Anyone notice the "cutting beams"? :)

[Atrahasis]

[CptSavage]

I Noticed ;D

[Atrahasis]

CptSavage said:

I Noticed ;D

It helps the ship out against drones...quite useful actually. It's an obscure detail about the TAS ship, but if it can be used and made relevant to SFC then I don't mind incorporating it.

They could even be lasers. What does the ship do when it needs to generate a simple laser beam, for whatever purpose? The phasers are particle beams, so they're not really suitable. A simple laser system can be useful against unshielded targets, like missiles or other objects, or in situations where antimatter weaponry like phasers are inappropriate.

[Zerosnark]

Yeah, I noticed the cutting beams. . . . .looked at in isolation the concept is sound. In "game terms", I think these weapons are somewhat unbalancing (as is the increase in forward P1's to 4)

But looking at this concept in isolation. . do the later ships have the cutting beams? 4 p3's are better than a single ADD.

[Atrahasis]

Guest-Zerosnark said:

Yeah, I noticed the cutting beams. . . . .looked at in isolation the concept is sound. In "game terms", I think these weapons are somewhat unbalancing (as is the increase in forward P1's to 4)

But looking at this concept in isolation. . do the later ships have the cutting beams? 4 p3's are better than a single ADD.

People at first glance may indeed think the 4 phaser-1's in the forward bank are "unbalancing", but I submit to you that not only does the ship need them, but also it's the way the actual ship has its weapons arranged.

How do we know what a starship's phasers from the TOS era look like? There are 2 sources, one canon and the other semi-canon (meaning approved by Paramount but not actually seen on the screen). The canon source is from the TOS episode "Space Seed", the one with Khan. When he is in bed recovering, he is flipping through the ship's library files, and the one he has on screen is a diagram of a starship phaser turret on a "MK Heavy Cruiser" (the TOS Enterprise). The diagram shows a ball-like device with a little nipple sticking out of it.

Years later, you have the diagram of the internal layout of the Connie from "The Captain's Chair CD" which shows these turrets inside the ship but stacked on top of each other, freight-train style. The forward main phaser bank had four of these turrets total.

Then, one has to conisder the screen evidence. Whenever the Enterprise fired its main phasers, she did it either in continous-stream or in pulses....when she did it in pulses like in the early episodes, she fired from four to eight blasts at a time.

It seems clear to me that TOS phasers were linked together inside the ship, one generator upon another, perhaps in the same way that the TNG phaser emitters are linked together in an array that can form strips or rings, only not as extensive of course.

As for the saucer's side phasers, the diagram did not show those. The question we'd have to ask is: Are those turrets doubled-up like the main bank is? That's left to speculation, but for SFC game terms I say they're not. Those side phasers shouldn't be able to fire anywhere to the forward either like they do in SFB/SFC...which is why I asign them SFBL and SFBR arcs respectively, those arcs that shoot straight to the sides and not to the front as well.

Given that arrangement, that means the only bank that can fire forward is the main one, which is all we ever saw the TV show ship fire, and in that case it needs to be worth more than 2 shots in the game.

[Atrahasis]

Submitted for your approval.....note the actual position of the phasers..........on that "rim". Compare that with Franz's positioning of the phasers, which is not on the rim but on the saucer's bulkhead.

Consider yourself a historian, researching things from 40 years ago, years before you were born, and that the people who could've given us definitive answers are now mostly dead. That leaves us to figure things out for ourselves, and that means to consider ALL of the available evidence and consider it in context, and to figure out who said what and when and why and consider if we can admit a given piece of info as truth or as fanciful tale-telling.

This also means giving up pre-concieved notions, or notions that one may have had for as long as one can remember, because in fact those notions could be false.

This is exactly the situation we have today when it comes to discussing details about the TOS ship....it involves reconstructing history, because there have simply been too many sources over the years that said this and that about this ship but which were not really validated nor corroborating with what we see on the screen, or even what may have been Gene's original vision.

Trek in my opinion is an important part of American history, and there is more than enough to discuss aspects of it academically, and indeed this has been done as early as the 1970's in some American universities in engineering classes when they used Franz's manual as a textbook. So putting the discussion of the ship's original weapons arrangement to the standard of historical reconstruction is pretty valid and also an interesting exercise...because we're basically trying to see through the haze of time and into the mind of the people who created her.

