Linked contents
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The only way the design trade-off presented for Project Soyuz's guns makes any sense at all is if there's benefits to having more than two guns on target at once.
So ... I'm not entirely sure what to make of the "only two phasers firing" thing unless it's a very technical "you can only fire two at the same instance, but you can have more than two operating at maximum rate of fire by cycling between them".
So ... I'm not entirely sure what to make of the "only two phasers firing" thing unless it's a very technical "you can only fire two at the same instance, but you can have more than two operating at maximum rate of fire by cycling between them".
Last edited:
The tradeoff for the Soyuz was between an overlapping field of 2 sets of 2 phasers on the nose for a focused fire or a narrower field of overlapping phasers with a wider area of single phaser coverage.
Neither option allowed 3 phasers to overlap. It was a choice between 100% 2 phaser overlap or a small area of overlap and maximal single phaser coverage.
In Niven's work, the first Kzinti attack was defeated by an unarmed civilian survey vessel.
As military blunders go, that's pretty high up there.
It was a short story demonstrating that reaction rocket engines are de-facto weapons if you're dumb enough to stand in the way.
[x] Type-2 Focused Emitter
Shame, I really liked the smaller ship design, not something you see very often in Sci-Fi.
Shame, I really liked the smaller ship design, not something you see very often in Sci-Fi.
The main advantage is you need fewer phasers to reach 100% coverage with 2 phasers in every field. We could be looking at a world where we max out coverage with a mere 8 phasers. We could reach a point where 8 phasers is simply standard on every military ship larger than a frigate. It is not an unrealistic expense.
And I suspect the navy can do interesting things if, in the middle of a furball, regardless of where any Federation ship is, they all fire on a single target all in one moment. Movement becomes purely a matter of evasion and enemy evasion becomes a struggle with futility.
Individual ship captains focus on keeping their ships alive and evading. The admiral calls out enemy ships for focus fire deletion.
Last edited:
Honestly I would not really mind the gimballed emitter as a concept if it were justified with like, normal reasoning argued in a normal way. Because undeniably, the gimballed phasers do have some advantages! Coverage is nice to have, and so is being a bit cheaper. Honestly, cost is probably the strongest justification here.
But there's this tendency in quest arguments to instantly jump towards claiming your preferred option is just flat out 100% better, or concoct outlandish disaster scenarios which means the other option spells certain doom. We saw this with people insisting that the Focussed Emitters would be an instant death-trap, before it turned out that this is the canonical version the Federation went with on highly-successful cruisers like the Constitution. Or mathematical arguments based on flawed assumptions which fail to take into account for or at least acknowledge how it is seriously complicated by the ability of our ships to do things like turn, or the fact that only two phasers can fire at once.
It's not so much the point being argued for, which is not inherently unreasonable even if I tend to side more towards More Gun, and more the way it is being argued for. There is a basic failure to recognise that both options have major trade-offs and neither is necessarily "better" than the other.
But there's this tendency in quest arguments to instantly jump towards claiming your preferred option is just flat out 100% better, or concoct outlandish disaster scenarios which means the other option spells certain doom. We saw this with people insisting that the Focussed Emitters would be an instant death-trap, before it turned out that this is the canonical version the Federation went with on highly-successful cruisers like the Constitution. Or mathematical arguments based on flawed assumptions which fail to take into account for or at least acknowledge how it is seriously complicated by the ability of our ships to do things like turn, or the fact that only two phasers can fire at once.
It's not so much the point being argued for, which is not inherently unreasonable even if I tend to side more towards More Gun, and more the way it is being argued for. There is a basic failure to recognise that both options have major trade-offs and neither is necessarily "better" than the other.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Tell me, how much discussion have we generated over torpedo launchers? There wasn't even an option to do anything with them on the Selachii other than two forward.
But focused emitters would have changed a lot about our discussion. Singular emitters for wider coverage, a lone emitter on the aft potentially, etc.
I would argue this is a massive point in Gimbles favor, as you have way better time getting full coverage.
Big Ship=More phasers makes sense to me.
Because 2 forward torpedoes is so incredibly useful that we have stuck them on basically every ship in our fleet to the point they are simply a standard of design.
