing for in Night Terrors.
Quite true, and the "kill setting" is a good example. It appears to deliver sufficient energy to kill most humanoid lifeforms, but in a manner that spreads the energy out, not burning or otherwise damaging the target physically in any obvious way. One theory of mine is that these "kill" settings load the target up with energy that fries the nervous system. Additionally, given its tendency to spread the energy out, looking at the 4.7 MJ figure in DS9: Return to Grace, if that kind of energy went into raising the targets overall temperature even just a few degrees very rapidly, it would probably fatally overheat the brain, bringing about a quick, reliable, not easily treated death, all without engulfing everything in flame. On that note though, if that is indeed the case, then such operation combined with the storm trooper armors ability to disperse limited amounts of energy could result in a big surprise for the Feds. Kind of like in:Lucky wrote:2) Phasers aren't all that odd once you realize that they aren't naked particle beams. Star Trek is one of the few setting where they go to great lengths to limit collateral damage.
This may force them to crank it all the way up to "vaporize," or, counterintuitively, dial them down to the "crude" burn settings, say, 6 or 7. But, hey, I'm full of theories with inadequate basis in hard fact. I don't usually like to throw half baked ideas like that around, but I though that was a fun one.Darth Spock wrote:the TNG episodes "The Vengeance Factor" and "Conspiracy," where alterations to body chemistry enabled individuals to shrug off stun settings and survive "kill" settings,
Sounds about right, though I don't think we've ever seen flak from hand held blasters, but it sounds reasonable all the same.Lucky wrote:Most energy weapons in Star wars seem to use some sort of containment field as well. It certainly explains the laser flak.
At this point they may need to go for the highly regulated and generally law-forbidden "unplotize" setting, shooting antiparticles of narrativium which erase a character from the story.Darth Spock wrote:Quite true, and the "kill setting" is a good example. It appears to deliver sufficient energy to kill most humanoid lifeforms, but in a manner that spreads the energy out, not burning or otherwise damaging the target physically in any obvious way. One theory of mine is that these "kill" settings load the target up with energy that fries the nervous system. Additionally, given its tendency to spread the energy out, looking at the 4.7 MJ figure in DS9: Return to Grace, if that kind of energy went into raising the targets overall temperature even just a few degrees very rapidly, it would probably fatally overheat the brain, bringing about a quick, reliable, not easily treated death, all without engulfing everything in flame. On that note though, if that is indeed the case, then such operation combined with the storm trooper armors ability to disperse limited amounts of energy could result in a big surprise for the Feds. Kind of like in:Lucky wrote:2) Phasers aren't all that odd once you realize that they aren't naked particle beams. Star Trek is one of the few setting where they go to great lengths to limit collateral damage.This may force them to crank it all the way up to "vaporize," or, counterintuitively, dial them down to the "crude" burn settings, say, 6 or 7. But, hey, I'm full of theories with inadequate basis in hard fact. I don't usually like to throw half baked ideas like that around, but I though that was a fun one.Darth Spock wrote:the TNG episodes "The Vengeance Factor" and "Conspiracy," where alterations to body chemistry enabled individuals to shrug off stun settings and survive "kill" settings,
Hmm. I'd say Q sensed a disturbance in the force: fanfic writers gone amok. He intervenes by trapping Paramount and Disney executives in a special plottonium chamber, and bombards them with cashinium rays. They then do the unthinkable: they make a Star Wars/Star Trek crossover.Mr. Oragahn wrote:At this point they may need to go for the highly regulated and generally law-forbidden "unplotize" setting, shooting antiparticles of narrativium which erase a character from the story.
That isn't a Starfleet uniform he is wearing. It looks more like some sort of literal pajamas.Darth Spock wrote: True, but there is no way any alteration in the beams duration can indicate an extreme level of damage being blocked by the uniform. Looking at the consistency of the wounds between the chest, neck and face, and the damage to the uniform, a shot to the chest may have set fire to the uniform, the flames severely damaging the right side of his head, while scorching all the rest of his uniform and face. This seems unlikely given the consistent and severe, yet localized burns ranging from the chest to head, burning hair off the lower portion of his scalp, while only scorching virtually every remaining inch of the upper body.