Oh, by the way, if it isn't clear yet: Franz's positioning and arrangement of the ship's weapons are not to be taken as canon, because if you think about it NONE of his details corroborate with what we see on screen nor with diagrams from official sources. He gets the positioning of the main phasers wrong. He posits that the ship had side turrets---not corroborated. He even gets the position of the photon torpedoes wrong, becaus enot once did we see the ship fire torps from the B-C location. In conclusion his info does not reflect the type of ship that we saw on screen. It may reflect a different type of heavy cruiser, but not the one that we see in the TOS episodes.

And since SFB/SFC is based on Franz's info, we have to conclude that all of that is screwed up as well....and we have to come up with a new system that reflects our improved understanding of the TOS ship, that is if one wants to sleep well at night!

[USS Mariner]

Atrahasis said:

Submitted for your approval.....note the actual position of the phasers..........on that "rim". Compare that with Franz's positioning of the phasers, which is not on the rim but on the saucer's bulkhead.

Consider yourself a historian, researching things from 40 years ago, years before you were born, and that the people who could've given us definitive answers are now mostly dead. That leaves us to figure things out for ourselves, and that means to consider ALL of the available evidence and consider it in context, and to figure out who said what and when and why and consider if we can admit a given piece of info as truth or as fanciful tale-telling.

This also means giving up pre-concieved notions, or notions that one may have had for as long as one can remember, because in fact those notions could be false.

This is exactly the situation we have today when it comes to discussing details about the TOS ship....it involves reconstructing history, because there have simply been too many sources over the years that said this and that about this ship but which were not really validated nor corroborating with what we see on the screen, or even what may have been Gene's original vision.

Trek in my opinion is an important part of American history, and there is more than enough to discuss aspects of it academically, and indeed this has been done as early as the 1970's in some American universities in engineering classes when they used Franz's manual as a textbook. So putting the discussion of the ship's original weapons arrangement to the standard of historical reconstruction is pretty valid and also an interesting exercise...because we're basically trying to see through the haze of time and into the mind of the people who created her.

Oh, by the way, if it isn't clear yet: Franz's positioning and arrangement of the ship's weapons are not to be taken as canon, because if you think about it NONE of his details corroborate with what we see on screen nor with diagrams from official sources. He gets the positioning of the main phasers wrong. He posits that the ship had side turrets---not corroborated. He even gets the position of the photon torpedoes wrong, becaus enot once did we see the ship fire torps from the B-C location. In conclusion his info does not reflect the type of ship that we saw on screen. It may reflect a different type of heavy cruiser, but not the one that we see in the TOS episodes.

And since SFB/SFC is based on Franz's info, we have to conclude that all of that is screwed up as well....and we have to come up with a new system that reflects our improved understanding of the TOS ship, that is if one wants to sleep well at night!

All very interesting. So, the weapon count is this, right:

6 forward torpedo tubes
1 or more aft tubes
4 frontal phasers
"midships" phasers

That's what I can remember. It would be nice if you could repost that "original Connie weapons arrangement," so that we can see what the original was supposed to be like before the 2250's refit.

From what I've seen, those who call the Connie a "weakling" are in for a real suprise. ;D

[Atrahasis]

Mariner said:

All very interesting. So, the weapon count is this, right:

6 forward torpedo tubes
1 or more aft tubes
4 frontal phasers
"midships" phasers

That's what I can remember. It would be nice if you could repost that "original Connie weapons arrangement," so that we can see what the original was supposed to be like before the 2250's refit.

From what I've seen, those who call the Connie a "weakling" are in for a real suprise. ;D

Indeed! Considering the standard was those doubled-up phaser emitters, who knows what's lying underneath that innocently smooth hull.

Let us further our study by examining the following:




We have a total of 16 weapons emitters, which is only 2 short of the refit/upgrade TMP Enterprise's total tally of 18 phaser emitters. This is not even inlcuding the side phasers which may be present, which would bring the total tally of emitters to 18-20.

But what do those TOS emitters fire?

