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Thread: Phasers and Warp Question

  1. #1

    Question Phasers and Warp Question

    Opinions are very welcome. . .

    It's been stated (Cannon-wise?) that phaser combat at warp speeds is nearly, if not totally, impossible, due to the fact that phaser particles travel at roughly 0.999c, and once outside of the warp field the particles would return to relativistic speeds. But one tactic that I came up with (vs. a relatively immobile target) is to travel towards your target at (for example) warp one while firing your forward phasers at the target. Now assuming that the phaser particles don’t "break down" too soon or the ship doesn’t turn, you’d have a build-up of phaser particles right in front of your ship. Now could this create a "Phaser Ram" like effect. (i.e. In a fleet battle The U.S.S. Thunderchild is flying towards a Dominion ship facility at 3 million kilometers away goes to warp one and begins to fire phasers at the structure. At 20-30,000 (or less) drops to impulse and vectors off letting the 50 seconds [10 rounds, or 200 points of damage] of phaser build-up continue on to the station. . .Ouch)

    Now for the mechanics questions:
    First- Does this sound possible?

    Second- If possible, how much damage would this do (I’m using a variation of the original ship rules, not the new SD rules. . .yet)? (By the way- the house-rule that I’m using is 10% of normal shield strength equals the resistance of the shields, i.e. the 60/80 shields of a Galaxy-class would have a resistance of 6)

    Third- How would you determine the Difficulty for this stunt?

    Lastly- What’s everyone’s opinion of this type of this tactic?

    Phoenix. . .


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    "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
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  3. #3
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    If you fire Phaser or anything that is slower than the ship, it will hit the canon as soon as it shot.

    However, maybe with proper modification, the phaser particle will slide throught subspace. But that will be a very difficult modification. Cause the particle fire by the canon will it the Canon at time 0,R1 . So the particule must be completly unable to traval subspace and only able to travel normal space...



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    Im french so I can pronounce Jean-Luc Picard

  4. #4
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    Projectiles "fired" at lower muzzle velocity than the speed of the firing platform retain the platform's velocity on top of their muzzel velocity, for a short period.

    Phasers are so short-ranged that I assume it doesn't make any difference... or that the phaser beam "bubbles" the firing ship's warp field for the split second that the phaser beam is in existance.

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    "I'd rather die standing than live on my knees..."
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  5. #5
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    You do have to watch out for:
    A) Maximum Phaser range. You can't start firing before you get in range, and then you only have a second or two to fire before you zip past.

    B) Bubble Dispersion. The Warp field is round, and this will cause the phaser beam to diffract away from the target in a cone shape, as it passes between regions with different values for the speed of light.

    [ascii img]
    .\./----phaser beam
    ._|_
    /.|.\--warp bubble
    ignore the dots
    [/ascii img]

    it would be just like pointing a laser through a water drop. The change in the index of refraction (change in local lightspeed) causes a lensing effect.

    I suppose you could spend an hour and refocus your phaser emitters to cancel the distortion, but you would then be defenceless at sublight

    C) The buildup of energy right in from of your warp field is going to cause some sort of distortion/instability. Roll to see if the chief engineer can handle it. Light damage to warp coils if you fail.

    ----------
    Note that it dosen't matter whether the phaser is pure EM energy or a particle beam. If it is a particle beam, the distortion will still be there, just a little smaller effect. It's all the same on that scale.

    [This message has been edited by suicide junkie (edited 04-04-2001).]

  6. #6
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    <font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Projectiles "fired" at lower muzzle velocity than the speed of the firing platform retain the platform's velocity on top of their muzzel velocity, for a short period.</font>
    There's a difference between Projectile like torpedoes and PHASER. The speed of the phaser in fix, the platform's velocity cannot affect its speed.



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    Im french so I can pronounce Jean-Luc Picard

  7. #7
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    Well, if a phaser beam travels at .99cc (fastest impulse possible I assume?) and the ship goes into Warp 1, any phaser fire would go right back into the ship since the ship is literally outrunning the phaser. :-)

    Just my .02¢

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    If the phaser beams traveled at the speed of light, I would agree with you... but they aren't "light", and only travel at .99c, and are made up of particles of some type, so who's to say that they don't retain the velocity of the firing ship?

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  9. #9
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    Thats like Sound... Sound doest retain velocity.

