In "The Balance of Terror." The Romulan Plamsa torpedo seemed to grow larger the further it got from the Bird of Prey, and an enemy ship could outrun, but just barely.
Think of it as starting small, and rapidly growing to full size, and then gradually getting smaller the further it flies without hitting anything. Also it's theorized that the Plasma Torpedo got caught in the Enterprise's warp bubble since it makes sense, as opposed to it flying in warp speed on it's own.
In DS9 there is mention of physical components for the torpedo, and in TOS the Enterprise has to be at warp to outrun it. My guess is the torpedo 'casing' is on the inside, functioning largely like a photon torpedo, but with a magnetic containment device that holds a super compressed plasma shell around the torpedo, in TOS it was very basic and later in trek it increased in quality. Upon impact, that field is dropped, probably dropped from the front to channel the blast foward, but the sudden release of compressed plasma would do the damage, and if it gets thru shields it burns thru most physical matter. The dissipation could be explained as the plasma provides power for the guidance casing, as the power avalible drops the field expands to reduce the power required for containment.
When discussing plasma weapons, the question must be asked, "a plasma of what?". The vessel firing the weapon must carry some sort of matter to be ionized into a plasma. Essentially you would need "plasma ammo". Xenon is a frequent suggestion since it is the heaviest of the noble gasses.
Modern High Explosive Anti-Tank weapons use copper to form the plasma jet. It doesn't have to start off as a gas, you can also create plasma from superheating minerals/metals.
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 True that it doesn't have to be a gas. Theoretically any matter will form a plasma when heated to ionization, hence the question "a plasma of what?"
It could be more or less whatever you need. Remember in Trek that Replicators are commonplace and the universe at large is in a post-scarcity state. You can literally take waste material from the ship (or the crew), and use the raw matter to turn it into almost anything by reconstituting it's molecular structure in near any form. So a Replicator attached to the weapon itself could easily be tuned to specifically emit a quantity of Xenon, or whatever they use, contain it in an electromagnetic field and ignite it. This could work for both torpedoes and beams, just by altering the delivery system.
Couldn't it also make sense to have a "conventional" torpedo that uses a power source to contain plasma around it (generated by the ship before firing) to allow a guidance system and boost range by constantly producing the magnetic fields to keep the plasma from dispersing? I feel like this would also allow the torpedo to travel faster.
Wet navy torpedos do damages due to the incompressibility of water,this directes the explosives forces in to the ship which being filed with air can not stop the explosive force form entering the hull's air filed space allowing water to flood in the space or breaking the spine of the ship splitting it in half thus sinking it.
If I may suggest, admitting we are discussing fiction of course, I have aways believed that the plasma torpedoes had a physical core, a device to generate the containment field and guide it. Imagine that the ship generate the plasma and then infuse it inside the core containment’s field just as it launches. Then the propulsion is a combination of plasma being vented from controled “holes” oppened in the containment field with subspace fields (to reduce overall inertial mass). So, that explains why the PT looses potency as it travels, and explains why the plasma does not spread in the vacuum. Of course it’s a shame the writers seemed to have forgotten all about PT from TNG show on.... we could have seem the concept better refined.
they get mentioned several times in DS9, and even appear as Kazon weapons in VOY. dialog in DS9 implies a physical weapon. their visuals are just similar to photon torps but with different colors.
Regarding your physics, the magnetic field collapsing is NOT the entire electromagnetic field collapsing its simply the excited state that collapses. Also gravity does NOT cause the electron to orbit the nucleus indeed it's basically neglible here. Its electro static attraction that keeps the electron near the nucleus except in the case of plasma which is so hot that the electons spend much of their time being hit off the atoms. Its likely that the main energy source when the plasma collides with a starship is the electron affinity released when the plasma cools back down espacilly if the plasma is a heavy atom like uranium. Hope that helps! Alternatively the 'additional damage' caused could be some kind of fusion interaction between the plasma and the other ships duranium hull.
In essence Ummdustry is correct as gravity is considered weaker than literally the Strong and weak nuclear forces, one of which are overridden in plasma states, however once stripped of electrons the only two forces left on the governing of matter is the strong and electromagnetic, the latter we have extensive information on how to manipulate even if we fundamentally still have no idea what it is. Gravity becomes an issue if you have several googles of metric tons of the stuff. Yeah remember Google is a measurement stat.
That is a good point about their being almost no risk of harming yourself with your own weapons. I would think if someone was to apply post 24th Century advancements to Plasma Weapons they could make for a very interesting weapon - if wrapped in a warp sustainer field or even generated directly by the warp core into a prefire chamber and then beamed directly to the target in whatever shape is required. I like the idea of a Torpedo being a semi-solid ball on the end of a Tractor beam chain used to knock around a ship until it's shields collapse and then the full energy is released to splash on to the enemy's hull.
So much better, I'd like to see how you describe the Tau'ri 304 since its one of the few ships in syfy with a bizzare mix of technology. Though I really wish the size was retconned to what it really is and that's 680 meters in leangth this has been perfectly consistent throughout the franchise but everyone just assumed it was 225 meters. Until Trek yards compared the actual CGI model to the Enterprise E CGI model and discovered its a lot bigger then previously thought and makes a lot more sense. Sorry for rambling, keep up the good work.
According to the FASA Romulan Ship Recognition Guide, there is only a single plasma launcher on the Winged Defender Cruiser type one, though there are also eight beam weapons, four of which face forward. The type two carries no plasma launchers but does have two forward-facing photon torpedo launchers. Nice video.