The only logical thing I can conlucde is that they could be configured to fire EITHER phasers or photon torpedoes, depending on the tactical situation and the preference of the commanding officer. If you think about it, you never saw the TOS ship fire both torps AND phaser in the same salvo, it was either phasers OR torpedoes. Kirk seems to have used that main forward bank for sometimes firing multiple salvoes of phasers, other times for firing a spread of torpedoes.....but never at the same time.

So as it turns out, that TOS emitter seems to have been quite versatile....remember in TAS it fired what was basically a laser beam form there too.

A photon torpedo in TAS was a ball of pure light. No casing or guidance system or propulsion system at all. It was the gamma ray photon package you got when antielectrons (0.51 MeV) touched electrons (also 0.51 MeV) to create a 1.02 MeV photon, whcih was shot out into space as a direct fire weapon. That's why the SFX shot that we're used to seeing for it depicted a photon torpedo as a bright white light...because that's actually what it was meant to be.

So what was a phaser? It was some kind of beam weapon that used this principle of matter/antimatter annihilation as well, but modulated into a beam that could be fired continuously or in pulses.

Once you understand that, you'll understand why in the TOS episode "Balance of Terror" the ship fires "depth charges" that look like photon torpedoes, but it's the PHASER CONTROL ROOM that has an overload from the ship firing its weapons too prolifically.

Phasers = torpedoes = same thing

This explains why both torpedoes and phasers fired from the same spot on the ship....because they did in fact use the same emitters.

Now, once we understand that, there are some other details to sort out...specifically how does a commanding officer organize this configurableness for maximum effectiveness? Let's work on the assumption that Photon torpedoes take up a lot of power, otherwise the emitters wouldn't have burned out like they did in "Balance of Terror". But althouh they may take up power, it's conceivable that a Connie could do a spread of 10 Photon torpedo shots (all the forward emitters) in one tactical pass...which makes it deadly indeed. You wouldn't have phasers, but you may not need them with that many torps at your disposal. So if we speculate that that a maxium spread of 10 torpedoes in a given pass is possible, then Kirk's comment in "Elaan of Troyius" makes sense, where he gives the order to arm "tubes 2,4,6" and ends up firing 3 Photons at the Klingon ship. Emitters 2,4,6,8 (even numbers) could be the four main emitters, which would make 1,3,5,7, (odd numbers) the ones in B-C deck. Ah but wait, we have 2 emitters left over, what numbers would they have been? 9,10? But why have two consecutive numbers like that one after the other to label the remaining 2 emitters in the B-C deck with? Maybe because 9,10 are not prime numbers like 1,3,5,7 are (check your math, 3 X 3 and 9 X 1), which could have been designations for emitters that are used for other "special" purposes. I believe that the people of the 24th century have a keener wareness of math because if you study things like the Golden ratio and the fibonacci sequence, you'll realize that math like that forms the basic building blocks of everything you see in nature, from the length of your arms to the swirl in a sea conch. Prime numbers have a special significance and are distinct from other numbers because they form the fibonacci sequence which is a basic expression of Phi which is what nature is based on....yada yada yada. Granted, "2" is a prime number and so according to my numeration theory it should be among the B-C deck emitters, but here is where maritime tradition may kick in: on a submarine, especially the old U-boats, the tube numbers are numbered from left to right and so the even-numbers tubes are the starboard tubes. In the Connie's case, the even numbers tubes/emitters are the ones below the saucer, the odd numbers are above the saucer in the B-C deck, but 9,10 make up the remaining 2 because it's better than calling them 9,11 (which would raise the question of where is 10?). So, there you have two ideas of mine which would explain why those tubes/emitters are named the way they are. Peronally, I think the mimicking of the oldtime martime tradition is the better explanation, but I never leave out the possibility of advanced mathematics being incorporated into the designs of a technically advanced people.

Now let's deal with the aft array. Since there is only one "level" to deal with here (no top/bottom) then they can probably be named with a straightforward left-to-right system, 11,12,13,14,15,16. That's IF there are no saucer-side phasers that may take up these numbers.

But rather than try to completely figure the emitter numbering system out, all we really need to know is that 2,4,6, (8) seem to refer to the main bank.

