Do phaser arrays amplify energy, or merely direct it?

[Matt4511]

Often in TNG and the post-TNG era shows, we see Federation starships using their phaser arrays to discharge one blast at a time. I believe only once during TNG do we see the Ent-D firing more than one beam from a single array at the same time. Later on, during DS9, we clearly see multiple phaser beams being fired by a single array simultaneously.

I wonder — are phaser arrays simply a conduit for the ship's power? Is it a way of taking whatever the available energy output of the ship is, and blasting it out? Or are the phaser arrays themselves somehow resevoirs of energy that are merely ACTIVATED when discharged?

Put another way, imagine a Galaxy-class firing a full-power phaser blast at a ship. Now imagine that it has to fire another full-power blast. Does each additional beam reduce the overall power each can direct?

Sometimes I wonder if one of the reasons Federation ships seem reluctant to let loose with as much firepower as you'd expect them to is because they'd rather direct their entire power reserve into a single beam. But if the phasers consume relatively little of the ship's energy and merely direct the energy potential contained within the array's hardware naturally, perhaps there are issues of cooling after each discharge?

 

[iguana_tonante]

I'm pretty sure they phase it.

 

[blssdwlf]

I think in TNG that the phasers have a maximum output aka "full power" but overall the amount of phaser output is less than the maximum output aka "full power" of the ship's engines. So, if the E-D was firing a continuous phaser beam and then added a second simultaneous phaser beam there probably would be no drop in power on first beam.

However, under combat conditions, it's likely a good chunk of power is going to shields and/or propulsion as well so they might fire one or two shots at a time instead of all the bearing phaser strips.

 

[Timo]

Since starships do so clearly prefer to only fire one beam at a time, it would make sense that this is the best they can do, and that additional beams would only detract from the destructive power.

We have heard of the starship's ability to pump immense amounts of power into just about any of the ship's systems - even communications can be used to drain the ship's total power, as in "The Infinite Vulcan" (and perhaps as implied in "Masterpiece Society"). This would seem to support the idea that any given phaser emitter can pour out the maximum amount of destructive power the ship can generate.

On the other hand, we often see beams terminated before the enemy is satisfactorily defeated. Again a possible bit of proof for the idea that a phaser beam drains the ship's overall power reserves, and massively so.

I'm pretty sure they phase it.

Agreed; instead of simply pumping out destructive energies from ship to target, the system probably invokes Trek phasing magic and makes the universe behave oddly at the target point. The destruction could be indirect: the beam would properly tickle a spot of space so that it goes out of phase (like in "The Next Phase" and "The Pegasus" and "Time's Arrow") and takes the target with it to another realm where it will be no tribble at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

I don't think so. TNG was pretty explicit in "The Best of Both Worlds" that the phasers could not channel the ship's full power output.

LAFORGE: If we can generate a concentrated burst of power at that same frequency distribution, I mean a lot more than anything our phasers or photon torpedoes could ever provide.
RIKER: How do we do that?
WESLEY: The main deflector dish.
LAFORGE: It's the only component of the Enterprise designed to channel that much power at controlled frequencies.

It's more than likely even firing multiple phaser arrays the E-D would still not be using her full power output.

In TOS, it was different and we know from "The Paradise Syndrome" that a single phaser bank can channel the ship's full power output. What keeps the TOS Enterprise from using full phaser power is usually the use of full shields which can take power from the phasers and even the engines for maneuvering.

I suspect in TNG, the times we see the E-D using a single phaser array at a time is due to some other power system like shields using up the remainder of the power allocation.

 

[Timo]

I don't think so. TNG was pretty explicit in "The Best of Both Worlds" that the phasers could not channel the ship's full power output.

Ah, good point. Doesn't mean a single phaser couldn't channel all the power that the overall phaser power network can handle, though... Which I guess is the best-of-both-worlds explanation for the near-invariable use of single phasers in TNG and DS9. The power trunks for the warp engines and the deflector might be of a completely different caliber, for various treknological reasons.

In TOS, it was different and we know from "The Paradise Syndrome" that a single phaser bank can channel the ship's full power output.

...Although cooling issues or somesuch require rapid cycling through banks to maintain that power flow, yes.

What keeps the TOS Enterprise from using full phaser power is usually the use of full shields which can take power from the phasers and even the engines for maneuvering.

But that only happened in "Taste of Armageddon", right?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Matt4511]

Not to be fiddly here, but the key part of what LaForge said might "at controlled frequencies," not "that much power."

The issue of cooling might be why arrays are better than emmitters, banks or batteries. If you're engaging a target whose relative position is constant and begin to experience an overheat, you could simply transfer the energy discharge to the next emmitter segment over in the array.

The big wrap around effect of the array energizing before coming to the discharge point might likewise be a way of distributing heat across the entire array (and a greater number of beams might therefore pose cooling issues, rather than power consumption issues).