Indeed, my 'retconned' version is at least a type 3. The type 1 could have a bank of disruptors in the legs but no doubt the weapons pods would look quite different., and you could put the plasma launcher just under the 'head'. My headcannon: perhaps an early design meant for photon torpedoes, but due to technical difficulties while the hull chasis was ready, the photon launchers were NOT, but they were ready by the time of the type 2. And then somewhere along the line later (perhaps turn of 24th century) we get the version you see in this video, which could fit either in those lower weapons pods.
The split version is from Star Fleet Battles (SFB), a semi-licensed version of starship combat that follows an alternate timeline, and thus not canon. Paramount has pretty much disavowed the Star Fleet Universe (SFU), but cannot abolish it due to an "in perpetuity" license granted in the seventies for starship blueprints. This version of plasma torpedo has a small physical device inside the torpedo that maintains the containment field for the plasma and provides guidance to the target. It consumes plasma energy to sustain propulsion at a high warp speed, thus weakening the warhead the farther it goes. They come in a variety of sizes, and all but the smallest can be split inside the arming chamber into smaller warheads, each with its own guidance/propulsion device, but at a much higher cost of energy. 'Standard' plasma torpedoes in SFB lack the enveloping feature, but they can be overcharged with extra plasma in the arming chamber, also with a much larger energy cost, and this version is equipped with an enveloping detonation system. Further, all of these versions can be degraded by phaser-fire, but with only limited effect. With no physical form to impact, most of the phaser energy passes right through the torpedo, only partially disrupting the containment fields. Plasma tactics vary between using standard torpedoes to break (or penetrate) a facing shield for follow-up with direct-fire weapons, or using enveloping torpedoes to grind all the shields down, making them easier to penetrate with later attacks. Shotguns are typically used to deal with smaller units attacking in waves. A single torpedo would be vast overkill for a single fighter, while leaving the others unharmed. Shotgunned torpedoes can take out anywhere from 2-5 fighters, depending on the size of the original arming chamber and energy used. A very versatile weapon system, but as in the video, one that is very slow to arm, is very large and heavy, and can consume very large amounts of energy. If the initial torpedo(es) do not destroy or significantly damage the target, the plasma-armed ship is very vulnerable to counter-attack.
+jeffprime To follow up on what Jeff said, in SFB the plasma torpedo has the longest arming sequence of any of the heavy weapons. A Disruptor (used by the Kzinti, Lyrans, Klingons, Tholians, and others) can be fired every turn. Most other heavy weapons such as the Photon Torpedo can only be fired every other turn (it takes two turns to fully arm). The Plasma Torpedo takes *three* turns to arm, with two exceptions: (1) Type-D torpedoes (the weakest) don't need arming, but they are in limited supply (4 per launcher, with 1 or 2 reloads). They're used primarily for anti-fighter defense, since they can be fired one per launcher per turn. (2) Type-G, type-S, and type-R can be "fast-loaded" as a Type-F (the second weakest) in just two turns. I could be wrong about the type-G, but the S and R can definitely be fast-loaded. In regards to "shotgunning": It takes the whole three turns to arm, but a Type-G can be fired as two Type-F torpedoes; a type-S can be fired as three type-F torpedoes; and a type-R can be fired as five type-F torpedoes.
Modern HEAT(high explosive anti tank) weapons use a plasma jet that projects out anywhere from 0.3 to 0.9 meters from a shaped charge warhead...made from Cu(copper). The destructive force of the plasma can be disrupted by an explosion coming outwards from the armor(hence why they developed ERA...explosive reactive armor).
The plasma torpedoes are possibly the most mysterious "major power" weapons i have ever seen in ST (Borg not included for reasons). This is augmented by a relatively small exposure they have in the shows and the movies. AFAIK they were only used in the original series, and then only by the Romulans (who by the 24th century converted to photon torpedoes). They were present in some games though, and this is where most of out info comes from. In the series, aside from the name, we can establish three major properties: 1. They are very powerful and damaging, both the shields and ships; 2. They are very slow to rearm; 3. They appear to have limited range. Secondary canon, games and inspired SF works seam to offer some explanation for all of these, but i'll try to stay "in lore". Do note, this entirely my interpretation, based on very little information. I. I think plasma torpedoes are in fact "torpedoes" and not plasma pulses or beams. The reason why i think this, is that in ST we do meet species that use forced plasma cannons and plasma energy weapons, and on every occasion, these are not referred as torpedoes. By exclusion, this would imply the Romulan plasma torpedoes are actually powered, guided and propulsed warheads of some sort; II. Their very short range implies they lose their yield over time for some reason. On screen their firing sequence looks like a slowly growing blob of shimmering semi transparent gas (which fits the plasma attribute). Why would this cloud of plasma (presumably around a guided and propulsive core) lose it's damage potential over time? Two main reasons, wither the plasma "leaks" over time and the torpedo dissipates, or the plasma simply cools down as it travels the vacuum of space, the gas normalizes, stops being plasma and then leaks again. Or maybe it's both; III. Why are they so powerful? Aside from being apparently rather large in diameter when fully charged, they would have to be either very hot (much hotter then the increase in temperature that a material would go through as a result of gamma ray bombardment - like when a photon torpedo detonates), or they would have to possess some other means of destruction. We have arguments for both of these hypothesis'. The fact that they take so much time to rearm, means they take a huge power drain on the ship systems. This in conjunction with a cloaking device, would make them almost exclusively ambush weapons (which they kinda appear to be in TOS). So maybe it is just a very large, very very VERY hot "ball" of gas. However, there is another kind plasma that most ships have and that isn't either the electro plasma used by the power transfer system or the fusion plasma generated by the impulse engines. And that is warp plasma. The plasma that runs through the warm coils. This is by far the most powerful plasma used aboard a conventional star ship and it comes almost directly from the matter - antimatter reaction in the warp cores. I'm not sure if this plasma possesses any other properties (the warp fields are actually generated by the coils, the plasma is just a power source), but if this is the plasma used for the torpedoes, it would explain 2 very important things. First, it takes quite a bit of time and fuel to generate it if you run out of it. This means it could only be used for short periods of time and you won't be pushing high warp while using the torpedoes. Second, it may explain why they weren't used in the TNG era. By this time the Romulans converted to singularity cores to power their ships. This means no matter anti matter generated plasma. Their warp coils must still be powered in some way, but are never shown how. Any way, sorry for the long post....but the video got me thinking and i let myself go :D
+ilejovcevski79 I suggest you read the reply from jeffprime further down. He explains why plasma torpedoes get weaker over time, at least in the non-canon game called Star Fleet Battles (which is based on TOS). However, I will say that you are almost exactly right!