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    Im french so I can pronounce Jean-Luc Picard

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    Thumbs up


    Phoenix said:
    “It's been stated (Cannon-wise?) that phaser combat at warp speeds is nearly, if not totally, impossible, due to the fact that phaser particles travel at roughly 0.999c…”

    Phaser particles are luxionic particles, just like photons. They travel exactly at the speed of light. This is confirmed on page 125 of the TNG Tech Manual.

    Phoenix said:
    “…and once outside of the warp field the particles would return to relativistic speeds.”

    Correct a phaser beam traveling inside a warp field would move at light speed relative to the center of the warp field (not relative to observers outside the warp field). As the phaser beam travel out of the warp field its speed would drop to c.

    Phoenix said:
    “But one tactic that I came up with (vs. a relatively immobile target) is to travel towards your target at (for example) warp one while firing your forward phasers at the target. Now assuming that the phaser particles don’t "break down" too soon or the ship doesn’t turn, you’d have a build-up of phaser particles right in front of your ship. Now could this create a "Phaser Ram" like effect.”

    The Phoenix Maneuver! YES!
    This is a brilliant example of how techno-bable solutions should be done in ST. It uses ST physics and REAL physics to create an innovative way to solve a problem. No pseudo jargon, just plan common sense. What an idea! I’m definitely going to use the Phoenix Maneuver in my own campaign.

    Phaser particles can’t break down over time. Particles that naturally travel at the speed of light don’t experience ANY time so they can’t be affected by its passage.
    The limited range of phasers (300,000 km) is due either to beam spread (after it’s traveled that far the beam is spread over too great an area to cause significant damage), or time delay (It takes one second for a phaser beam to reach 300,000 km. By that time the target has moved)

    Phoenix said:
    “(i.e. In a fleet battle The U.S.S. Thunderchild is flying towards a Dominion ship facility at 3 million kilometers away goes to warp one and begins to fire phasers at the structure. At 20-30,000 (or less) drops to impulse and vectors off letting the 50 seconds [10 rounds, or 200 points of damage] of phaser build-up continue on to the station. . .Ouch)”

    Your math is wrong. At warp one (the speed of light) it would take the Thunderchild 10 seconds (not 50) to cross 3,000,000 km to reach the target. You need to start further out (assuming the spreading of the beam doesn’t prevent that)

    Phoenix said:
    “First- Does this sound possible?”

    Potential problems:
    1. The limited range of phasers (300,000 km) is due either to beam spread (after it’s traveled that far the beam is spread over too great an area to cause significant damage), or time delay (It takes one second for a phaser beam to reach 300,000 km. By that time the target has moved).
    If you assume that phaser beams spread too much after 300,000 km then the Phoenix maneuver is pointless. You can only get a maximum of one second of phaser beam built up before you reach the target. If you assume that time delay is the problem (the reason I use in my campaign) then the Phoenix maneuver will work just fine. (Though there would still be an upper limit to how much time the beam could be built up)
    2. You could experience sever frequency shift in the phaser as it exits the warp field. Possibly the shift would be bad enough that the phaser particles would lose lethality (just like a bunch of radio waves aren’t dangerous but a bunch of microwaves are). It would probably be GM digression as to whether or not this problem occurs.
    3. The warp field could distort the Phaser beam, change the direction or spreading the beam. At GM disgression the engineer could compensate for this. (make the difficulty suit your campaign). Or (at GM disgression) it might not be a problem at all. The warp fields don’t seem to mess up the navigational deflector beam or subspace radio.

    In short, there are some potential problems with the Phoenix Maneuver depending on how you look at Treknobable. But (and here’s the real point) it is WAY more believable and realistic then what the writers use for techno-bable solution on the show. I say go with it even if everything doesn’t quite add up. It’s better then converting a phaser and transporter into a structural integrity field generator.

    Phoenix said:
    “Second- If possible, how much damage would this do (I’m using a variation of the original ship rules, not the new SD rules. . .yet)?”

    LUG phaser rules don’t have much to do with real science (though they do work well in the game) so my degree in physics isn’t going to be able to help much.
    The general pattern I’ve notice in most RPGs (besides WEG’s Star Wars) is that every time the energy of a weapon is increased by 4 the “damage” is increased by 2. Take the factor of increase in energy, find the square root, and that will be the factor that the damage should be increased by. This is just a suggestion. YMMV.

    Phoenix said:
    “Third- How would you determine the Difficulty for this stunt?”