I don't think so. TNG was pretty explicit in "The Best of Both Worlds" that the phasers could not channel the ship's full power output.

LAFORGE: If we can generate a concentrated burst of power at that same frequency distribution, I mean a lot more than anything our phasers or photon torpedoes could ever provide.
RIKER: How do we do that?
WESLEY: The main deflector dish.
LAFORGE: It's the only component of the Enterprise designed to channel that much power at controlled frequencies.

It's more than likely even firing multiple phaser arrays the E-D would still not be using her full power output.

In TOS, it was different and we know from "The Paradise Syndrome" that a single phaser bank can channel the ship's full power output. What keeps the TOS Enterprise from using full phaser power is usually the use of full shields which can take power from the phasers and even the engines for maneuvering.

I suspect in TNG, the times we see the E-D using a single phaser array at a time is due to some other power system like shields using up the remainder of the power allocation.

 

[blssdwlf]

In TOS, it was different and we know from "The Paradise Syndrome" that a single phaser bank can channel the ship's full power output.

...Although cooling issues or somesuch require rapid cycling through banks to maintain that power flow, yes.

I think it has more to do with the way the TOS Enterprise generates power than with the phasers (or perhaps the phaser banks are designed with the power generation in mind). After a point, the phasers are drawing more power than the ship's engines can provide requiring a momentary pause. In the end it's clear the ship's engines burn out from it and not the phaser system.

What keeps the TOS Enterprise from using full phaser power is usually the use of full shields which can take power from the phasers and even the engines for maneuvering.

But that only happened in "Taste of Armageddon", right?

There is also "Return of the Archons" where the shields were drawing so much constant power that the ship is unable to maneuver or maintain orbit. And "The Tholian Web" where Spock's power allocation to the shields would have reduced whatever phaser power they had by half. And "The Changeling" where the shields eventually used up all the warp power forcing Scotty to drop the ship to impulse to maintain the same level of protection.

What's interesting is that TOS Enterprise's phaser power output at "full phasers" is relative to the ship's current power output and allocations to other systems. A charged phaser bank by itself would likely represent a minimum amount of phaser power available but not necessarily the full output of the ship's power. ...Which makes gauging phaser outputs a bit of a challenge

Not to be fiddly here, but the key part of what LaForge said might "at controlled frequencies," not "that much power."

However, the usage of the main deflector nearly wrecked their reactor core indicating all the ship's power was thrown into the attack. The same cannot be said for any phaser attacks given by the E-D, AFAIK.

LAFORGE: Deflector power approaching maximum limits. Energy discharge in six seconds.
WORF: Firing, sir.
WORF: The Borg ship is undamaged.
SHELBY: Impossible.
COMPUTER: Warning. Warp reactor core primary coolant failure.
LAFORGE: Can't maintain it much longer, Commander.
COMPUTER: Warning. Exceeding reaction chamber thermal limit.
RIKER: Cease fire.
LAFORGE: Shutting down warp engines.

​

The issue of cooling might be why arrays are better than emmitters, banks or batteries. If you're engaging a target whose relative position is constant and begin to experience an overheat, you could simply transfer the energy discharge to the next emmitter segment over in the array.

The question then is when has a ship's phaser system overheated before?

 

[Timo]

"Balance of Terror", I guess. And the strange thing is that our heroes accepted it as perfectly natural that their main guns would fail after just a few shots.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

SULU: Phaser overload. Control circuit burnout.

"Balance of Terror" phasers went down due to a "control circuit burnout" in the bridge. Whoever designed it apparently made that circuit going to the bridge a bit too critical to the operation of the phasers even if the phasers were fully manned below decks

Later in that episode, even with a phaser coolant leak, they still could fire phasers though.

Personally, I think the phasers on the Enterprise were still very new and the failure wasn't unexpected. (And Pike's Enterprise sported laser cannons )

 

[Timo]

Naval precedent allows for other interpretations, though: the guns of HMS Prince of Wales behaved just as badly in the fight against the Bismarck, despite reliable rifled, breech-loaded, turreted naval cannon having existed for half a century already. It was just this particular model that had rather fatal quirks in it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Well, whatever was wrong with the phasers in "Balance of Terror" was apparently fixed since there were no more phaser control burnouts or other malfunctions with the phasers in any episode afterward. The existence of phasers at the time of "The Cage" I think is still questionable. Even if you threw in the Enterprise series there was no explicit mention of "phasers" and TNG's "A Matter of Time" points out that there were "no phasers in the 22nd century" To me, phasers were still pretty new (or at least untested in heavy combat) by the time of "The Balance of Terror".

 

[Timo]

TNG's "A Matter of Time" points out that there were "no phasers in the 22nd century"

Yeah - but that's probably a Worfism, because the question was about important inventions, and Worf thus is likely to be saying "there were no phasers in the 22nd century until they were invented in that century"...