It is a ball of plasma, held in a force field generated by a small robotic torpedo. Thus, it can track a target, but loses energy based on distance. Imagine a small probe, generating a force field filled with plasma. The plasma torpedo is bigger than a photon torpedo, so the plasma energy is spread across more shield emitters. Thus, the plasma blankets a shield, whereas photon torpedoes and phasers have a smaller blast radius.
Plasma would be a large positively charged ball of matter. Extremely hot. Upon impact it could try to rob nearby electrons from anything it touches/melts through. This would disrupt power systems. Electricity would be arcing everywhere, grounding to the plasma ball. It would look like Star Wars ion cannon.
In Star Trek Online it's described as plasma torpedos melts the targeted ships hull, leaving behind a lingering plasma fire which deals damage over time after the explosion.
DS9 establishes that plasma torpedoes have at least some form of physical ammunition, as the Romulans were stated to be stockpiling plasma torpedoes on one of bajor's moon's in the episode "Image in the Sand". the same episode establishes the weapons used high concentrations of trilithium. this suggests they are a physical projectile of some kind, and likely were even in TOS. since trilithium is known from other episodes to be a very power explosive (TNG's "starship mine") as well as be able to effect stellar plasma reactions (Generations, DS9 "by inferno's light", in both cases where they were part of a weapon capable of causing a star's fusion to collapse destroying the star). at a guess, the weapon uses trilithium to amplify the power of plasma (likely created from a fusion or M/AM reaction). the version seen in TOS "balance of terror" was probably an early model with more of an area effect design. when we see them mentioned again during the romulan attack on the enterprise in TOS "The Deadly years" their visual effect and damage is more in line with the federation's photon torpedoes. the DS9 dialog implies that the photon torpedo like weapons we see the romulans use in TNG and DS9 were supposed to be Plasma Torpedoes. interestingly, Diane Duane in her Rihannsu novels (which are sorta side canon to even the other trek novels) refers to the old plasma torpedoes as using "matter implosion technology" in the novel "the empty chair" which is described as using energy fields to weaken molecular and atomic bonds. since one of the properties of real world plasmas is the dissociation of molecular bonds in matter due to the ionic properties of the plasma (above and beyond that which the thermal energy alone would account for.) this would seem to be a reasonable interpretation of Spock's claim in "balance of terror" about the plasma enveloping the target than imploding it.. the plasma was configured to weaken hull metals, and set up for area effect to surround the target in plasma, causing the hull integrity to weaken and the ships own mass to cause it to collapse. presumably the later versions switched to a more limited area effect in order to inflict damage in a shorter time, at the expense of a more confined damage area.
Regarding physics, plasma weaponry always over-estimated, and magically powered up. However, in reality they would be ineffective because, they would have brutally low energy conversion efficiency. So plasma is basically a soup of free ions, so basically contains nuclei and electrons. The reason is why don't these fall back to the normal matter state is that the electrons have such a high kinetic energy (heat motion) that they could escape much farther away from their nuclus (meters away), than their low temperature counterparts ("this is why free") (yes i know electromagnetic has an infinite range but it has an inverse square law). So this is the plasma, a pretty simple concept, without any magic. To get a good understanding of the basic behaviour of plasma, without external electromagnetic interaction, it is just an ideal gas (the same ideal gas concept as in thermodynamics). What makes the behaviour of plasma extraordinal is its interaction with electromagnetism, because of its free, charged components (it's simple to understand the behaviour of one charged body, but when you have "zillions" of charged particles, then it becomes overwhelming). Under electromagnetic effect, it shows a brutally complex behaviour, but still there isn't any such magic like in star trek, and of course its behaviour can be infered to the dynamics of charged bodys under electric or magnetic field. Gravity doesn't plays any role in plasma dynamics. Nevertheless, the overall plasma can be ionised or neutral (when you have equal negative and positive charge in matter). So, in order to get a reasonable range for plasma weapons, you have to keep together your plasma before it hits the target, you have to create a self-sustaining containment field. Because without such field it would disperse in space like any other normal gas would. A practical way, do this via electromagnetism, like in tokamak reactors, but mother nature also done a nice example for such a field: ball lightening. However such containment field is very volatile, when it disrupts, the plasma disperse like an ordinary gas. And of course can contain low-density plasma. Plasma weapons in sci-fi are just catapults of plasma balls, that throw them at the targets. There are plasma beam weapons but they are much more senseless then their "ball thrower" counterpart, because these cannot have containment field, thus they have to collimate the velocity of the particles of the plasma at a magical effectivity to reach reasonable range (it is not impossible because there are some example in nature for plasmabeams: relativistic jets of black holes or neutron stars, but incredibly difficult), otherwise the plasma just disperse. So when the such plasma ball from a weapon collides into solid material, its containment field disrupts, and the material within the ball just splash on the solid object. But it is not just figuritively splash, it literally splash, like a water bomb would splash, except it wont remain on the solid object for long because it woud immediately escape into space (it would be tha same as you would throw a gas ball at a wall). No