More likely, the phaser beam made a sweep over the most gruesome wounds on the chest, neck and right side of his face, burning off the hair only near where the beam made contact, while leaving the rest intact. The uniform is mostly obliterated where the beam made direct contact, but resisted catching fire, yet still smoldered enough to account for the scorching and ash that covers the majority of the rest of the uniform, and his face and hair on the far side of the burn.
1)Darth Spock wrote: Quite true, and the "kill setting" is a good example. It appears to deliver sufficient energy to kill most humanoid lifeforms, but in a manner that spreads the energy out, not burning or otherwise damaging the target physically in any obvious way. One theory of mine is that these "kill" settings load the target up with energy that fries the nervous system. Additionally, given its tendency to spread the energy out, looking at the 4.7 MJ figure in DS9: Return to Grace, if that kind of energy went into raising the targets overall temperature even just a few degrees very rapidly, it would probably fatally overheat the brain, bringing about a quick, reliable, not easily treated death, all without engulfing everything in flame. On that note though, if that is indeed the case, then such operation combined with the storm trooper armors ability to disperse limited amounts of energy could result in a big surprise for the Feds. Kind of like in:This may force them to crank it all the way up to "vaporize," or, counterintuitively, dial them down to the "crude" burn settings, say, 6 or 7. But, hey, I'm full of theories with inadequate basis in hard fact. I don't usually like to throw half baked ideas like that around, but I though that was a fun one.Darth Spock wrote: the TNG episodes "The Vengeance Factor" and "Conspiracy," where alterations to body chemistry enabled individuals to shrug off stun settings and survive "kill" settings,
Blaster bolts explode even if they do not cause damage.Darth Spock wrote: Sounds about right, though I don't think we've ever seen flak from hand held blasters, but it sounds reasonable all the same.
Well, I don't know about literal pajamas, but I think you're right about that not being a Starfleet uniform. The seams don't really line up right, do they? Actually, it looks like it might be something like the civilian jumpsuit as seen in Time's Arrow: link. The scientists in "Who Watches the Watchers" appear to wear this as well. It would be a shame if they provided inferior protective garments to non-Starfleet personnel, who would seem to be just as much at risk to environmental hazards as a crewman operating a console. However, it only serves to validate the reason I brought it up in the first place. Specifically, that a simply clothed human was subjected to a beam that heated an unfamiliar material in excess of 2314 degrees, and yet he was still very much intact, looking rather like he had been subjected to a blow torch. We have come full circle to the original point I was making, that the rather common (and deadly) medium level burn and "kill" settings on phasers and disruptors compare favorably with typical blaster bolts.Lucky wrote: That isn't a Starfleet uniform he is wearing. It looks more like some sort of literal pajamas.
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Nope. Those rings are a fairly common effect in early TNG, for a variety of weapons, on a variety of settings, against a variety of targets.1)
A) TNG: "Conspiracy" features a parasite that seems to have shields of biological origin.
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This is more interesting than simple adrenaline, but it is still just a tweak to how her body functioned, it's not as though her skin became armor. The limited aging factor leads me to think it was a form of overdriven healing or regeneration. The second shot definitely hurt her, it just failed to immediately terminate the functionality of her organic machinery, so to speak.B) TNG: "The Vengeance Factor" features someone who was altered at least at the sub-celular level in undefined ways to be an assassin, and the primary weapon was a microvirus.. What was done to her was left undefined, but we know she went 50 years without aging.
An interesting reference, though I fail to see its pertinence here.2) There is actual an episode where Spock nearly dies do to radiation poisoning caused by being too close to an object that was made to disappear.
