Klingon BOP Torpedos

[Omega_Glory]

I am working up some movie-era ships for the game StarFleet Battles and noticed that the torpedos fired by the Klingon Bird of Prey scoutships in both Star Trek III & V didn't seem to look like photons. Anyone else notice this? The green color wasn't really what perked my interest, but rather the way the torp tube acted just prior to the torpedo exiting and the general look of the torp itself.

The tube has a lot of ocillating colors with tendrils of energy rumbling around the thing just before the torp comes out. These energy tendrils look kinda like minature lightning bolts. Then, the flash as the torp exits the tube is several times larger than a photon torpedo flash. Add to that, the torpedo takes on a comet like shape once out with those little tendrils of energy snaking around the thing. Surely doesn't look like a photorp.

Perhaps these BOP ships, being Romulan in design, fire a small version of the plasma torpedo seen in TOS? Any thoughts?

 

[SeerSGB]

Haven't seen the ep. in a while, but didn't the Vorcha do something similar in Redemption Part 1 when they fired their disruptors? Maybe the BOP torps are some sort of disruptor-torp? A single high powered blast of concentrated disruptor energy.

 

[JNG]

In "Errand of Mercy," the Klingons fire "magnetic pulses."

I thought maybe the "ring" around where the torpedoes emerge on Klingon ships (and I do believe they are typically photon torpedoes in the conventional sense, meaning guided missiles containing matter/antimatter reactants) is part of equipment that generates the weaponized magnetic pulses. Could be that all the electrical-looking business the BOPs fired in the movies are some manifestation of this weapons system.

I sure don't have a problem believing there's a third major weapons system onboard a Klingon ship that size for when they run out of torpedoes, need something less "dirty" and destructive, or can't easily bring the wing guns to bear (that last is a big one). Also, the line from "Errand of Mercy" sometimes seems oddly forgotten in the world of Trek tech, and I like picking it up and having it make itself useful.

 

[Timo]

I would argue that the BoP of the TOS movie era was a vessel specifically built for commerce raiding, being a much closer analogy to WWI and WWII submarines than is usually thought. Such a vessel would greatly benefit from a special weapon optimized to do what it does in ST3:TSfS: disabling the enemy ship for capture, rather than destroying it outright.

The disabling effect seen in ST3 looks pretty much like an electric charge spreading across the victim vessel's surface. Perhaps the BoP torpedo launcher is designed to "spice" its as such conventional if weakish shots with an extra "charge envelope" or plasma cloud specifically for this purpose? Chang would shut down this plasma charger when firing his Starfleet-imitation torpedoes in ST6:TUC, or perhaps would remove it from his special vessel altogether. But other Klingon commanders such as Kruge and Klaa would heavily rely on the shield-disrupting, systems-shorting effect of the charge envelope, and would indeed manage to knock out Scotty's automation and Scotty's transporter repair job, respectively.

As for those "magnetic pulses", where in "Errand of Mercy" are they mentioned? The only thing the Klingons fire is in the teaser; after the hit, there's overlapping commentary, of which some might not be well transcribed in the usual sources. But I personally don't hear any mention of the nature of the Klingon weapons there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JNG]

As for those "magnetic pulses", where in "Errand of Mercy" are they mentioned? The only thing the Klingons fire is in the teaser; after the hit, there's overlapping commentary, of which some might not be well transcribed in the usual sources. But I personally don't hear any mention of the nature of the Klingon weapons there.

Timo Saloniemi

Kirk says "Magnetic pulses!" when the Enterprise is struck by the Klingon attack in the beginning of the episode. I don't have my scripts handy, but it should be in there.

I think it is interesting as a little tech hint on Klingon weapons systems because, in context, it seems to leave Kirk with no doubt of what they are being hit with and who is responsible. (Also interesting: Kirk slightly smirks at the attack, saying it "very nearly qualifies" as one, and later Sulu displays an odd confidence that Enterprise can repulse the Klingon fleet later in the episode. In later encounters with Klingons, though, they seem to be treated as rather more of a threat. I wonder if Starfleet had been underestimating the Klingons--their hardware, their resolve, or both--before this "Organian Crisis" and perhaps was taught not to do so by it.)