magical enveloping effect, no magical energy releasing collapse, no magical subatomic collapse effect. (Of course the containment field store energy, but it completely converts into the kinetic energy of the particles.) These plasma projectiles have two type of destructive effect: kinetic effect, and thermal effect. The fun thing is that if you want to augment one effect, you have deteriorate the other. For example you want higher kinetic effect, to do a larger punch on the hull, then the best way to do, is fire it at higher velocities, because increasing the mass of the projectile is not option due to the nature of the containment field. However the thermal effect of the projectile is depends on the temperature and the time for heat exchange which is the time duration when the plasma matter contacts the solid object. The faster plasma projectile the less time for heat exchange. The greater thermal effect, the lower kinetic effect. This is why it has an awful energy conversion efficiency, because the most of the heat goes into waste, not in the target, and the kinetic effect is diffuse (not like a wedge shaped solid projectile). Gas balls are pretty awful projectiles, they cannot produce concentrated forces, like solid projectiles. However if you have a great amount of gas in your balls (that is inachievable in plasma weapons, or senselsess to achive), that is concentrated, then you can achive an effective shockwave when released, this is what high explosives does at a much cheaper cost and higher efficiency. So plasmaweapons basicly just can create a spectacular fireworks. A nice eyecandy, nothing more. They are useless in atmosphere because drag force immediately disrupts the containment field. And pretty easy to defend against a plasma projectile: just throw in front of it a some material with high heat capacity, like water. The ball will disrupt, the water will absorb a large amount of heat and also it will turn into gas (if the ball has enough heat energy) and creating an explosion, which is further scatter the remains of of the plasma ball, and catalisate its dispersion. Then of course it is a good question that what will be plausible weapons of future. I would answer, the good old laser weapons (or any kind of collimated photon emitter technology), and the railgun. In terms of mechanical destruction, the railgun undoubtly wins, because the kinetic energy of the projectile completely converts into the irreversible deformation of the target object's material, if it don't fly through the target. It can cause a highly concentrated destruction. Thus achieving the highest possible energy conversion efficiency of destruction. However if you afraid of the projectile just flies through the target, then pick expansive munitions, these ensures that the material of the pojectile wont escape out of the object, before it converts its energy into destruction. However collimated photon weapons shouldn't be underastimated. These devastate by concetrated thermal effects: overheats a small portion of the target, which will explode. Thus much of the power converts into waste heat. However has some serious advantage. Its projectiles are the fastest things in the universe, the target cannot percept the firing, before the impact of the projectile. If you choose wisely the frekvency, then you can minimize the the energy loss and scattering of the beam in a certain medium (air, water) or directly attack the inner parts of the without wasting much energy on the outer shell (this depends on the target's inner structure). But, if you want a plausible, and effective weapon, that uses plasma for its destructive effects, then I suggest nowadays thermonuclear warheads. These warheads converts their material nearly instantenously into superheated, superpressured plasma ball (and of course radiation of many kind), and causes destruction via the shockwave effect of the expansion of the plasma ball (and of course thermal radiation). Brutal, and effective, but it is low at energy conversion efficiency (much of the energy is wasted).
Botond Kalocsai You are talking bullshit "In reality they would be ineffective because, they would have brutally low energy conversion efficiency." You are using conversion level of our reality and timeline, you fucking idiot, that is not the case of their time-line, you idiot. And laser-weapons are shit because you can deflect it with reflexive-coating.
I don't have my reference books anymore and the memory isn't as good as it once was so apologies for what may be a basic question. How SMALL could a warp engine be made? In any generation of the ST universe? I know there is a warp field generator in the photon torp casing, but no drive. I was thinking use a small M-AM generator to power both a warp drive and a super-powerful plasma containment field to counter the slow speed and range of the plasma torpedo. It would also have the effect of adding a small kinetic element to the attack.
Hmm, so something along those lines COULD be done in a relatively small volume. But as others have pointed out in the comments, shields have gotten to be extremely effective -vs- plasma weapons.
Balance of Terror kind of establishes the Plasma Torpedo has tracking device (unless it's attracted magentically to the Enterprise) because otherwise the Enterprise while going at full reverse warp could have diverted their course .000001 degrees and the torpedo would have missed. Also ST TMP, V'ger's torp has a guidance system in one of the releases. The scene is cut during most versions where Sulu calls out evasive maneuvers. I'm also assuming the Klingon's fire a Photon Torpedo at the V'ger Torp having previously detonated Romulan torps.
A V-30 Winged Defender heavy cruiser carries a 28-pt. long range "plasma weapon' or 2 RP-3 aka 10-pt. torpedoes with 4 V-9 heavy disruptors via ST:TRPG......Ironically my starship Capt. who also commanded a Chandley class heavy frigate used a maneuver called "the Morrison Maneuver"(his namesake) where he basically "parried" (like a shield blocking a sword attack) the plasma weapon off of 2 shields(stbd and fwd) and then fired his 2 fwd photons with phaser array into the Defender blowing down its shields, doing severe damage and crippling it........self-destruction iminent!