Nope. A type 3 phaser is not a type 4 phaser. The episode TNG: Who Watches The Watchers specifically references a "small phaser bank," this indicates a vehicle mounted unit, like may be found on a runabout or shuttle at the smallest. As for the Cardassian phase-disruptor, we can get a final number of roughly 1.5 gigawatts from the numbers given, but we can arrive at many other numbers too. Just as easily could we take this to mean that the weapon's total power capacity equals only 4.7 MJ. Given what these weapons can do however, that seems too low, and other references, such as TNG episode "The Mind's Eye" debunk such an interpretation. That’s simple enough. To draw a reference to contemporary firearms, those numbers probably reference the energy that can be "chambered" while a new "round" can be "loaded" to fire in just three milliseconds. How fast is the discharge rate though? Assuming a simultaneous discharge rate equal or less than the three millisecond recharge would indeed give us a total of roughly 1.5 GW, but that is the absolute high end limit, not a hard specification. Fair enough, but it's quite possible to arrive at a lower number depending on how quickly this 4.7 MJ is released.3) Star Trek has a tendency to give low gigawatt range numbers for type 3 and 4
TNG: Who Watches The Watchers
LAFORGE: We've finished replicating the parts they'll need, but what I don't understand is why a three man station would need a reactor capable of producing four point two gigawatts.
RIKER: Enough to power a small phaser bank, a subspace relay station, or
LAFORGE: A hologram generator. Oh, a duck blind. Right. They're anthropologists.
DS9: Return To Grace
KIRA: This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four point seven megajoule power capacity, three millisecond recharge two beam settings.
Perhaps, but I doubt that someone would kill themselves while on duty in such a way, and not being able to sleep was the big danger in that episode.Darth Spock wrote: Well, I don't know about literal pajamas, but I think you're right about that not being a Starfleet uniform. The seams don't really line up right, do they? Actually, it looks like it might be something like the civilian jumpsuit as seen in Time's Arrow: link. The scientists in "Who Watches the Watchers" appear to wear this as well. It would be a shame if they provided inferior protective garments to non-Starfleet personnel, who would seem to be just as much at risk to environmental hazards as a crewman operating a console. However, it only serves to validate the reason I brought it up in the first place. Specifically, that a simply clothed human was subjected to a beam that heated an unfamiliar material in excess of 2314 degrees, and yet he was still very much intact, looking rather like he had been subjected to a blow torch. We have come full circle to the original point I was making, that the rather common (and deadly) medium level burn and "kill" settings on phasers and disruptors compare favorably with typical blaster bolts.
Yay, on screen evidence of personal shields being standard!Darth Spock wrote: Nope. Those rings are a fairly common effect in early TNG, for a variety of weapons, on a variety of settings, against a variety of targets.
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1) Adrenaline will help you shrug off things like TASER and drugs as well, and that means such a comment is rather worthless.Darth Spock wrote: Further, the details given are rather specific, the adrenal glands where stimulated, generating "strength and resistance." More than just adrenaline may have been at work, but the implication is clearly a tweaking of the normal human body, not exotic bio-shields, that’s the Borg's playground.
Accelerated healing would actually cause her to age faster, but she would need some sort of telomere-lengthing therapy anyway just to look her age, but that implies more nano-technology then what was talked about as well.Darth Spock wrote: This is more interesting than simple adrenaline, but it is still just a tweak to how her body functioned, it's not as though her skin became armor. The limited aging factor leads me to think it was a form of overdriven healing or regeneration. The second shot definitely hurt her, it just failed to immediately terminate the functionality of her organic machinery, so to speak.
Phasers aren't magical go-away beams, and even if the Storm Trooper armor stops the beam, the hit may still be lethal.Darth Spock wrote: An interesting reference, though I fail to see its pertinence here.
Who's claiming this? Clearly the type 4 would be designed to operate at higher outputs and have better cooling systems. It would be akin to the differences between an assault rifle and a true machine-gun.Darth Spock wrote: Nope. A type 3 phaser is not a type 4 phaser.
