Projectile Weapons

[JALU3]

Question.
For Spacevessel sized projectile weapons . . . with warheads which don't contain explosives, how would one figure the the damage done by these weapons?

Say someone were crazy enough to mount M2s on a Greyhound (the Enterprise-E shuttle from Insurrection) . . . and did a straffing run on a Type 6 Shuttlecraft . . . what damage would that do?

[C5]

I'd say it depends a lot on whether the shuttlecraft has its shields up or not. Shields are big forcefields, and I don't remind having ever seen a forcefield fail after being hit by a physical object (correct me if I'm wrong). So in the case of a shield up, I think the damages would be next to nil, unless maybe if you spend some time pounding the shuttle in the same exact spot (no more strafing run, then).
On the other hand, if the shields are down, I guess you can do much more damage than that - we have ocasionally seen unprotected shuttles being damaged by meteors, IIRC. So in that case the bullets could be quite effective as to pierce the hull (provided of course they are made of a sufficiently strong alloy).

As for the numbers crunching behind that, I have to confess that I have no ideas so far.

[JALU3]

I am just asking the question, due to a discussion I am having with another member in the Spacedock forum, and am looking at the communities opinion on the use of projectile weapons.

For instance, the shields for the Borg Drone proved ineffective for the .45 ACP rounds fired by the Thompson Submachinegun.

[Tobian]

By their nature deflection shields of a starship are designed to cope with high speed impacts, often of particles, traveling faster than light, at warp, so even a gauss weapon might be pointless unless it can throw something BIG enough.

With regards to the Borg shields 1) those weren't bullets, they were forcefields, with the holographic illusion of bullets, so technically it was an energy weapon and 2) The personal shields of the Borg are not very effective UNLESS they adapt, then they are usually invulnerable. Since Picard didn't take the gun out and shoot more than 6 of them dead, we don't know if they couldn't adapt!

[C5]

Interesting point. But then, the Borg seem more vulnerable to physical attacks (as proved by Data twisting their neck or Worf slashing the Borg's arm). Maybe there are different kind of forcefields actually, some being more tuned to stop energy attacks than physical ones. But I guess a ship's shields are supposed to stop both of them, or maybe that's the difference between navigational shields and combat shields (I expect a starship always have some shields up to stop the occasional stray comet while moving at impulse speed, but nevertheless the Captain has to order shields up when a combat situation arises, so there must be another type).

I have to point that it's been a while since I haven't read Spacedock, so I might be musing on something that has already been well documented somewhere.

[Tobian]

I suspect they would avoid the occasional 'stray comet' LOL As I said - enough mass, and it would hurt! The issue with Gauss guns is there ain't much mass, relative to regular space junk, which could be travelling at similar speeds!

I don't thing either of those are evidence of any sort of vulnerability: We never see them get performed more than a few times, and Borg do take a while to adapt, we forget they have that flaw as much as they have that strength: a couple of Borg have to die before they adapt, but that's acceptable for Borg!

I think it's safe to say Borg personal shields are massively lower power, compared to a starship shield, so hence before they adapt, they are fairly weak to powerful weapons: a Borg's internal power, no matter their technological advantage is always going to be significantly weaker than a forcefield plugged into mains power! This is always the issue with any kind of personal shielding, how do you power it over a large diffuse area, as compared to, say, a phaser, which has only to concentrate it at one point.

Looking at Borg technology, their shields seem to function more like enhanced structural integrity fields than regular shields, so yes, being able to bleed off the energy throughout your shield conduits (those little pipes they have all over hehe) means they are probably less vulnerable to energy weapons, and you're probably recharging them! Whereas physical attacks are different in that sense, but I do say this - do you honestly believe that the Borg would not change tactics if people started flinging swords at them? I mean really? They are vast, monolithic and slow moving zombies, but one thing they are not is dumb! I very much suspect that the Borg have significant advantage with respects to energy weapons so drones, as portrayed in TNG and Voyager, because they are specifically adapted drones, with respects to energy weapons in general, but if they are continuously fighting physical weapons, they would do something else, not just keep getting a licking You'd just start seeing new models of heavy shielded armoured drones, for front rank fighting. it has to be stated too - fighting a Borg one on one is also nearly suicide, unless you are a hero character anyway, as they will probably inject you with nanotubules, before they go down, then you are f*****

Damn I have missed trek arguments hahaha

[JALU3]

Although this is straying of my original subject . . . why do they not have a projectile weapon that fires nanites which conduct the assimulation in the first place? Do they weigh so much that they cannot be fired as a projectile and survive an impact on the outer membranes of their intended targets? Or have they not been designed light enough so they can be considered an airborne capable . . . much the way a bacteria is?

But back on the subject at hand . . . the navigational shields are specificaly designed to block small density objects from colliding with the vessel at high speeds (which is any speed when you are measuring in c (speed of light)). However, there must be some logical damage or power drain when significant amounts of projectiles come at a ship . . . otherwise why avoid astroid belts with astroids no larger then a cubicle?