Just an idea, the reason they fell out of favor is because shields became too effective against them as the technology advanced. They couldn't advance plasma torpedoe tech because it's just…well, plasma. At the time of TNG, ships could skim the surface of stars (and the Enterprise went inside after a software patch to its shields) so obviously "modern" shields are more resistant to plasma. Maybe the magnetic effects are automatically delt with in modern ships. You can make photon torpedoes more powerful by sticking more antimatter in it. You can't make plasma torpedoes more resistant to magnetic shielding. In effect, they become obsolete. As a side note, I wonder if there's ever been a mix up on a Federation ship where humans, using English, order some plasma to be delivered, and the doctor is looking at a magnetic container full of superheated gas, while the engineer, in confusion, is holding bags of pale yellow blood components.
LMAO, yeah I would agree that eventually the limitations of a plasma torpedo compared to a photon torpedo, especially range and speed, would explain why the Romulans liberally use photon torpedoes by the 24th century instead.
As long as you have functional shield technology plasma is by far the weakest weapon available. Without shield technology the damage yield to tech required is staggering.
@@steelgreyed Yep, and mostly because plasma is easily dealt with even by the most primitive of electromagnetic shielding. Even lasers are more effective against shields.
All that being said...given the advanced alloys that a starship such as the Enterprise is made of, shouldn't it NOT burn up in an M class planet's atmosphere? I mean c'mon! Even our current ceramic shuttle's tiles survive reentry, how did the Enterprise burn in the Genesis atmosphere then-when just a couple decades earlier it survived going around the sun at incredibly close range to travel back in time to prevent history from changing?
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 Well the Enterprise was probably not burning that much. The re-entry burning effect happens even if the object is not burning. It's just the atmosphere heating up. Also the fact that half of the ship saucer had been blown off exposing the interior did not help much defending it against the heat of entering a planet atmosphere.
I don't understand how relatively low powered electromagnetic fields (or grav/tractor fields or whatever) can be used to shape and direct plasma while relatively high powered electromagnetic fields (or grav/tractor fields or whatever) such as those in a ship's deflector shields cannot. Plasma weapons should bead and flow around shields like water poured on an oiled surface.
in physics their are more the 4 states in normal life about 6 and a bunch in esoteric places. I like the ones with color change (it doesn't actually change color just a way to describe it to the uninitiated) most of the 'esoteric' ones are theoretical but some have been proven.
A plasma torpedo that is maintained and even guided over distance by a... Torpedo. Go figure. You only have a limited number of shots but you have more range. But then and standard Anti-matter charge is just as effective. As a close range weapon, Plasma weapons are one of the best weapon to have, that and a Railgun/Gauss cannon.
I feel it’s more likely that the plasma torpedo have a physical core, a small probe with its own Propulsion, and just enough battery to sustain a magnetic containment field. When the torpedo hits, the core probe get destroyed, so the plasma expands from the containment field and cause severe damage.
Plasma torps have been shown adjusting flight path to follow targets. They must have some sort of propulsion system which can steer and accelerate - and which can change warp speeds. They must have some sort of onboard sensors (or communications) which can identify and track programmed (or directed) targets. Not sure how you'd engineer all those features into a ball of plasma which doesn't contain physical devices.
I never really bought that the weapon in Balance of Terror was the same thing as a plasma-torpedo. The weapon in Balance of Terror was a dumb-weapon consisting plasma. A plasma torpedo is a smart weapon that uses plasma as a warhead. It might have an advantage over a photon torpedo in that with enough momentum, the plasma continues forward in a blast cone, whereas a lot of the energy of a photon torpedo gets wasted, exploding in all directions.
+AMC2283 Well... you're at least partially right. The weapon used in Balance of Terror (based on the novels) was what the Romulans called a plasma *mortar* ... so it was probably unguided, but otherwise was a plasma torpedo. In Star Fleet Battles (a non-canon tabletop wargame based on ST:TOS and ST:TAS), it would have been a Type R Plasma Torpedo, which was the Warbird's *only* weapon, until the Klingons gave the Romulans phaser and warp technology as part of the Treaty of Smarba.
Electrons are not attracted to atoms as a result of a gravitational force. They are attracted to atoms because the nucleus is positively charged and the electrons are negatively charged this creates an electrostatic force between them.
