Phaser Array Firing Range
- Thread starter N1N
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If I remember the reasoning correctly - 1 light second (aka ~300,000KM or ~186,000Miles) is the 'effective' range....
From everything I've read, the "Amount of Phaser Units" in the "Phaser Array" doesn't seem to affect range, they do affect Maxium Power Output and potential targeting angles.
To quote the ST:TNG Technical Manual:
"The maximum effective tactical range of ship's phasers is 300,000 kilometers."
So for real time combat with ships manuevering, that seems to be the maximum practical range that Phasers can hit with a target that is attempting to dodge.
Anything longer than 1 Light-Second might be too much time and it would be too hard for sensors & FCS (Fire Control Systems) to handle with any reasonable accuracy.
Given that Phasers travel at the speed of light, that makes logical sense.
To quote the ST:TNG Technical Manual:
"The maximum effective tactical range of ship's phasers is 300,000 kilometers."
So for real time combat with ships manuevering, that seems to be the maximum practical range that Phasers can hit with a target that is attempting to dodge.
Anything longer than 1 Light-Second might be too much time and it would be too hard for sensors & FCS (Fire Control Systems) to handle with any reasonable accuracy.
Given that Phasers travel at the speed of light, that makes logical sense.
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You're correct, other than the rounded end cap strips on each end of the array, they generally should be the same units short of any slightly curved units that need to bend around a curve.
But the general concept is that they all fit in like standardized Phaser Lego Bricks of a certain Brick shape.
More Array Elements = Greater Maximum Power Output and Wider 3D firing Arc.
"Seeing" is precisely the issue. At those distances, you're either getting a ship firing out-of-frame or into infinity, then cutting to the other ship getting hit (which happens often enough as it is), or a distance shot of empty stars with beams appearing connecting one dot to another dot.
Here is an example in TNG of long range combat: "The Wounded". The Cardassians would have fired phasers at the Phoenix and the Phoenix returned fire with photon torpedoes.
Most TOS battles are long range - see "Journey to Babel", "The Changeling" and "Balance of Terror". The opening battle in TMP between the Klingon Battlecruisers and V'ger was at a distance of 41 AU (Director's cut lowered it to 1 AU).
You are correct in that most modern Star Trek battles are portrayed as close-up dogfights (that inexplicably miss) rather than appropriate ranged combat.
The Expanse seems to have figured out a way to portray long distance combat with their camera zooms, IMHO.
If that was truly the case then Galaxy-class ships would only use her saucer's dorsal phaser array as it is the longest array on the ship. Also on the Battle Section of the Galaxy-class the phaser strip on top of the neck and the rest of the phaser strips are very short. You would think that the longest strips would be on the section that stays and fight and has the power to fire the phasers and not on the separated impulse-powered saucer section
edit: Edited TMP range above. Good catch on TMP range @BK613
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Most modern Trek has had the bad habit of reducing combat range to Star Wars point blank combat. Even World War 1 and 2 battleship engagement were usually at longer ranges where you often could barely make out the other ship.
(Washington vs. Kongo in the Solomons being a bit of an outlier there.)
(Washington vs. Kongo in the Solomons being a bit of an outlier there.)
No one single Phaser Array has Total coverage, there are "Significant Blind Spots" if you look at it from a total 3D perspective.
That's why you have them spread about the vessels hull. To gurantee coverage and offer redundancy along with the ability to fire multiple Arrays on the same target or different ones.
Yes, those are for coverage, not for maximum damage.
Once seperated, the StarDrive is more of a Torpedo Boat in the truest sense of the word, it has the largest complement of Torpedoes.
The Saucer only has one single Hidden Torpedo tube that is in the Neck area where it's docked. That is only exposed when seperated and is only useful when seperated, otherwise it can't be used when docked.
The Saucer Section having only access to Dual Small Fusion Reactors & Batteries isn't anywhere near enough power.You would think that the longest strips would be on the section that stays and fight and has the power to fire the phasers and not on the separated impulse-powered saucer section
That's a problem that the Ross Class literally fixes by having a secondary M/A-M reactor located within the Saucer Section.
I'm perfectly fine with the larger Round Saucer on the Ross Class.
However, there is no evidence to support the idea that more array elements = greater maximum power output.