[Tobian]

Haha yes back on topic. But that's the thing - flying at an asteroid field with thousands of significantly large objects (a cubicle as you put it) at significant fractions of C is NOT the same thing as having modern ballistic sized shells fired at you. - as I have said, if they fired something big enough at you then yes it would be effective - firing chunks of stone the size of a house, from a rail canon would probably do a dent to a shield, since a ship would not, in the inverse, fly through an asteroid belt close to the speed of light, for that reason, but how many ships could do that!

largely speaking why most weapons do damage is because they do exotic effects the shields cannot cope with, or they output so much raw power, very coherently, it overloads the shields, or overwhelms them in that localised section. The Devore neutron beam, and the Dominion Phased Polaron canon both did exotic effects that the Federation technology couldn't cope with, and in the case of the Species 8472 Bioships, it was both very powerful and exotic.

The problem we have here is of orders of magnitude. It's awkward to do in the icon system, because there's no minimum threshold but comparing the output of a warp core, or an antimatter explosion against your shield, against being hit by a fast moving lump of metal is just orders of magnitude different. It's not that physical weapons aren't damaging, it's just compared to trek weapons they are tinker toys!

You also have the issue of navigational deflectors. I'd generally say if something can be stopped by the navigational deflector then the tactical shields don't take any damage at all. With enough effort and mass either can be worn down, but the issue is here of the battlefield, and when something is doing less damage than the minimum unit of damage in the game

I don't know if any of you have seen the latter series of SG1 (season 9-10) but a good analogy comes when you see the Earth ships fighting against the Goa'uld and Ori motherships. The Earth ships use rail guns, which fire a continuous stream of large projectiles at the mother ships. To be fair, against the goa'uld ships they can do damage, but only after quite a long period and a LOT of matter being fired! However against the Ori ships - errr is something tickling me?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Although this is straying of my original subject . . . why do they not have a projectile weapon that fires nanites which conduct the assimulation in the first place?

The Borg are more than drones; presumably there needs to be some sort of larger Borg infrastructure to integrate the biological components with the rest of the Collective–interplexing beacons, manufacturing capabilities of ships, stuff like that. The nanites probably just provide an interface between the technology and the biology, getting the drone ready for implantation rather than being the Borg equivalent of the Black Oil.

Also, patterning their behaviour off of grey goo probably doesn't match Borg goals. After all, they're kind of discriminating.

[Tobian]

haha, yes this is true, or presumably seven of nine could have manufactured an entire Borg cube using her Nanites

and yes Borg are actually quite picky, that's a good point, they do 'use' people in a pinch, but they like to chose good drones when they can.

[Captain Otto]

I think the main point the discussion (at least with the projectiles) boils down to something like this:

Used against Shields Projectile Weapons are not powerful enough to penetrate them and individual projectiles deliver normally not enough damage to overload the shields. Unless the projectiles exceed a certain size that is... but throwing Projectiles the size of a bus at a star ship is somewhat ridiculous
The other Option is throwing enough projectiles at the shields to overload them.
A withering hailstorm of a couple billion projectiles probably does the job nicely.
Just kidding.
But with shields active rail guns certainly will not even dent the ship.

[tonyg]

It is sort of curious that in ICON, one of the most effective weapons, according to the game mechanics, is a shuttlecraft ramming at top speed.

Rules-wise, there are fewer tactics that could be as dangerous as lauching all the ship shuttles and flying them into a target (maybe via remote).


Mathmetmatically, tghe kinetic energy of a shuttle impact at high impulse/low warp speeds makes the yield of a photorp look like a firecracker.


I guess that's why tractor beams have a "reverse" setting. Just push all those projectiles away.

[Tobian]

Yes, but a shuttle has all of the explosive capability of a few photon torpedoes! So yes, it might indeed be a desperate tactic, but it could work, but the larger the object the more likely they can get a lock on it and push it away. As a general tactic though, it's pretty wasteful of shuttles!

It has it be said that against kinetic objects that aren't shielded (given that shuttles and photon torpedoes have shields of one sort or another) could simply be 'caught' by sweeping tractor beams projected from the ship - and actually I do believe that there are low-yield tractor emitters built in to the navigational deflectors, which is how they sweep 'larger' particulates out of the way of the ship, by nudging them out of the way. This in a way could perhaps then create a system for the mechanics.. the tactical or ops officer programs the deflector array to deflect the projectile ballistic objects away, with a difficulty based on how fast or large they were, and mitigate any damage if they succeeded on the test?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Shuttles might be easier to shoot down, too...

[JALU3]

So given that the Navigational deflectors are designed to push away or shield against incoming ballistic objects that are heading towards the targetted vessel . . . and since they have an automatic degree of success if they are operational . . . and since they are automatic and don't normally require a roll to succeed . . . would one have to roll to successfully deflect ballistic objects if they are coming in mass . . . or are the considered automatically deflected . . . how would one decide?