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Magnetic_pulse_weapon

The sort of charge envelope you are describing (which can amp up torp launches, have useful applications to disabling shots, commerce raiding and such) and the (electro)magnetic pulse I was trying to describe (emitted from somewhere around the torpedo launcher for precision shots and so forth) seem to me to be essentially consistent with one another!

I wonder if it is similar to how the Enterprise-B used her main deflector to generate a "resonance burst" that somewhat simulated the effect of a photon torpedo. While I can believe that Starfleet only rarely makes use of weapon-like capabilities of the deflector, the Klingons building such a burst capability into the "mouth" at the front of most of their ships seems appropriate.

 

[Praetor]

I like this idea of the BoP analog as to WWI and WWII commerce raiders, and of having their torpedoes being specially designed disable/disrupt rather than destroy outright. The (electro)magnetic pulse is a nice addition.

I have to think a lot of the confusion when it comes to the exact nature and depiction of Klingon weapons has to do with the varying and sometimes conflicting interpretations of just what 'disruptors' are and how they work. I believe the sidearms were once assumed to be 'sonice disruptors' due to their resemblance to the Eminian weapon props that they were modified from.

Perhaps the original intention was that they were of an electromagnetic nature, and emitted some type of magnetic pulse that could disrupt not only ship-based electrics but also humanoid nervous systems, therefore explaining the 'magnetic pulse' reference?

Indeed, do we really know canonically even now, explicitly, how disruptors work? MA offers little, other than the fact that Jem'Hadar disruptors can leave anti-coagulants in the wound and that Romulan disruptors leave residual anti-protons.

 

[Omega_Glory]

The magnetic pulses don't make sense. How does such a thing cause appreciable damage to the target? If it was an electromagnetic pulse, it is highly unlikely that would disable a ship...they would shield systems from such an event otherwise, anytime a shield went down, an EMP could disable starships...they wouldn't need to shoot any more than that. Doesn't seem to be the case. Given that they were never mentioned again, I'd bet they abandoned mag pulse weapons anyway.

The Enterprise's torpedos caused a similar lightning effect when they hit the BOP, so I would disagree that the Klingons had some sort of special warhead to knock out power systems only. I believe the impact effects were just the SFX shot of the day, so to speak, since they were very similar.

The torpedo effect in both films (II & V) was significantly different than any photon effect from either the Federation or the Klingons. I doubt that it's a photorp just based on that. In Trek VI, Chang's BOP did fire photorps, since he was trying to implicate the Enterprise. And that film took place 8 or so years later, so the Klingons could very well have changed to photons on that ship class by then. The Klingons used photons in TMP and they were exactly like those used from Trek II and later movies/episodes (the Federation torps were blue in TMP).

 

[ShinRa Actual]

In general, when you look at the close-ups for when the BoP fires in STIII, the nose mounted weapon has a very "Emitter" like look to it, rather than a concave "tube" for firing a physical torpedo. This might make for a weapon that's /capable/ of disabling shots, but I don't think it was limited to that. While the two shots in ST III were intended to disable (assuming the unlucky gunner was actually shooting to disable Grissom), Klaa's attacks in STV were not.

I think a better analogy for the BoPs would be towards Subs and U-Boats, rather than the converted merchant ship Commerce raiders tho. Commerce raiders relied on looking like their prey to survive and hunt, whereas a sub's MO was much closer to the cloak & shoot approach. DS9 eventually has them operating in wolf packs for the most part, as well.

 

[Timo]

The Klingons used photons in TMP...

...But the TMP torpedoes were from a K't'inga battle cruiser, allowing for the theory of a fundamentally different type of weapon aboard the BoP. Intriguingly, BoPs after ST6 are never seen firing torpedoes again, until ST:GEN where the torps once again are decidedly green, and once again create conspicuously little physical damage against an unshielded target.

I think it is interesting as a little tech hint on Klingon weapons systems because, in context, it seems to leave Kirk with no doubt of what they are being hit with and who is responsible.