So how do we translate all of this into SFC terms? Remember that in SFC we are limited by only being allowed a max of 4 weapons at any single hardpoint. Hardpoint 11 on the F-CA SSD is the forward main bank, and this should be filled up with four phasers, representing the four emitters. So how do we deal with the six emitters up at B-C? You can assign them all as Photon torpedoes over two hardpoints (3 each), but this may have the problem of upsetting game balance....compare that with the relatively measley weapons of a D-7 and you have a Connie that is an uber-ship. Rather than have 6 torps, you can just keep it at 4 and if you like you can assign the remaining 2 emitters as worth 2 X Ph3 each for a total of 4 Ph3 (the "special use" emitters we talked about earlier). I mean why not? They come in EXTREMELY useful for drone defense because otherwise you'll have to use your main bank to shoot them down, which will be a waste. It's also supported by details we saw on screen in TAS.

As for the aft weapons, you can assign two of those emitters to torps, two to phaser-1's, and 2 to house 4 X Ph3, the same anti-drone configuration as in the forward bank. You'll need them to shoot down the drones that are tailing you.

As for the side saucer phasers, 2 X Ph1 on each side OR 4 X Ph1 each side. Depends on how uber you make this ship, but realize those phasers would have a limited arc of SFBL and SFBR...they probably shouldn't be allowed to fire forward, because I believe in a 2-d game like SFC the maximum efficient arc of a turret is probably only 120 degrees, not 180 or 360 as SFB assumes.

Or, you can totally ignore the "cutting beams". But remember this would tie up your main bank with drone-shooting, which does make a difference in game. Seeing as how the D-7 has a lot of laser/phasers dedicated to defense (those 7-9 turrets that McMaster depicted in his original 1970's blueprints) having 8 X point defense shots on a Connie seems reasonable.

But seeing as how I started all of this off with pointing out that the weapons on a Connie are configurabnle, you should go ahead and have a ball and do what you like.

[Lord Schtupp]

I agree that the Photon Torpedo is a setting of the Phaser weapons, just like "Stun" and "Dematerialize" are settings on the hand phaser, and thus come from the same location on the ship.

I also agree with the comments regarding the "canonistacy" ( hey I made a new word) of the FJ plans, realizing of course that the cutaway featured here is no more canon than FJ or anything else really. Yes the lower phasers are in a more accurate location but I dont think that it was ever inferred that there where other firing locations mounted on the hull, canon-wise.

Although it's natural to assume that the Enterprise is a warship and therfore must have a weapons package that cover 360° about the ship, this is contrary to the idea that it's primary purpose is exploration, not battle. However, we find the Enterprise doing things like patrolling a sector or acting as a high leverage courier (Journey to Babel), duties that warships, ummm, do.

Ive always considered the Enterprise to be outfitted like a scout on steriods, I mean a really capable scout-explorer, not a proper ship of the line.

[Atrahasis]

Guest-Lord said:

I agree that the Photon Torpedo is a setting of the Phaser weapons, just like "Stun" and "Dematerialize" are settings on the hand phaser, and thus come from the same location on the ship.

I also agree with the comments regarding the "canonistacy" ( hey I made a new word) of the FJ plans, realizing of course that the cutaway featured here is no more canon than FJ or anything else really. Yes the lower phasers are in a more accurate location but I dont think that it was ever inferred that there where other firing locations mounted on the hull, canon-wise.

Although it's natural to assume that the Enterprise is a warship and therfore must have a weapons package that cover 360?about the ship, this is contrary to the idea that it's primary purpose is exploration, not battle. However, we find the Enterprise doing things like patrolling a sector or acting as a high leverage courier (Journey to Babel), duties that warships, ummm, do.

Ive always considered the Enterprise to be outfitted like a scout on steriods, I mean a really capable scout-explorer, not a proper ship of the line.

Hey Shtupp, glad you could make it!

I don't think we even have to argue for the "canonisticity" or "canonness" (hey I made a new word too) of the FJ designs, because even if they don't accurately reflect twhat we saw on screen, we can easily surmise that his plans reflect another Heavy Cruiser class entirely.