That is a lot of assumptions you got going there. We are never told what Type of phaser a small phaser bank is.Darth Spock wrote: The episode TNG: Who Watches The Watchers specifically references a "small phaser bank," this indicates a vehicle mounted unit, like may be found on a runabout or shuttle at the smallest.
The Mind's Eye states phasers are pulse weapons, and each pulse's yield would be given in joules as Kira does. 20,000 rounds a minute will look like a solid beam to the human eye.Darth Spock wrote: As for the Cardassian phase-disruptor, we can get a final number of roughly 1.5 gigawatts from the numbers given, but we can arrive at many other numbers too. Just as easily could we take this to mean that the weapon's total power capacity equals only 4.7 MJ. Given what these weapons can do however, that seems too low, and other references, such as TNG episode "The Mind's Eye" debunk such an interpretation. That’s simple enough. To draw a reference to contemporary firearms, those numbers probably reference the energy that can be "chambered" while a new "round" can be "loaded" to fire in just three milliseconds. How fast is the discharge rate though? Assuming a simultaneous discharge rate equal or less than the three millisecond recharge would indeed give us a total of roughly 1.5 GW, but that is the absolute high end limit, not a hard specification. Fair enough, but it's quite possible to arrive at a lower number depending on how quickly this 4.7 MJ is released.
In "DS9: Business as Usual", Quark sells a weapon roughly the size of a type-3 phaser, the CRM-114. The CRM-114 is guarantied to cut through 15 centimeters of reactive armor, and shields up to 4.6 gigajoules.Darth Spock wrote: Gigawatt level hand weapons also strike me as being too high, and again further evidence supports this. Your own reference here is a good indicator, given that you can power a "small phaser bank" one would normally find mounted on a vehicle with 4.2 GW, and considering further that shuttles and runabouts are not particularly threatened by hand phasers, it’s a pretty good bet that the power ratings of most light infantry weapons lie somewhere south of the gigawatt range. An extra tidbit to consider is from the rest of Kira's dialog comparing the Cardassian weapon to its Federation counterpart. While she describes the Cardassian unit as having a three millisecond recharge rate, she gives no such specification for the phaser. She does however, state that it has "autonomous recharge." This seems to indicate that the Cardassian unit does not recharge while firing, while the Federation phaser is capable of firing through a live feed from the power cell. At the opposite end of the 1.5 GW pulsing stream interpretation, we could take this to mean that the Cardassian phase-disruptor has a maximum of 4.7 MJ of energy available in a single shot before the operator must stop firing while the unit "chambers a new round" so to speak. What's the longest duration beam we've seen from a Cardassian weapon? I don't recall, but I'd say this interpretation would put the weapon's effective output below the 10 MW range at any rate.
Actually we don't know what setting the weapon was being fired on. Tera and gigawatt outputs are talked of as the maximum outputs rather then what it is normally used on. Phasers also fire in distinct pulses as well at times. We know the effects of the thoron rifle were nowhere near what a terajoule pulse would do.Darth Spock wrote: Unsatisfied? There's more. Another instance where power figures are given for a rifle is in VOY S4:E17 "Retrospect." The thoron rifle sampled for purchase to supplement Voyager's arsenal was stated to have an even more impressive sounding terawatt power source, and an even quicker four microsecond recharge. Nice, except we see the weapon emits pulsed beams, not a continuous stream. That puts the individual pulses at about 4 MJ. The weapon has an impressive rate of fire though, for not emitting a continuous stream. We only see it fired in 3 round bursts, but judging how quickly they are released, and assuming in can handle sustained fire, I would guess it could emit somewhere around 10-15 rounds per second (600-900 RPM), comparable to a contemporary SMG. This would put its effective destructive output in the 40-60 MW range.