Only that the advantage of the phaser arrays in a strip format allows for greater coverage.
After all, both the Intrepid class and Galaxy class have same Type X phaser arrays... which means, both are capable of dishing out same levels of firepower from phasers alone at any section along the strip.
The main difference lies in the arrangement of the strips and what kind of coverage they allow.
A similar premise follows the Sovereign class.
While fans assume it has Type XII phasers, this information was never confirmed in canon though.
However, the Sovereign class is generally seen as more powerful than the Galaxy class - and even Worf in S3 of Picard described the Ent-E that it has additional phaser arrays (but nothing about them being more powerful than the ones on the D).
By certain logic however, one would assume the Sovereign class phasers at the time were more powerful than the Galaxy class, but given the sheer size of the Galaxy class, it stands to reason it can be upgraded to the same level of standard as the Sovereign to match or even outclass it perhaps (that is, IF size can be used as a direct indicator that a bigger ship is usually more powerful - but we've seen Trek examples, even on SF's end where this wasn't the case - examples being both the Intrepid and Defiant class ships - both pretty powerful for their respective sizes).
At any rate, we know from TNG 'The Wounded' episode that a Nebula class ship had weapons range of 150,000 to 300,000 km.
I would imagine that the Galaxy class was superior in that regard... and yes I would agree with the estimates that 300,000km is the effective range of Phasers.
Whereas Photon torpedoes have an effective range of 3.5 million km (well, it stands to reason they would be fired using principles of maglev and impulse technologies from the tube and use subspace fields and impulse engines to be able to maneuver and achieve those distances in any appreciable manner - you're looking at a speed of about 0.75C to 0.9C if subspace fields would be mitigating the effects of relativity - which for an object such as a torpedo would be less critical than for a starship).
Then why even bother with Phaser Arrays when Turrets would do the same thing for less physical installation costs and simpler routing?
In the ST:TNG Technical Manual:
As installed in the Galaxy-class, the main ship's phasers are rated as Type X, the largest emitters available for StarShip use. Individual emitter segments are capable of directing 5.1 megawatts.
Why even bother with an "Array of Segments" if they're capped out at 5.1 MegaWatts per unit, why not just have a bunch of Ball Turrets lined up?
You wanted a significant leap in power when transitioning from the old Enterprise to the new Enterprise and 100+ years of tech improvements, you should be combining the energy output of each individual Emitter within the Array to fire a Beam of higher energy output.
According to DITL, the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D can output Phaser Energy in the TeraWatt class to vaporize rock through a single beam.
If you're arguing that the array can never output more than a single element, on screen evidence shows otherwise.
How else do you get close to 1.731 x 10^3 TeraWatts of power output to vaporize rock?
According to your logic, the Emitter would be capped at 5.1 MW of phaser energy output.
There are around 200 Emitter Segments on one side of the saucer. so 1020 MW or 1.02 GW, but if you OverClock the Energy Output of each Emitter, and combine the energy output, I can see how they can end up close to the amount of energy needed in a single beam to be in the TerraWatt range to vaporize rock.
The bigger limiter seems to be how much energy the EPS conduits can feed along with LN2 cooling to regulate the emitters.
Given that the Phaser Array tech was still in it's relatively young early days, I can see massive OverClocking of energy output being possible.
Just look at Computer OverClocking history, in the past, they were FAR more conservative with default clocks that allows MASSIVE % energy gains, I can see them being "Very Conservative" on how much energy each emitter is allowed to output by default settings, with over-rides allowing far more energy outputs.
The emitters themselves seem to be able to handle MUCH more energy as we've seen in the show, the only major limitations is cooling and energy feeds from the main Warp Core along the EPS conduits.
Those seem to be the main restraints on how much phaser energy is able to be pumped out.
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The "The Nth Degree" shows that the Enterprise-D only needs 40 phasers (emitters) to fire beyond full power. Laforge: "Phasers are as hot as we can make them." Arguably, all of the phaser strips in the E-D could have a minimum of 40 phaser emitters.
As to why bother with Phaser Arrays? As you point out, they offer redundancy and multiple emitters. Also, a majority of the equipment is on the surface which frees up volume below.
That might be the limitation of the Phaser Array Emitters of the Type-X design.