However, when we do argue for canonicity of anything, we have to look at what a given source is claiming, and basically weigh it against all known info, and the deal with Trek is that it's Paramount that decides a great deal of what is canon in the end. If they publish something, anything, we should look at it with a more favorable light than a source that is just plain wrong or has fallen "out of favor" like all that FASA stuff was in the 1980's (the FASA stuff was GOOD, but Paramount seems to have basically not paid a lot of attention to it).

Given that, so far from Paramount we have several sources that refer to the aft weaponry of the Connie, so I'd say we have to consider that it did have it. If we can accpet that then I don't see grounds for objecting too harshly to the other specs for the ship they list, especially as how it does not conflict with screen info.

Yes, it's a big puzzle that we're piecing together, and the dicussion is not over yet because there are other things that I want to introduce that we have to consider about this ship.

[Lord Schtupp]

Thanks for the welcome Atra, Im glad you got your own board. BTW I didnt get the confirmation email to join the board, I think the AOL spamblocker is to blame.


Somehow Im pretty sure that if Roddenberry had more budget that there would be more weapons and the Enterprise studio model would be a little more detailed.

Wow I totally forgot about the Elaan of Troyius part when Kirk orders 2,4,6 to fire. My take is that weapons on the port side are numbered odd, and starboard side are even numbered. I dont know the naval tradition for naming such things, but I would bank on naval tradition being a kind of "tie breaker" in the case of such arguments.

[Atrahasis]

Guest-Lord said:

Thanks for the welcome Atra, Im glad you got your own board. BTW I didnt get the confirmation email to join the board, I think the AOL spamblocker is to blame.


Somehow Im pretty sure that if Roddenberry had more budget that there would be more weapons and the Enterprise studio model would be a little more detailed.

Wow I totally forgot about the Elaan of Troyius part when Kirk orders 2,4,6 to fire. My take is that weapons on the port side are numbered odd, and starboard side are even numbered. I dont know the naval tradition for naming such things, but I would bank on naval tradition being a kind of "tie breaker" in the case of such arguments.

Ah, but consider this: on a WW II submarine, the LINE OF SYMMETRY between the banks of torpedo tubes is down the centerline of the ship seperating starboard and port, because it's on the port and starboard sides that the tubes are gathered at. There's presumably more space between the starboard and port sides than there is vertical space between the tubes that are stacked atop each other. So that's why you have even numbers on the starboard and odd numbers on the port.

But consider where the most important line of symmetry is on a Connie's saucer....you have two seperate banks of tubes/emitters on the top and bottom of the hulls, seperated by about 20 decks. In that case I don't think the number groupings would or should delineate port vs starboard. The more logical grouping of even numbers vs odd numbers would be either the top or the bottom set gets the even numbers, and the other set gets the odd numbers. Obviously a starship's saucer is more "3 dimensional" than a WW II submarine's.

Psychologically speaking, I think the even numbers have always been considered "more important" than the odd numbers, even in maritime tradition. I believe it's because the number 2, the first even number after zero, is one of the most appealing numbers you can think of, and it is the basis for a lot of mathematics in nature, and so the human mind is intuitively drawn to it. That's why it would make sense to label all the main emitters as 2,4,6 (8).

By the way, I like your eloquent take that the photon torpedoes are a "setting" of the phasers, that's basically what I was trying to express, but had to use a lot of paragraphs to do so.

[USS Mariner]

Hmm, that does make a lot of sense. Though the only gripe I have is that all the "photon" torpedoes we've seen are fired separately from the phasers.

Also, the "depth charges" in Balance of Terror always looked like a "pulse" setting of the phasers, considering that the Enterprise-class phasers also had a "super-pulse" setting since it hammered the Reliant in TWOK. I'd bet that the sensors could simply track the phaser pulses and detect where they dissappear, just like the Enterrpise-E did 114 years later. They don't need to be guided weapons to be tracked.

Also, it's been made clear that phasers from atleast the Ent-C era onward are nadion-pulse based, and that phasers only use plasma as a power source, though your right that nothing conclusive has been said about TOS or TMP phasers. I also don't see the point in having bridge mounted phasers, as any accident or enemy fire would be dangerously close to the bridge. ;D

Just offering my opinion.