I have a bit of a difficulty accepting any of Kirk's gear as new or untested. Much of the charm of TOS came from these people being veteran space exploiters rather than wet-behind-the-ears space explorers; they would take giant floating amoebae or lightning-fast invisible babes on a stride, and they wouldn't be excited about their own rayguns and teleporters, either.

But admittedly the exact word "phaser" isn't used in a pre-Kirk environment much. It does appear at least once before the Pike era, though: Captain Robau calls for phasers in the teaser of STXI, two decades before "The Cage".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Sure, they're professional space explorers (eploiters!? ) and on those lines I don't see them getting excited about the bridge getting a modification between "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Man Trap" or the myriad of changes that occurred in the Engine Room over the three seasons. The introduction of phasers might not be anything of significance to Kirk as long as they don't impact his career like it would have in "The Ultimate Computer" with the M-5, IMHO.

But admittedly the exact word "phaser" isn't used in a pre-Kirk environment much. It does appear at least once before the Pike era, though: Captain Robau calls for phasers in the teaser of STXI, two decades before "The Cage".

Well, when they indicate in a later movie how Kirk died in their so-called "prime" continuity, we can take a guess at which tech tree to apply to it

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Food for thought: modern day lasers--fiber lasers in particular--gain a significant amount of power through an elongated gain medium. The longer the channel of the gain medium, the higher the output for a given power input (within limits, of course). In the case of fiber lasers, the beam is pumped through a dozen meters of doped fiber that amplifies the beam until it gets to the actual emitter; the longer the fiber, the higher the gain on the beam.

I kind of think that what's actually happening with phasers is that older "conventional" phasers (TOS et al) are actually being generated by a single source within the ship and then directed through conduits/waveguides to whichever phaser emitter is facing the enemy. In TNG style phaser arrays, emitter assembly doesn't just direct the beam, it also acts like a gain medium that amplifies the beam before directing it at a target. The longer the strip, the greater the beam amplification.

That doesn't necessarily mean that a longer emitter is more powerful. More likely, that a longer emitter can have a higher peak power for the same input and therefore can be effective over a much longer range or can sustain firing for longer periods of time without overheating.

 

[Timo]

...The problem with any "longer is better" theory is that (regardless of the specifics of "better") if it holds true, then starships are not built right. Phaser strips on them are often artificially short, divided into two without any good reason.

There might be good but not so obvious reasons, of course. Perhaps a long "phasing medium" is better, but dividing it in two (or, in the case of the Sovereign main phasers, five!) is necessary to create redundancy, to allow one segment to go on phasing when another is taken out by enemy fire.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

That and also strips on the "combat section" of the E-D are a lot shorter than what's on the saucer section. It could be that the array is just to give a wider firing arc and the "charging effect" across the array is a side effect or a trade-off in the design that was rectified in later ship designs of the Sovereign and Intrepid classes.

I do agree on the thinking that the phaser energy in the TOS ship being generated by a source (Phaser banks 1 thru 4) inside the ship and sent to any available emitters

 

[Crazy Eddie]

...The problem with any "longer is better" theory is that (regardless of the specifics of "better") if it holds true, then starships are not built right. Phaser strips on them are often artificially short, divided into two without any good reason.

Considering starships only ever fire phasers one beam at a time, you would have that exact same problem no matter WHAT theory you use. This is a case where we're going to have to partially diverge from the visual evidence and go by a bit of extrapolated logic, and once we do that we can conclude three things:

1) The longer phaser stripes are usually present in the front-facing sections of most starships, while the shorter strips are on the rear sections

2) Starships PREFER to fight with their bows facing the enemy and only turn their backs when they are running away or can't otherwise help it

3) We've seen from BOBW and a few other situations where starships are capable of firing all phasers at once, but for some reason they rarely actually do this.

The missing element here may be what we haven't (until recently) seen, that phasers can be used in a point-defense role against enemy missiles and torpedoes to supplement shields and deflectors. And there's also ships like Voyager and the Galaxy battle section whose largest phaser arrays are unnecessarily short anyway, despite the fact that both possess heavier-than-normal torpedo armaments.

Put it all together, and what have you got? You have
- Photon torpedoes as the primary offensive weapon.
- Main phaser banks (long arrays with higher output and endurance) as a supplement for torpedoes at close ranges or situations where torpedoes may not be appropriate.
- Secondary phaser banks with better accuracy and a shorter duty cycle for defensive fire.

In that case:

Perhaps a long "phasing medium" is better, but dividing it in two (or, in the case of the Sovereign main phasers, five!) is necessary to create redundancy, to allow one segment to go on phasing when another is taken out by enemy fire.