That's probably why we start seeing more "Split Arrays" moving forward like on the Intrepid-class USS Voyager.
I can see future designs where there is a "Forward Array" that is crescent shape along the nose of the saucer facing fore and two side arrays on the Port/StarBoard on each of the Ventral/Dorsal sides.
This would allow more Beams to fire together simultaneously at full Phaser Array Power with "Maximum Emitters".
True, but why have a single large array when you can have multiple segments of 40 Emitters to maximize output?
The Ambassador-class Enterprise-C had multiple small segments.
The Galaxy-class went all in on arrays that cover the majority of the saucer.
The Intrepid Class bi-furicated the Arrays into Port/StarBoard seperated units.
Personally, with my Enterprise-J style Extra Deflector Dish mounted on the nose of the saucer, I would have one special forward array arc.
2x Segments on the Port/StarBoard sides on both Ventral/Dorsal sides.
Add in one segment on the Dorsal Aft side above the Saucer Aft Shuttle Bay.
This would allow more segments to fire at "Full Power".
Turrets may have various limitations in so far how many can be placed in a given line, whereas strips offer more versatility in how they can be used, redundancy and you can fire multiple beams from any point in the strip simultaneously with greater options for upgrades that can allow more firepower in the future (easier upgrade paths) and evidently greater coverage (they could also be occupying less internal space and might have a more direct connection to the EPS grids vs turrets - aka if a grid is running in a circular or oval line along the hull, just place the phaser strip on top of it and connect it to the EPS line directly).
Though to be fair, the USS Lakota was heavily upgraded prior to the Dominion War, and we've seen early 25th century ships (which were in effect refitted 23rd century ships) still using Turrets too.
So, by that analogy, why did SF even start using strips if it had the ability to upgrade existing turrets all along and why didn't it just place a lot more of them across the hull?
One possible explanation could be that it wasn't until the late 24th century that SF ended up making sufficient advancements which allowed them to bring the Turrets to the similar level of phaser strips in terms of outputting needed yields and gave them improved versatility that you can emit different types of energy beams (not just phasers) from them... and once they have, they opted in using both Turrets and strips on some ships (such as the Titan-A), and possibly because the pre-existing frames did not allow for installation of strips - this may explain as to why 23rd century refits have similar designs as 23rd century ships, but now sport a combo of both strips and turrets - the refits allowed for inclusion of some strips placements alongside existing turrets, but in versions of ships like the Excelsior II which was more of a redesign, its internal structure and power distribution network may have been altered so it can feature full blown strips this time around.
Already explained above why.
Also, the technical manual isn't canon for one, so there's no reason to think the existing output is as low as you suggest (but I'm not discounting it altogether).
The strip can simply serve as a better coverage with much higher baseline output than what turrets would have allowed with the technology of the era (thanks in part in greater power generation, etc), plus greater versatility for scientific applications (which reduces the need to carry different equipment perhaps).
That's assuming of course the power output for phaser arrays are in that range (and as I said, we have conflicting data on energy yields which don't really mesh with what's in the TM vs what we see on screen, plus the fact the TM's aren't canon).
Considering the ENT-D warp core was rated on screen at 12.7 exawatts in 'True Q', its highly unlikely that phasers would be limited to GW or even TW range (and if they are, those would most likely end up being 'baseline' levels before taking into account use of subspace technology which we saw has been used in amplifying different technologies and resulting effects of those technologies).
In the N'th Degree, Barclay was able to enhance the shield output by 300% (aka, 3x) by transferring Warp power into the shields.
In VOY, female Q was able to provide the crew with a shield configuration which enhanced the shields by a factor of 10 (which necessitated turning off Warp drive and remodulating the shields to emit a beta tachyon pulse, after which a series of focused anti-proton beams would have to be emitted to the shield bubble ... and it allowed VOY to survive a supernova explosion up close.
To me, these two instances may imply that Warp power isn't normally used for shields and weapons, but it CAN be.
Most of the time, the actual shuffling of Warp power to weapons (while doable) has limited effects... but that's probably because SF doesn't know of the advanced techniques which can be used to gain better effects from using Warp power in other systems (unlike more advanced species which do).
The Ambassador class ENT-C having multiple small segments makes sense because it was probably one of the first iterations of starship designs which started using only strips.