Umm, who is responsible should indeed be clear from the context, without requiring any knowledge of the weapons involved.

It's a bit different from, say, ST3 where Kirk immediately associates an invisibility cloak with a Klingon Bird of Prey even though there is no prior hint that Klingons would be the enemy of the day. The same happens in ST6: a certain type of invisibility cloak is immediately associated with a Klingon BoP, without a thought spared for the possibility of it being a Romulan vessel. Perhaps this particular type of cloaking effect is easily identified with this one vessel or at least with this one hostile culture?

I still wonder if Kirk is exclaiming "We're being hit with magnetic pulses!" or something like "We're being hit - quick, activate magnetic pulses!" or "We're being hit - look at that warning light, we're suffering magnetic pulses!"... The hits strike right next to the saucer torpedo tubes, and Spock then reports minor damage to antimatter bottles, presumably those associated with the torpedo arming systems. If these bottles suffered pulsation of their all-important magnetic fields, a big warning light should indeed be attracting Kirk's immediate attention.

Then again, the idea that the attacker in "Errand of Mercy" was the classic, easily identifiable Klingon BoP is a sensible one: the attacker came out of nowhere (as if emerging from a cloak), fired multiple shots that failed to create physical damage, and then succumbed immediately to the return volley. "Magnetic pulse" could be a very generic name to an EMP-style or EMP-enhanced weapon, since "magnetic" is e.g. used in Trek a lot as a synonym to "gravitic" or "attracting" despite the physical incorrectness...

Klaa's attacks in STV were not

...Yet Klaa failed to create any destruction with his torpedoes. He merely managed to short out Scotty's repairs on the transporters. So if Klaa wanted to destroy but failed, then it would be logical to assume that his weapons, or at least his torpedoes, were incapable of delivering a lethal hit against a "Federation battle cruiser".

I think a better analogy for the BoPs would be towards Subs and U-Boats, rather than the converted merchant ship Commerce raiders tho.

Oh, definitely. But a German WWI or WWII submarine would be a commerce raider, with no appreciable alternate role. British, US and Japanese subs, and to some degree Italian subs, were intended for sinking warships, while German ones were aimed against mercantile targets. The Klingon BoP of the TOS movie era would be a very nice analogy to the Nazi Type VII boat, while the BoP of the ENT era would be its WWI predecessor - technologically very similar, but with improvements and refinements and with more modern weaponry.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Omega_Glory]

Timo: The torps from TMP were from a larger ship, but it still represents a photon torpedo similar or the same as the Feds use, and provides some sort of baseline of what a Klingon torpedo might look like.

The fact that the BOP in Trek VI fired exactly the same torps as the Feds or TMP Klingons shows that the emitter or tube (the front of the ship was unchanged when compared to the other films/episodes) on the ship was capable of launching such a weapon. But close up, slo mo footage of the launches from III & V clearly show a much different torpedo than any photorp thats ever been shown on Star Trek. That alone would support a theory that they were not photon torpedos, but rather something else. A small plasma torpedo would actually make more sense than a special, EMP torpedo....since the ship is a Romulan design and plasma torps have appeared in both TOS and DS9...wereas an EMP torpedo, with the abilities suggested here has never been substantiated on film.

And Klaa's attack in Trek V did quite a bit more than short out the transporter. The bridge suffered noticeable damage. People were sprawled out everywhere, and fires were burning. I am sure the shot was intended to disable, but that can be done with targeting...it does not require a special EMP torpedo to cause damage short of total destruction. To assume the torpedos are special EMP weapons based on that shot is inaccurate at best. And as I mentioned before, the Enterprise achieved the same type of damage with her torps in Trek III.