1) You appear to be confusing watts and joules. A terajoule pulse is very different from a terawatt beam.Darth Spock wrote: More? Let's take another look at light anti-vehicle weapons. In the DS9 S1:E13 "Battle Lines" we see a fully shielded runabout struck by a single weapon burst from a defensive satellite. Just prior to the attack, Kira says "Reading a significant energy build-up in the satellite. Six hundred megawatts, nine hundred, it's firing." It takes roughly 6 seconds between the time she begins reading the energy build-up until they fire. Let’s ignore the 600 MW figure, it may have already had a partial charge when it started anyway, and let’s just go with the 900 MW figure for the full 6 seconds. That gives us a 5.4 GJ total accumulated charge, about what your earlier 4.2 GW generator could produce for a "small phaser bank" in under 1.3 seconds. This burst however, brought the runabout's shields completely down, significantly scorched the hull, and knocked out a number of systems, causing the vessel to crash. That sounds like something significantly more powerful than a phaser rifle.
1) Phase pistols lacked a disintegrate option that later phasers had.Darth Spock wrote: Returning again to hand weapons, there is one other notable example were specific numbers are given. In ENT S2:E23 "Regeneration," an early phase pistol is being modified, and the dialogue indicates that the weapon is boosted "another 5 MJ," before final adjustment supplies the weapon with an additional 10 MJ of power beyond an undisclosed baseline. It’s rather vague, but judging by the dialogue, the pistol may have started with about 5 or 10 MJ. At any rate, the final "supercharged" version appears to have been using around 15-20 MJ. So, clearly the 24th century phasers must be drastically more powerful, right? Well, yes, and no. For one thing, we again receive a power figure in joules instead of watts. Given that Reed later says that the new, improved pistol "may take a few seconds to recharge after each shot," we again seem to be looking at the amount of energy that is "chambered," and available to fire, rather than a clearly stated output. Furthermore, while the phaser weapons found 200 years later would obviously be superior, "superior" is a relative thing.
Darth Spock wrote:
0) Since whan are phasers N.D.E. weapons? The only known N.D.E. system is the navigational deflector.Darth Spock wrote: Take for instance, the rifles found roughly 200 years prior to our time, during the Napoleonic Wars. Rifles were still slowly phasing out older muskets at the time, much the way the phase pistol was replacing EM pistols. These early 19th century weapons were capable of firing their projectiles with over a kilojoule of muzzle energy. While modern military firearms are obviously far superior to these antiques, contemporary carbines typically have measured ballistic energies of about 1.5-2 kilojoules, only about double that of the early rifles, and roughly equal to some of the more potent muskets. The point being that the existence of low megajoule rated hand weapons in 22nd century Trek does not provide solid evidence for a jump to gigajoule level hand weapons in the 24th century.
The numbers match up, and they seem to indicate light anti-vehicle weapons operating in the low gigawatt range, while hand weapons are indicated to be in the low to mid megawatt range. At least, for whatever dialogue based power figures are worth. Outside of just how much the NDF portion of such weaponry does, we have perhaps seen enough explosions and glowing hot rocks to support numbers larger than "only" a few megawatts for a power ceiling, but I can think of nothing that directly supports gigawatt level small arms.
When you have related topics you end up with similar conversations.Darth Spock wrote: Now, having gone through all this rigmarole, how exactly did we get here? I don't think anyone here seriously thinks that storm trooper armor is going to have any significant impact on the effectiveness of phasers or disruptors, as the title of this thread clearly indicates is the question. Other than a loose connection to this thread: 10 UFP foot soldier verse 10 Stromtrooper, the only point in question seems to be "how much can a phaser overkill a storm trooper?" Normal blasters already do an adequate job, and you can't kill a storm trooper twice. It's already been stated that phasers are engineered to reduce collateral damage, so we're not looking at big, overpowered beams cutting through swaths of troopers at once either. The only real difference I can see with an engagement between storm troopers and a force equipped with phasers is that the number of wounded, surviving storm troopers would drop from almost zero to perhaps absolutely zero, and you might leave a tidier battleground by cranking the phaser to 16 and vaporizing everyone. Other than that, any firefight that may occur would probably look a lot like any previously seen in either franchise.