Electrons have a negative charge and nucleus has a positive charge. This makes a central potential dip centered in the nucleus to which electrons wish to fall. This is an electromagnetic phenomena, and at this scale gravity is negligible. Why do electrons not fall to the center? Contrary to what many might say, it is not similar to the orbit of a planet. We do not have forward motion and a bent circular path from the electro motive forces. We know this becuase this would imply acceleration of a charge, and we also know that an accelerating charge looses emerge to the emissions of electromagnetic waves. Instead we find that the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle shows that we can not both be certain of both the position and velocity of an electron, which shows that the electron cannot fall into the center of the nucleus. When we use the Shrödinger equation we can see that electrons have probable stable states at certain energy levels. Electrons will habitate these levels becuase it is extraordinary unfavorable to stray from them. What you may be thinking of is something called electron degeneracy which is what supports white dwarves (it is when the main force opposing the claps of matter agains the gravitational force is the fact that electrons occupy every available quantum state), or simply what keeps planets from collapsing, the electromagnetic repulsion between atoms. This explanation is incredibly limited, but it’s difficult to discuss quantum mechanics in a TH-cam comment section
Indeed it is, I ddint expect to go there but it seems we've arrived at quantum mechanics. Okay so an electron cannot fall to the center of the nucleus but would the sudden 'resumption' of the electron orbits trigger some kind of energy release such as, some gamma radiation perhaps? Certainly photons. I at least know shifting orbits release those. :D
The name quantum mechanics comes from quanta of light. Electrons can absorb specific frequencies of light to jump energy levels. Energy levels refer to different allowed obits that have different endothermic favor abilities. This election is said to be in an excited state, and there are some other processes that can cause electrons to enter excited states as well. When an electron demotes energy levels it emits a packet of light, a quanta of light. The amount of energy contained in the quanta of light is the difference in the energy levels of the orbitals the electron moves between. The greater the energy gradient, the higher the frequency of light that is edited. It certainly is possible for gamma rays to be emitted like this, but I do not know of any occurrences of this happening of the top of my head. It also is possible for an electron to enter the nucleus of an atom. It just is remarkably unlikely, but i do recalling having to calculate that probability of a one proton hydrogen atom one,I unfortunately do not recall what the probability was. An instance in nature where it is probable for electrons to enter the nucleus is in super novas. Stars hold their shape thanks to the balancing of gravitational pressures and radiative pressures. Once nuclear fussing in the star's core stops, this radiative pressure begins to lesson, causing the core of the star to collapse. As it collapses, the energy and density in the stars' core increases, which could allow for new nuclear reactions in the core to happen, stoping the collapse of the core. If this does not happen, the core can be supported by electron degeneracy which I covered in the original comment and form a white dwarf. If the star is massive enough, the forces collapsing the core can be so great that electrons begin to be forced into the nucleus of atoms, merging with protons to form neutrons. This will allow the star to continue to collapse until there are only neutrons and these neutrons occupy every possible quantum state. We now of neutron degeneracy, and if this stops to collapse of the core we are left with a neutron star. If there is enough mass to overcome neutron degeneracy there is a theory that suggests that the neutrons could desiccate into quarks or form something called a strange star, but otherwise the core collapses into a black hole.
when you're able to make several pounds of the stuff and throw it an enemy, no level of shielding in the world can help its seeping freezing destruction, especially since they're assuming a much more energetic foe, however making that pound is the problem.
also I have issue with a weapon system literally defeated by liquid water, or even liquid hydrogen for that matter. in short getting to near absolute zero is easier than 90,000 Kelvin. A condensate weapon's effects. yay! they're wet or slightly colder.... than they were during normal space flight....
Interesting idea about the damage. One additional, since the starships are in space, one would think that their hulls would be close to the temperature of space - in other words VERY cold. Now imagine heating that up to the temperature of the sun in milliseconds using a plasma torpedo. That, in itself, should instantly vaporize the hull. Even deflectors should be unable to stop this.
Your statement if flawed. Pouring hot coffee inside the thermos would not become suddenly cold (over time yes) because it IS separated from the outside. On the reverse, you are saying the outside of the thermos would become hot because of the liquid poured inside. This would cause energy consumption to be extremely high since the ship would be constantly losing heat to the hull. Ideally there would be a vacuum - as in a vacuum flask - separating the interior from exterior so that this would not happen. As a result, the outer hull would be exposed to the cold of space. Space is not an insulator. If it were, Earth would be ice as we would receive no energy from the sun. In certain conditions, there would be convection, certainly conduction at times. Radiation, always. This is why we see objects that radiate. An asteroid, for example, would be detected, at best, by reflected radiation. Nonetheless, my hypothesis would be true for objects away from sources of radiation. The outermost planets, moons, asteroids and comets are examples. Unless, for some reason you want to waste energy, a ship's outer hull would be equal to the space it is in contact with. HOWEVER - regardless, the point was that a plasma weapon would immediately heat the hull to the temperature of the sun and vaporize it.
Considering there are people on this thread considering Condensate weapons, this is by far one of the more reasonable questions. This being said plasma is VERY susceptible to an electromagnetic field, and in the form of a shield its good until you have to come up with somewhere to store this extra heat you've channeled and encapsulated, and the shield's idea of spreading it over the entire frame only makes this heating problem worse.
A thermos in this field of questions is directly comparing the insulatory effect a defense has against a burning attack. If the damaging effects are contained and dissipated, literally nothing happens. Plasma has very few things outside a magnetic field that it can't literally burn into non-function. (see gravity effects as mentioned above.) Irony is the deflection or containment of the effects of a matter-antimatter reaction also fall into this question. which is why they are both weapons.
Unfortunately, this theory can't hold up because the episode "Balance of Terror" actually gives us a good working theory for how the weapon works: "SPOCK: From the outpost's protective shield. Cast rodinium. This is the hardest substance known to our science. (He crushes it with his hand) SPOCK: Lab theorizes an enveloping energy plasma forcing an implosion. This is nothing like rapid thermal expansion, it is in fact a weapon that uses plasma to *crush* targets, which means it is place an enormous amount of mechanical energy on shields and the alloys making up the hulls of starships. And the fact that it was able to do this to a fully shielded base that was a mile-deep on an asteroid made of almost solid iron is scary as hell. This is hundreds of gigatons to multiple teratons of energy.
Electrons are not separated from the nucleus by an electromagnetic force. If anything, the negatively charged electrons would be attracted to the positively charged protons. It is a quantum mechanical effect that excludes electrons from the nucleus. The nucleus is too small, too confined of a space.