 

[ShinRa Actual]

Actually, the German subs were initially intended to attack Warships as well. They just adapted to attacking civilian ships when the need arose (long detailed story behind that), and in fact the most notable incidents at the begining of each war were of U-Boats sinking british warships (the sinking of Aboukir, Houge, and Cressy for WWI, and Royal Oak, Courageous, and Ark Royal in WWII)

When referring to Klaa's attack, I meant over Nimbus III; You hear a great deal of his prep for the attack, and actually see it, in which no mention is made of attempting to disable, and he in fact seems eager to blow apart a relatively easy target (the Shuttle). The later attack isn't seen, just the after effects, which means we don't know if he was aiming to disable, or even what weapon was used; The wing mounted disruptors are used earlier in the movie, and later down on the planet.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Well in Star Trek VI the torpedoes Chang's BoP fired looked just like a regular torpedo...

CuttingEdge100

 

[Timo]

Well, it would have to, now wouldn't it? I'm pretty sure it wasn't even a Klingon torpedo, but rather something Cartwright had provided for Chang, so that it would convince most people that Kirk's ship had fired those shots.

If so, the final battle in ST6 would actually make a great deal of sense. Chang isn't doing the standard moustache-twirling villain thing by slowly nibbling Kirk's ship to pieces: he's blasting it apart with the sum total of his firepower, which amounts to very little. Cartwright wouldn't have wanted to sell Chang full-power torps, and OTOH Chang wouldn't have wanted full-power torps to be fired against Kronos 1 when he himself was aboard. Adapting the Starfleet hardware to the Klingon launcher might have imposed limitations, too. So Chang was stuck with torpedoes that could do little more than knock out the gravity generators of the target vessel.

Naturally, being a clever tactician, Chang hid the impotency of his weapons from his opponent. By pretending to be a mad villain who wants to kill his victim slowly rather than efficiently, he prevented Kirk from realizing how puny a threat his special assassination BoP really was, as opposed to a standard BoP...

In general, a BoP should probably be assumed to be a relatively weak weapon system anyway. Just because it has torpedoes is no guarantee it has the firepower of a torpedo-equipped battle cruiser. It must be a relative thing. Klaa's torps could no doubt have blown Kirk's shuttle to bits, but they could still have counted as disabling weapons against starship-sized targets. And Kruge never seriously believed he could tackle a Constitution class vessel; he just tried a suicide attack, and when fate intervened and he survived, he tried a second suicide attack of six boarding crew against five hundred enemy crew. That one failed, but it does tell us something about Kruge's attitude towards relative military strength...

So I'm not arguing that the green torpedoes are "stun-only". I'm just saying that they are relatively weak. The strange green glow and the strange launch VFX could then nicely tie in to this, by representing a "disabling augmentation" effect that the Klingons added to the torps which were a) too puny by themselves and b) already optimal for disabling attacks. It's chicken-and-egg: either the Klingons built a ship that was too weak to do anything but raid and scout, and thus sent it out to raid and scout and boosted those capabilities with the special torps and the cloak; or then the Klingons specifically wanted a weak/cheap cloaked raider, and designed the BoP and its special torps with those specs in mind.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JNG]

^These are interesting thoughts. However, can they be fully reconciled with the presentation of the BOP elsewhere? The things seemed an even match for a Jem'Hadar attack ship on DS9, three BOPs presented a major threat to the Enterprise-D in "Yesterday's Enterprise," and two of them plus Enterprise were seemingly enough to leave two Romulan warbirds in doubt of victory in "The Defector." The ship is also fast and sturdy enough to handle the time travel whatnot in the movies. Now I know there are different classes of BOP, but I don't think it is remotely reasonable to believe in different-sized classes that look utterly identical, so even if two classes carry somewhat different equipment, how much could the firepower really vary between classes? Or do you think there was some major improvement to their weapons in the years between the movie and TNG eras that may have justified their remaining in service for so long?

 

[Omega_Glory]

Timo: If the torps they are using are some kind of photon with "disabling" characteristics, then they would need a launcher equavalent to the cruisers. The torps don't seem to be any smaller or larger in physical dimensions onscreen. And that area of the hull where the tube/emitter is located is plenty big enough to house a single photon tube of the type seen on the Enterprise. They might not be able to carry as many torpedos in the magazine, but the launcher could easily fit below the bridge. So, the BOP could mount the photons of the larger ships if thats what the intention was.