It was to the point we had outdated photon torpedoes being overshadowed by new phasors and we stuck forward torpedo tubes on anyway because we insisted that torpedoes would catch up.
Last edited:
Star Trek ships are more like fighter jets which can take a fuckton of hits without combat capability degradation than they are ships.
This militates heavily against the idea that you can somehow just "lurk" and simply not get hit against even large blindspots and relatively in maneuverable ships, because it becomes far easier to make that mistake which brings you into enemy firing arcs.
Meanwhile, it also means that you have to hit hard to actually force an enemy to break off
Which means that a lot of the time you'll want to bring the enemy into the narrow firing arc of your heavy weapons, and if you can't do that reliably you are either far more capable than the opponent or you're probably going to lose anyways.
You are finally centering your reasoning on an untested assumption. It would be just as fair to assume that solid-state or phased array phaser advances would magically take away the disadvantages of focused emitters.
On the other hand, it means that in formation you really want to focus fire from your entire formation on single enemy ships. It's a different tactic for fleet combat. With focused phasers you are essentially asking for dules, where ships square off and fight one another. With gimbal phasers I would expect more of a focus on fleet wide firing patters because everyone CAN, in fact, just shoot one guy and take him out of the fight.
[X] Type-2 Focused Emitter
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Having thought a bit more I don't think either option is remotely bad much less a trap, I think they'll just influence our future design options and aesthetic.
As for upgrades negating the downsides? Well, TNG-era and later arrays have pretty nuts coverage so it seems a reasonable assumption - for both.
As for upgrades negating the downsides? Well, TNG-era and later arrays have pretty nuts coverage so it seems a reasonable assumption - for both.
Sarpedon
Knight Errant
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Why chase after 100% when it serves no purpose in most cases and you could get good enough coverage with more hitting power? Forex given you mentioning 8 gimbals, you could fit 5 focused phasers for less cost, cover the main avenues of attack, and do half again as much damage where they overlap.
Gimbal phaser arrays!!!!!! 360 degree coverage for each phaser!
Ship flippers! Ship flippers!
Because there will be a lot of angles they DON'T overlap, and so you are going to have less time on charge for your phasers as you have to wait to bring an enemy into your field of fire. You are less able to coordinate fire with the rest of your fleet because you cannot simply pick a target out of a furball without reorienting. You are individually able to bring more fire on a single target in a single moment, but this becomes less valuable the more ships are in an engagement and can be done just as easily with photon torpedoes.
The difference between 12 and 16 damage in your forward arc is minimal when you are throwing 26 damage worth of photon torpedoes down in anyway.
And if 100% coverage is not needed then you can get away with 4 gimballed phasers and still get almost 100% double phaser arcs, with 135 degree coverage forward and back, for about half the cost of 5 focused phasers.
Last edited:
Butbutbut Sarp think of what would happen if we fought the invisible teleporting instant death attack ship that can be destroyed by a single glancing phaser hit! What if we fight this imaginary enemy with capabilities and weaknesses nobody bordering the Federation has?
[X] Type-2 Gimballed Cannon
I don't really care either way, but I'm going to go with this one because the archetypical Starfleet ship - the Explorer, whether that be a Constitution or a Galaxy or whatever else- is big and chonky. Yes, there are plenty of others, but the ship type that defines what Star Trek is for me could really use the area benefit because it's not a swift and nimble escort.
I don't really care either way, but I'm going to go with this one because the archetypical Starfleet ship - the Explorer, whether that be a Constitution or a Galaxy or whatever else- is big and chonky. Yes, there are plenty of others, but the ship type that defines what Star Trek is for me could really use the area benefit because it's not a swift and nimble escort.
I mean, bird of prey comes out of cloak with a pair of photon torpedoes is not that far off from this. It has no shields, no armor, and you have one moment before it fires.
We spent a lot of effort making the shark as fast as possible to deal with the limitations of current phaser design. Sure, we could double down on that, but making it so the next ship we design doesn't need to worry about that problem is also a valid option.
Last edited:
StriderInCosmos
Wanderer in the Worldsea
- Location
- Somewhere in... Terminal Dogma? I think?
I think we've largely reached the end of productive discussion on this line of thinking with @MJ12 Commando strawmaning and mocking people.
Last edited:
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
[X] Type-2 Gimballed Cannon