Unlike turrets, strips probably offer greater firepower (although not because of the amount of emitters they had per strip), versatility, etc., possibly greater range too, but because they were an early integration, SF didn't have the means to create a full blown strip connected from one end to the other (and they didn't have to because it still probably offered greater coverage and other benefits that turrets simply didn't have... or they may have just followed a similar implementation of ball turret layout and placed the phaser strips in the same fashion (obviously if SF had the ability to place more turrets in a single line, they probably would have, but evidently they did not... which implies a limit with turret technology vs phaser strips that isn't necessarily there in favour of strips simply because of the amount of emitters per strip).
One of the reasons as to why the Intrepid has separate strips on each side of the saucer could be hull geometry/configuration and placement of internal systems - different ships will have different implementations of phaser strips, which makes sense.
There could be too much of a curvature at the front which didn't allow the strips to be connected and internally it would have interfered with other systems, or because the ship was designed to have an auxiliary deflector dish on the saucer, there wasn't enough room to connect the strips into a single strip (and again, because it may have interfered with other systems in that section).
But from what we do know, the Intrepid class apparently has same Type X phaser strips as the Galaxy class... meaning, it would be able to output same yields as the Galaxy class.
The USS Prometheus from VOY had multiple separate strips on the saucer, and that likely had more to do with the internal ship's layout and the fact it was able to split into 3 vessels.
However, the ship was described as being designed for deep space tactical assignments... and its phasers were also extremely powerful - plus there was no phaser pulse travelling along the strip before it fired... it just fired and destroyed a Romulan warbird pretty quickly).
Again, conflicting evidence... but admittedly this could also be an issue with the VFX because it wouldn't be the first time they mucked things about (what with phasers being fired from cargo bays, or torpedo launchers, or from airlocks).
We'll probably never know why you would want a single large array like on the Galaxy class over multiple segments. It could be to maximize internal volume and/or minimize the distance between the phaser end points to internal power source (main eps taps to the warp core) or could just to look imposing
Regarding firing at "Full Power" - we've only seen the Galaxy-class (and to the same extent Voyager) fire a maximum of 3 simultaneous beams in combat. Combine that with "The Nth Degree" and it would mean that the maximum power output can only be a single beam. Multiple beams from different arrays would only divide the maximum output. But, since the maximum output with a single beam is actually above "full power" we could argue that firing 3 simultaneous beams mean that each beam is at "full power". YMMV.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on the phaser energy output issue then.
You don't think it's additive, I believe it's additive given the evidence I've seen on screen.
And ST:TNG Technical Manual works for me along with on-screen canon evidence.
At that point, to get more fire power, you would need more Arrays with at least 40 Emitter Units per array.
Assuming that we've seen each Array fire 2x Beams Simultaneously from the same Array, having a minimum of 80 Emitter Units would allow enough Fire Power to channel 2x Beams Simultaneously per Array.
You don't think it's additive, I believe it's additive given the evidence I've seen on screen.
And ST:TNG Technical Manual works for me along with on-screen canon evidence.
Given the evidence we saw in "The Nth Degree", I'm willing to go with 40 emitter segments on a single Array being the Maximum Energy Output of the Emitter Array, regardless of how many extra emitter units are part of the array.We'll probably never know why you would want a single large array like on the Galaxy class over multiple segments. It could be to maximize internal volume and/or minimize the distance between the phaser end points to internal power source (main eps taps to the warp core) or could just to look imposing
Regarding firing at "Full Power" - we've only seen the Galaxy-class (and to the same extent Voyager) fire a maximum of 3 simultaneous beams in combat. Combine that with "The Nth Degree" and it would mean that the maximum power output can only be a single beam. Multiple beams from different arrays would only divide the maximum output. But, since the maximum output with a single beam is actually above "full power" we could argue that firing 3 simultaneous beams mean that each beam is at "full power". YMMV.
At that point, to get more fire power, you would need more Arrays with at least 40 Emitter Units per array.
Assuming that we've seen each Array fire 2x Beams Simultaneously from the same Array, having a minimum of 80 Emitter Units would allow enough Fire Power to channel 2x Beams Simultaneously per Array.
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Sure, we'll agree to disagree
Just remember that the E-D had more that one phaser array that could fire above full power on target but they only used one array to fire one beam
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