Certainly the BOP is a weaker ship than the cruisers, thats not in doubt. The Enterprise outgunned it 10:1...probably not 100% accurate, but close. But, to imply that it can only carry small torpedos capable only of disabling electrical systems seems inaccurate given the ship is large enough to mount a photon tube or small plasma emitter. And I doubt that Chang's ship used Fed torpedos given that Klingon ships use the same ones....K'Tinga.

 

[ShinRa Actual]

The 10-1 remark is probably close; a BoP's strength is in it's stealth. Kruge wasn't suicidal in attacking the Enterprise, he was just counting on getting in some telling hits while the shields were down to gain the upper hand after his stealth approach to point-blank range.

Comparing the movie BoPs to TNG/DS9 BoPs is a tricky proposition; in addition to the size variations between episodes, there's also the simple fact that a hundred years worth of advancement goes into those ships, even if they look the same (as exampled by the Miranda and Excelsiors firing TNG-like phasers, rather than TWOK beams, and the K'T'ingas having disruptors in their old Torpedo launchers)

Omega's right on the PhoTorps; many of the movies and episodes clearly depict them as physical torpedoes of the same general size. The limitation for smaller ships would really be reload capacity, not warhead size.

 

[Timo]

I'm not yet completely convinced that the mere presence of identical-caliber launch tubes gives equal firepower. It sounds a bit too simplistic... Say, the Terrier, Tartar and Talos SAMs all had basically identical launchers, but a ship capable of carrying Tartar would not necessarily have been capable of carrying the more potent Terrier or Talos, thus failing to enjoy the range and the explosive yield of those weapons. In Trek, a small ship might be unable to eject her torps at equal speed, or to load them with equal amounts of antimatter, or <tech>.

As for the "varieties" of BoP, I'd argue that the small scout/raider came first, and at some point the Klingons saw the need for a larger vessel that would still be capable of planetary landings. Say, a small K'Vort might be able to deploy a platoon, but a larger B'Rel could carry a battalion. Both would need to obey the laws of aerodynamics, though - and rather than waste time and effort on coming up with a new aerodynamic shape, the Klingons scaled up something that worked. So the large B'rel would fill a different niche than the similarly sized but landing-incapable Vor'cha...

Typical lackluster Klingon R&D in action, then. Rather than press for state of the art, these folks rely on that which works - and then pimp their rides. The Klingon society is depicted as somewhat feudal. So it would be natural for the individual Houses to upgrade their heirloom ships to the degree allowed by the wealth and influence of the House, thereby resulting in a great variety of equipment standards, and in great longevity for ships serving in the less wealthy Houses that would aim for maximum mileage.

Yeah, I'd argue that K'Vort is the smaller and B'Rel the larger ship. After all, Worf established that B'Rels attacked the E-D in "Rascals", and those were the same large ships that we saw in "Yesterday's Enterprise". In the War Timeline of that latter episode, the names apparently were flipped and the bigger ships were K'Vorts.

Two size variants I can buy. A third would be a bit difficult to swallow, but fortunately we can squint a little and fit most of the ships in those two categories. Some residual distortion from the cloaks can be blamed on the rest...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

Perhaps 'D-12' from 'Generations' is the designation for a type of the smaller (K'vort) class?

 

[Omega_Glory]

Ok, how about this. The BOP mounts a launcher that can launch a torpedo that will either disable a ship with minimal damage or it can launch a torpedo capable of normal damage. Either the torp is modified at launch for either role or they carry several of both types....have to decide which way to go on that.

I can work this into Starfleet battles. A Klingon torpedo with two modes. It will have it's own damage table unlike either the photon or the plasma.

The ship does seem to be a raider more than anything else (especially with only 12 crew members) so a disabling torp would not be unreasonable. And, such a thing doesn't exist in StarFleet Battles so it would be a new and interesting concept. Now, should it be direct fire like a photon or a seeking weapon like a plasma torp? Gonna have to think on that one.

Thanks for the info and opinions guys.

 

[ShinRa Actual]

Direct Fire. When the Ent-A hit the gas over Nimbus III, the weapons fire made no attempt to track it.