It's more likely that phaser strips are a defensive type of ship-to-ship weapon that only gets fired when the other guy refuses to stop harassing you. The archetypical example would be "Corbomite Maneuver" where Balok's marker buoy is finally destroyed only after Enterprise tries VERY hard to get away from it.

I might go so far as to theorize that phasers are far more effective against shields than torpedoes are, which makes them a pretty useful defensive weapon since you can quickly knock out an enemy's defense screen and thereby discourage him from attacking you further (especially since phasers can still do damage to your unprotected hull). Photon torpedoes seem to do a lot more damage to a weakened/unshielded target and are therefore mainly used offensively.

I see Enterprise-E and Voyager as ships whose main phaser banks are "sub-caliber", like 10-inch rifles compared to the big 15 or 16 inch boomers on the Galaxy and Nebula classes. They wouldn't be quite as powerful, but they would gain accuracy and a faster duty cycle to make them able to engage smaller shielded targets like Jem'hadar fighters or Klingon birds of prey. The Intrepid class as a border patrol/cutter type vessel makes a certain amount of sense in that context; it's not the kind of thing you'd want to take on a Galor with, but you could easily chase down and engage a couple of Maquis Raiders or a pirate ship or something.

 

[Matt4511]

I see Enterprise-E and Voyager as ships whose main phaser banks are "sub-caliber", like 10-inch rifles compared to the big 15 or 16 inch boomers on the Galaxy and Nebula classes. They wouldn't be quite as powerful, but they would gain accuracy and a faster duty cycle to make them able to engage smaller shielded targets like Jem'hadar fighters or Klingon birds of prey.

That's not my interpretation, but I grant the validity of yours.

I guess the question, though, and it ties right back to my original post, is what determines the destructive power of a phaser blast? Is it the size of the array? The total output of the warp reactor? The impulse engines? Are starships capable of directing up to 100% of the ship's total energy output through the phaser arrays, with total phaser output mid-battle depending on the other energy demands being placed on the ship's systems?

Or does the destructive potential lay somehow in the hardware of the array, with tremendous destructive potential contained within special crystals or ores or something, that can only be released when stimulated by the properly tuned energy of a starship?

Personally, I feel that starship's total energy output during a battle (less the energy necessary to run the shields, engines and all other ship's systems that cannot be turned off) is available to be directed out at an enemy through the phaser arrays, and that the limitations placed on beam power rest more on the arrays overheated or internal power transfer conduits blowing out. I imagine that longer phaser arrays are more efficient at cooling, and also provide redundancy — if a Galaxy-class has its dorsal saucer section phaser array cut in two by enemy fire, I imagine both sections can continue to fire, but with reduced efficiency and cooling.

All speculation, of course.

 

[Timo]

Let's remember that we hear of hand phaser Types 1 and 2, with different ranges of application (unrelated to the specific design, as there apparently are half a dozen models of Type 2 in Trek history, and several Type 1 models as well). Something in their design sets them apart from each other; somehow, Starfleet builds "light" and "heavy" hand phasers and gives them "Type" numbers.

Let's then recall that starship-mounted phasers also come with Type numbers. The Galaxy has Type 10, as per "Conundrum" (although we don't know if all the strips are of that type, or only the heaviest ones). The Enterprise-B was pegged with Type 8 in that ST:GEN display. Type 8 was also mentioned in "Preemptive Strike", while Type 4 was a shuttlecraft weapon in "The Outcast".

Putting these together, it seems clear to me that different starships in any given era will mount different Types of phaser, most probably so that bigger ships mount phasers of higher Type - and the destructive capabilities of the phasers grow systematically with the Type number. We can't argue that Type 10 is merely a more advanced version of the older Type 6, with comparable even if slightly higher power, because we know that Type 2 is not a newer version of Type 1, but that Types 1 and 2 exist for all eras. And it does not seem likely to me that every starship in any given era would be mounting the same Type of phaser, even if we may lack direct evidence of two different Types being in simultaneous use.

I guess a starship gets equipped with a Type of phaser that best matches her overall power output. There's no point in mounting a Type 10 on a ship that can only spare enough power to fire a Type 7 at its highest setting. OTOH, I rather doubt a starship capable of firing up a Type 10 will get Type 7 as her main armament - although the "secondary batteries" (the shorter strips) of certain ships may indeed be of lower Type than the "main" ones. (And never mind that the division to "main" and "non-main" has only been explicated once IIRC, for the Constellation class in "The Battle".)

It does bear mention that the Voyager often fights her opponents with her full arsenal of strips, long and short alike, without any sort of segregation: small fighters get blasted with the long strips, and big capital ships get a taste of the short ones, whenever this choice of strips provides the optimum firing angle, and even when an only slightly less optimal angle would be available from a seemingly more suitably sized strip. That makes me feel the Intrepid class only carries one Type of phaser, which I'd place around Type 8 or Type 9, just because.

Timo Saloniemi