+Petra Meyer +Resurrected Starships Well, that's FASA's game. In Star Fleet Battles, plasma weapons *can* be split, but the decision has to be made on the final turn of arming. A type G plasma weapon can be split into two Type F torpedoes, a type S can be split into three type F torpedoes, and a type R can be split into five Type F torpedoes. A type-F torpedo has a base warhead strength of 15, but is most effective within 12 hexes and totally dissipates after 15 hexes. (Each hex represents 10,000 kilometers.) However, this requires a *lot* of energy, and a fully-armed plasma torpedo cannot be "held in the tube". If you don't launch it by the end of the turn - for example, if the target(s) cloaked or you took enough damage to disable your fire control - all you can do is vent the plasma into space and start the arming sequence again. By way of providing an example, let's look at the Type R plasma torpedo, the most powerful in Star Fleet Battles. It has a base warhead strength of 50 (for comparison, the Enterprise's shields have a strength of 30, not counting reinforcement). It costs 3 points of energy for the first and second turns of arming. For the third turn, it costs 5 points of energy to fire it as a normal type R, or *ten* points of energy to fire it as an enveloping torpedo or a "shotgun". An enveloping torpedo has twice the strength, but when it hits, the damage is divided equally across all six shields. So it would have a strength of 100, which is 16 points of damage per shield (with the remaining damage divided as equally as possible). The Warbird, which is what the Romulans used before the Klingons provided warp technology, *barely* had enough power to fire the Type R torpedo, which was its *only* weapon (it didn't even have phasers). It had 6 points of Impulse power, and 6 batteries. So: Turn one: Spend 1 point of energy to cloak, 1 point of energy for life support, 1 point of energy to move at sublight (speed 1), which is as fast as the ship could go, and put the other 3 points into charging 3 batteries. Turn two: Same as turn one. (You can skip this turn, but your batteries will be empty after firing the torpedo.) Turn three: Now that the batteries are charged, instead of putting three points of energy into charging the batteries, you put them into charging the torpedo. Turn four: Same as turn three. Turn five: 1 point of energy to cloak (you're going to decloak, but you want to start re-cloaking as soon as possible after you fire), 1 point of energy to move, 1 point of energy for life support, and 1 point of energy for fire control. This leaves them 2 points of impulse power and 6 points of battery power. It costs 5 points of power to finish arming the torpedo, some of which is going to have to come from the batteries. So, the sequence of battle: Spend five turns charging the batteries, arming the torpedo, and moving into position. On the last turn, decloak, fire (ideally from a range of 5 hexes or less), and immediately start cloaking again. You can't use fire control while cloaked, but it takes 5 impulses to decloak and 5 impulses to re-cloak after you fire. From that range, the torpedo will hit before you lose fire control again. Then the Klingons provided warp technology and phaser technology as part of the Treaty of Smarba. The Warbird was refitted with shields (strength 25), four phasers, and 20 points of warp energy, and was called the "War Eagle". It still had 6 points of impulse energy and 6 batteries. The problem with warp engines is that it takes more energy to cloak. So now you're looking at 6 points to cloak, 2 points for full shields, 1 point for life support, and 3 points for the first round of arming the torpedo. Another 4 points if you're going to charge the phasers too. (Once charged, the phasers stay charged for 50 turns or until they fire, whichever comes first.) That's all your impulse power and half your warp power. But at least you could move at warp speed, usually speed 10 to 14.
I don't think we've ever seen split-warhead plasma torps on screen. Although we have seen photons and phasers and even deflectors get configured, modulated, modified, and adapted in all sorts of versatile ways. And I doubt Romulans would continue preferring plasma torps if they have too many disadvantages and limitations compared vs other weapons (like photon torps).
sorry to ruin this for you but those two big guns are cannons not torp launchers. Star trek treats plasma torps like molotov bombs and if you fire one and youre too close your ship will burn as well. Go into sto and get stuck on a target and fire big high yield plasma and see that you will get the plasma burn debuff as well.
Nice! Here is the Minds.com link www.minds.com/newsfeed/875694012562096128 As for my own thoughts on the matter... In my universe, the plasma torpedoes are actual torpedoes, that are fired and track the target until right before the hit the warhead is spooled&fired upon the target in a form of a plasma funnel. It is concentrated and does not envelop the target but rather aims to breach the shields and melt the hull. Certainly, there are races who use the weapon in a different way and tactics vary greatly, but with enough insight, such torpedoes can have multiple implementations on the battlefield. In my second book of the Starshatter series, I describe a lengthy spaceship battle.
I don't think we ever had any on screen confirmation of the Borg weapon's nature, except for the cutting beam, which seams to be some kind of laser used after a target has been rendered completely shieldless and preferably immobilized. We know they have shield draining tractor beams that seam to adapt (or try to) shield form and frequencies. And we've seen them use some greenish blobs. Both the blobs and the tractors have been shown to destroy enemy vessels, but i can't recall if they were ever explained in any way on screen. The tractors could of course be some kind of directed graviton emitters that either hold or tare apart ships. The blobs could be anything from some kind of torpedoes to some kind of pulse energy weapons (capable of being used in warp).
I have something in mind. I have a very old low poly v-8 model I considered using this episode, but would have to spend some hours redoing the texture work on it. I would like to do a battle breakdown of the first battle between Enterprise and this ship. LOTS to unpack there.