    It’s as difficult as you want it to be. I you want it to be easy then assume most of the potential difficulties don’t interfere. If you want it to be hard then assume that the engineer needs to make difficult rolls (or needs special non-replicatable equipment) to make it happen.

    Phoenix said:
    “Lastly- What’s everyone’s opinion of this type of this tactic?”

    Like I said I love it. I’ll use it in my own campaign.


    ------------------
    Just remember, even though it’s a vacuum,
    In space no one can hear you Clean.
    -J.T.

  11. #11
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    I had an idea that was a version of the Picard manuever. You would have to start at least 300,000 km away from your target, but not much further. Fire as many phasers as you want at the target, then go to warp towards you target, come out of warp within point blank range of your target( I would suggest beneath him), then fire a full spread of torps. What the target should see is you ship firing at him, then another ship coming out of nowhere and attacking him, you supplied your own diversion, the enemy commander cannot ignore a ship firing on him, this will put his attention in the wrong part of space for a second or two. This manuever requires coordinating helm (the manuever and going to warp) and tactical (2 multifire attacks). A command roll could add a bonus plus any help from sensors. I suppose this would work best againtst a target sitting in space. The first attack is a feint, the second is the real threat. When the ship comes out of warp, I'd say below the target and attacks, the target may not even see it until it's too late. What do ya'll think of this manuever? This would be a challenging DC. Bonuses from helm (flight control) and commander(starship tactics) This could give a bonus to the tactical officer, he's now at point blank range. Maybe a different DC determined by how close you want to get to a target. Short- challenging, Point blank- difficult. Any suggestions?

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  12. #12
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    Concerning the Anton214 maneuver:

    This trick has the exact same drawback that the Picard Maneuver has. It relies on the target not having subspaces (FTL) sensors. If the target has operational sensors then it will be able to follow the attacking ship continuously. Anton214’s Maneuver, like the Picard maneuver will only be effective against primitive targets (who haven’t developed subspace sensors) and damaged targets (whose subspace sensors are none functional).

    It is still a nice trick to keep in mind. Never know when the right circumstances will come up.

    ------------------
    Just remember, even though it’s a vacuum,
    In space no one can hear you Clean.
    -J.T.

  13. #13
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    <font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Centurion Noctis:
    Thats like Sound... Sound doest retain velocity.

    </font>
    Sound isn't made up of particles, either.

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    "I'd rather die standing than live on my knees..."
    Shania Twain

  14. #14
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    <font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Antonsb214:
    I had an idea that was a version of the Picard manuever. You would have to start at least 300,000 km away from your target, but not much further. Fire as many phasers as you want at the target, then go to warp towards you target, come out of warp within point blank range of your target( I would suggest beneath him), then fire a full spread of torps. What the target should see is you ship firing at him, then another ship coming out of nowhere and attacking him, you supplied your own diversion, the enemy commander cannot ignore a ship firing on him, this will put his attention in the wrong part of space for a second or two. This manuever requires coordinating helm (the manuever and going to warp) and tactical (2 multifire attacks). A command roll could add a bonus plus any help from sensors. I suppose this would work best againtst a target sitting in space. The first attack is a feint, the second is the real threat. When the ship comes out of warp, I'd say below the target and attacks, the target may not even see it until it's too late. What do ya'll think of this manuever? This would be a challenging DC. Bonuses from helm (flight control) and commander(starship tactics) This could give a bonus to the tactical officer, he's now at point blank range. Maybe a different DC determined by how close you want to get to a target. Short- challenging, Point blank- difficult. Any suggestions?

    </font>
    I would reverse it... fire the torpedoes first, then fire the phasers from clse range. This way you use each weapon effectively, as well as causing your own diversion.



    ------------------
    "I'd rather die standing than live on my knees..."
    Shania Twain

  15. #15

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    Anyone see the JemHadar ships attack Odo in his runabout. They were travelling at warp, and firing fairly close to parallel to their course.

    In the original TNG manual it suggested there was a 25% chance firing along your acceleration vector would work. In the DS9 tech manual they suggested using annular confinement beams, much like beaming at warp.

    But, why let physics disrupt good game play. I just tell them the beam travels at warp for the fraction of a second it takes for the beam to hit. The max range is one light second. If they are close enough to hit with phasers (a penalty for velocity seems appropriate), then the beam should hit before being appreciably slowed by physics or attenuated by the two warp fields (a reduction in damage perhaps?)

    Just a thought

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