Talk:ST weapon accuracy and range

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Kane Starkiller: The idea is to have this article populated with as many examples as possible so don't hesitate to add more examples or even edit existing text if you feel something is omitted or inaccurate.

Mike: Nowhere in "Conundrum" does Worf or anyone repeatedly state that the ship's range is 300,000 km.

Hey Ted, I saw where you started a whine-fest thread on SDN. I challenge you to come back to SFJN and debate the Star Trek verus Star Wars ranges. I also note that you edited out evidence of longer ranges by visual as well as dialog, especially on the "The Die is Cast" and "Arsenal of Freedom" sections.

Right. Me pointing out that something potentially interesting is happening is now a "whine fest"? Whatever... --Ted C 12:16, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The Wounded

I don't see any reason to think the battle between the Phoenix and a Cardassian warship takes place at sublight speeds.

  1. The target of the Phoenix, a Cardassian supply ship, is on an interstellar supply run. If unaware of the Phoenix, it will be cruising at warp just to get to it's destination in a reasonable amount of time.
  2. If the supply ship is aware of the Phoenix, it will be running at maximum warp, hoping to get away or buy time for a Cardassian warship to save its ass.
  3. The Phoenix will therefore be travelling at warp to intercept or catch the supply ship.
  4. The Cardassian ship will therefore be travelling at warp to intercept the Phoenix.

There is no logical reason for this battle to take place at impulse speeds. The subsequent battle takes place very quickly, with no drastic slowing of any of the ship's involved. If they seem to be moving slowly relative to each other, it would be because the tactical view on the screen is "scrolling" with them. --Ted C 12:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


Arsenal of Freedom

Ted, I've substituted a new reference to replace the YouTube video. You may wish to place it in as an image in the article rather than simply a reference link:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s1/1x21/arsenal123.jpg

This image clearly shows that the drone is firing from very far away as the beam disappears off to an infinity point it is so far away. --Mike 03:42, 20 July 2011 (EDT)

  • I've included the image, although I dispute your claim that it "clearly shows that the drone is firing from very far away", since the drone is never visible to the naked eye until it heats up in the planet's atmosphere, at which point it is clearly very close to the Enterprise. --Ted C 23:04, 20 July 2011 (EDT)

Come on, Ted, this is really stupid obvious. The beam is disappearing off to an infinity point. Given that the drone was easily 6-10 meters tall, you'd see it if it had become visible to fire in that scene.--Mike 00:20, 21 July 2011 (EDT)

  • It's not stupid obvious, because there's no evidence it became visible to fire. Until it entered the atmosphere, they never actually saw it, and it only briefly showed up on sensors. The superiority of the Minoan military technology was repeatedly noted, too, so it's no surprise that their cloak would be better. Further, this theory explains both the image and the fact that the drone had to follow the Enterprise into Minos's atmosphere to continue it's attack. As noted repeatedly, if it could have just shot at the Enterprise from thousands of km away, it wouldn't have needed to enter the atmosphere and expose itself. --Ted C 07:12, 21 July 2011 (EDT)


I think it is. Explain why the beam is disappearing off to an infinity point from the camera angle view of the scene in question. Even if we were to assume that the beam is widening and the drone is close-by, just simple photometrics show that it would still be more than 3 kilometers out from the E-D's position. This is easily 5-6 times the distance the drone was at when it followed the E-D into the Minosian atmosphere. On the other hand, if you assume that beam is disppearing off to infinity because the drone is really far away, at least 100 or more km given the beam's width on impact with the E-D's front shield arc, then you have to explain away why the drone chose to close distance with the E-D in the atmosphere later on. One way to explain it is that we know the drone was constantly shifting postion and it attacked the E-D first directly from the front, then later from a low aft angle. It is also possible, even highly probable that in order to confuse the E-D crew and to keep it from being fired on by the multiple weapons of the larger ship that it was shifting not only position in space, but distance as well. Being close-up, as we both know, reduces potential response time to an attacker.--Mike 11:43, 21 July 2011 (EDT)


  1. We don't know the width of the drone's emitter. This will certainly affect the distance at which it "vanishes" in any given perspective image.
  2. We're already looking at the scene from a considerable distance from the Enterprise, further reducing the perspective on the drone.
  3. We don't know how much of the "width" of the beam at any given point in the image is genuine width and how much is lens flare from its brightness. This is a constant problem when you try to scale by something highly luminous, and it is highly affected by camera settings.
  4. Since the drone can apparently fire without fully decloaking, it gains no advantage by closing the range more than absolutely necessary. Worf was trying to hit it by firing spreads of phasers and photon torpedoes in the direction of its contact before it disappeared from sensors again; that effort will inevitably become more difficult as the range increases.
  5. Following the target into the atmosphere and risking both exposure to enemy fire and friction damage when it would be easy to just maintain altitude and shoot the enemy from outside the atmosphere is stupid. If it can fire from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, the drone has an entire hemisphere of potential attack angles to use, so it has no shortage of unpredictable angles to use for its attack.

There's no way you're going to make this drone look like a sophisticated attacker by claiming that it could have shot at the Enterprise from thousands of kilometers away, but instead it chose to follow the E-D into the atmosphere at a distance of no more than a couple of kilometers. --Ted C 11:05, 22 July 2011 (EDT)

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