[Atrahasis]

Oh, I'm aware of what Okuda might have said a phaser is......but the question I think of almost every day (obsessive, isn't it?) is what did Gene and possibly Matt Jeffries and even Franz Joseph think a phaser was? They're all dead now, so the best we can do is historical reconstruction considering all the evidence in context. And surprisingly, Franz and Gene (Gene' thoughts being represented by what we saw on the show) seem to correlate, but only as long as we give up pre-concieved notions that we may have of what a phaser is. As far as I can reason, a phaser used antimatter, because if you look at the diagram of the Type-I Phaser in Fran'z manual (the TOS handphaser), you see the phrase "1.02 MeV photon emitter" attached to the phaser's nozzle. This is exactly the kind of photon you get when you annihilate a .51 MeV electron (a standard electron at ground energy) with a .51 MeV positron (anti-electron).

But wait....isn't antimatter annihilation the same process behind a photon torpedo? Why yes it is.

That and the fact that these weapons all fired from the same place on the ship lead me to the conclusion that they are basically the same weapon but modulated to different settings.

Now, here's something further to consider if you really want to get your feet into the mud....What KIND of antimatter do phasers use? I just described it as anti-electrons (positrons), but was the kind that they used special in any other way? I believe it was. Basically, if you examine the power distribution system on board a Federation starship, from the Connie all the way to the Galaxy, how the systems on board a ship get their energy is not with regular electricity, but with an EPS current (Electro Plasma System).

What is electroplasma? I believe it's generated like this: You have a power core like a warp core, which involves combining antiprotons with protons, and putting them through a process by which they don't annihilate into pure energy right away, but can exist together stable long enough until it reachs the warp coils in the engines (in the 23rd century they use dilithium to achieve this, although it's possible to do it without dilithium re the Enterprise show), where the mixture is smashed against the coils (particle-accelerator style) and thus produces a warp field (and also probably a lot of other intereting by-products as well that quickly decay). The electroplasma, however, is produced by special generators that are powered by this flow of protons/antiprotons, and are located after the warp core but before the warp engines. Imagine a waterfall powering a hydroelectric dam that generates power, and this is the basic idea. There is inherent energy in the warp mixture flow that can be transmuted into this more useable type of power that we call electroplasma, as long as you have the generators.

Now, consider that the main warp mixture is a subtance that has matter and antimatter in it but does not annihilate until it's forced to do so. This property is probably transferred to electroplasma, which means it is a stable mixture of electrons and antielectrons. It's this mixture that hits a phaser crystal to produce a phaser beam, and so we have enough science-fiction elements in there to say that an exotic energy hits an exotic crystal producing an exotic beam. So a phaser beam is a lot more than just a simple antimatter readtion, it probably has a lot of other wonderful properties as well. A "nadion beam"? Heck, why not? We have to call the exotic particles it creates something, don't we? But the basic principle behind it is antimatter annihilation, I believe, and it was concieved to be this possibly right from the beginning with Gene et al, or if not right form the beginning then during production of the show. Moreover, when I explain it this way, this idea does not conflict with Okuda's explanation either.

[zerosnark]

Wow. There is ALOT in this thread to digest.

Regarding the port/starboard symmetry on sub tubes: Please bear in mind that the subs were small and the bow/stern areas (where the tubes were mounted) were not that much wider than two tubes lying together. . which is why multiple pairs were stacked. The tubes couldn't be mounted sideways simply because the subs were not *that wide*.

Now as for Canon footage from TOS: Looking at the battle sequences, the words "well thought out" and "consistency" don't really come to mind. Remember the shoe string budget these guys had to work with. . .and no CGI.

I go with SFB terms because Cole and crowd had more time to think things out . . .and actually developed a game system (warts and all=> gah, let's not start on the whole topic of fighters!).

As for the true role of the Fed Heavy Cruisers. . . I question the whole concept of the heavy cruiser. Given the exploratory nature of the ship. . .I think the term "heavy cruiser" is just a weakness in the BackStory. The terms "heavy and light cruiser" was created in the 1920 Washington naval treaty, and the last ships in the world BUILT with those type of designations were laid down in WWII -> less than 30 years later.

Hard to believe those type of designations would be around 400 years from now.

Anyone have the energy to figure out a whole designation scheme for Federation Starships? Or Klingon ships (which SURELY are different)