Photon Torpedo's

I understand the generic representation of Photorps in the game but they just arn't "heavy enough" In essence on alot of ships they do less damage than phasers. But in the shows they seem to be far more powerfull.

Has anyone given any thought to adressing this?

Like maybe half their penetration carries directly to structure points? In ST:VI when the enterprise is getting hammered by torpedo's from the cloaked bird of prey the hull is taking obvious damage even though their shields are up. Just a thought.

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Originally Posted by IceGiant

I understand the generic representation of Photorps in the game but they just arn't "heavy enough" In essence on alot of ships they do less damage than phasers. But in the shows they seem to be far more powerfull.

Has anyone given any thought to adressing this?

Like maybe half their penetration carries directly to structure points? In ST:VI when the enterprise is getting hammered by torpedo's from the cloaked bird of prey the hull is taking obvious damage even though their shields are up. Just a thought.

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Well the problem comes from the use of massed firepower rather than individual weapon damagew ratrings. SO if we went with a ICON like Type IV photrps doe x damage we'd avoid that problem.

Another thing I don;t like is that in CODA, since weapon damage is unsually lower than the SPACES a weapon takes up, it is more effeicnent to just rip out the heavy weapons and repalce it with a bunch of Type II or III phasers. For example, take a refit Connie, rip out those crummy Type V phasers (30 Offense, 18 Spaces with heavy discount) and replace them with 18 Type III phasers (54 Offense, 18 spaces with discount) and you upped the damage to 6/6/6/0/0.

Either damage by weapon or a cap would help. Something like no matter how many weapon you have the damage is capped at the phaser type.


On a different note, I do have a table I was working on that combines all the weapons (both era) on one scale for Firepower purposes. It doesn't match up exactly with STARSHIPS, but is ceertainly close, and if we are doing an updated version anyway, an point ot two here or there won't matter.

I orginally did it so we could use the TOS RIN-9 and RIM-12C phasers as such instead of Type I, Type IV etc. It worked something along the lies of a RIM-12C phaser being worth 12 offense, while a TNG Tpye X was worth 20 or 30 points (I forgot which I'd have to find the table).

Phaser damage often attenuates at range, which is why you see decreases in penetration the more distant the target. Damage from photon torpedoes is unaffected by range. Also, photon torpedoes can be used at all ranges whereas phasers tend to be worthless beyond Medium Range. Mind you, this is CODA's take on it. I presume the authors did their research.

Personally, I think the old Starfleet Battle Manual miniatures rules had the best take on photon torpedoes: the first torpedo in a salvo punched a hole in the target's shield and the subsequent torpedoes sped through unimpeded to strike the target's hull. While this produces the sort of dramatic effects that make for a satisfying miniatures outcome, I'm not sure they are supported on-screen nor do they make for all that exciting a roleplaying outcome.

Has anybody house ruled a damage increase for photon torpedoes? I'm thinking of the scene in STVI where Enterprise and Excelsior hammer Chang's ship a couple of times with shields down and it is destroyed. Under the current rules I don't see that happening, since TOS era torpedoes are so under-powered. In Star Trek Online, it seems that torpedoes are more effective when a target's shields are down, so I was thinking that against a ship with no shields, the torpedo does 2x it's penetration value. Any thoughts or alternative takes on this?

The rules are generally tuned toward TV show fights, where they shoot back and forth and casualties happen off-screen, than the movies where nobody seems to actually have shields at all. If you want the movie version, I suggest you just double weapon effectiveness or significantly lower shield effectiveness and structure.

Yeah, in the series, the couldn't afford to damage the models, so we don't see the ships take much damage. In the films, we frequently see sections of a ship blown off.

If you want to up the damage, then you could say that every point they gets past shields does one die (1D6) damage. You will very quickly ramp up the damage.


If you do try that idea, you might want to allow PCs and important NPCS to spend courage points to negate this effect, say on a point for point basis. This would explain why ships with important characters on them remain (mostly) intact while ships with mooks go boom.

Another idea I saw a fansite (don't recall which one), was to increase the damage vs. unshielded ships based on success levels, so: Complete Success = +2 damage; Superior Success = +4 damage; Extraordinary Success = +6 damage. In STVI, Chang's ship takes something like 4-5 salvos of torpedoes from Enterprise and Excelsior and is destroyed (their shields were down because they came out of cloak), so that might work.