If you want to learn the details of plasma torpedoes you would want to go to the original source material, Star Fleet Battles. For example, they are not guided by tractor beams. That probably comes from Star Trek Online, and computer game people are generally idiots. It would take me several pages to explain plasma torpedoes, but a few major points is that they are self guided seeking weapons, not guided by tractor beams... that is a silly notion that sounds like it was just made up by the idiots who make Star Trek Online. There are several different sizes of plasma torpedo launchers, all of which can arm a plasma torpedo of any size up to that launcher size. In addition to this "downloading" function, they have four modes of operation. Standard, Shotgun (which you covered here), Enveloping (which is an option, not the standard load), and Bolt (a direct fire option). Plasma torpedoes also "lose power with range". They are very powerful if they hit shortly after being launched, they eventually completely dissipate if they don't find a target within their fairly limited range. Like many aspects of Star Trek lore, plasma torpedoes were defined by Star Fleet Battles. Gene Roddenberry did not create much of the lore of Star Trek, especially when it came to the military aspects of it. He was just plain wacky when it came too the military and insisted that "Star Fleet is not a military organization" and that the Federation was a superpower that didn't have a military. This, and the fact that Paramount did not like or trust him, is why he was pushed back to being just an adviser after The Motion Picture. He actually had very little involvement with any of the movies after TMP and was more of an adviser and "figurehead of the universe". This is why you hear him complaining about the movies being "too militaristic" and not liking Star Trek V. Obviously, if he was in charge like most people think he was, he wouldn't be complaining about the movies not being what he wanted them too be. After TMP Paramount looked to the published works of Franz Joseph, Lou Zocchi, and Stephen V Cole to guide them when it came to the military aspects of Star Fleet... since Gene was just plain wacky when it came to his ideas about that. For example the Enterprise is not a "Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser" because Gene Roddenberry said so, it was that because Franz Joseph said so. The Star Fleet Universe were the Franz Joseph inspired games, and most of what you call "Star Trek lore", when it comes to Star Fleet, the ships, fleets, navies, and "engineering lore" comes from Franz Joseph and Stephen V Cole, not Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry called Wrath of Khan "too militaristic" because it had been based on Franz and Steve's work, completely ignoring him. You can see it in Wrath of Khan... the ship displays on the bridge screens are Franz Joseph's blueprints. The militaristic nature of it all comes from SFB. SFB was also used to choreograph everything happening in space, leading to the legendary dig/jab at the game recognized by all SFB players... "His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking". And this is one of those cases where the original source material is the Star Fleet Universe, which is where plasma torpedoes (and most military aspects of Star Fleet, including weapons) were defined. So if you want to know how plasma torpedoes actually work, just read about them in SFB and ignore all other sources. Franz Joseph and Steve Cole are what is "canon" when it comes to Star Fleet, ships, fleets, and weapons. Paramount went with them over Gene Roddenberry, which shows in the movies. You can see it in the movies, which are decidedly militaristic (Franz & Steve) and not at all Gene Roddenberry's literally delusional "a superpower that doesn't have a military" which was a primary reason he was pushed back to adviser status after TMP.
Kavik Kang I know I read they were guided by a tractor beam but I cannot remember the source but it wasn't STO. So then with no tractor, I couldn't find it in your reply, how do they home in on targets? Perhaps...programmed plasma circuit?
That's certainly not your fault. Star Trek lore is a jumbled mess, partly because what the fans believe about how it all came to be and the reality of how it all came to be are two completely different things. Gene Roddenberry was not the saint that the fans believe he was, Paramount didn't like him much but always supported whatever he wanted to tell the fans... no matter how far from the truth it was. In reality Franz Joseph, Steve Cole, and the Star Fleet Universe were as influential over Star Trek as Gene Roddenberry was. So, of course, were the various writers and directors, of course. After TMP Gene was really just an adviser that was often ignored. The actual "Roddenberry Star Trek" is the entire original series, TMP, and the first two season of TNG. Other than that, he actually had very little involvement with the rest of Star Trek. It's been so long since I've looked at "how plasma torpedoes track targets" that I can't remember how Steve Cole said that worked from memory. However, it would involved the targeting systems of the ships in some way because that is the case with all SFB weapons. Franz Joseph was a real-world aircraft designer who also reverse engineered capture foreign technology for the Defense Intelligence Agency. So Franz, Steve, and the SFU always base things on real-world military technology. Plasma torpedoes, for example, are very resistant to hostile "electronic warfare" which is represented in the game by the weapons themselves having 3 points of ECCM before even considering the EW status of the firing ship and target.
I thought I'd put this link here. If anyone reading this has never seen the original Franz Joseph blueprints before, you can see them at all at this link. If you look further on this web site, you can also find the complete Franz Joseph Technical Manual. These two things were the very beginning of what today you would call the "engineering lore" of Star Trek. It all actually began with Franz Joseph. Gene Roddenberry knew nothing about engineering and his vague description of the warp drive, and how nacelles needed to be placed on the ship to function, were about his only contribution to that aspect of the lore of Star Trek. www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/star-trek-blueprints.php
Plasma is many times more effective than phasers. When Enterprise first encountered Borgs in Federation space, Shelby hinted that the plasma weapons which were meant to deal with Borgs are still in development. So stop spreading bullshit that plasma weapons are weak. If they are good enough to fend off the Borgs, then they belong to pinnacles of ST-Universe-Weapon-Technology.
In "The Balance of Terror." The Romulan Plamsa torpedo seemed to grow larger the further it got from the Bird of Prey, and an enemy ship could outrun, but just barely.
I assumed that it appeared to get bigger because it was approaching the the ship (camera).
@@mikewd1983 well, I think it did that as well, but it specifically showed that the bubble of plasma dissipated and expanded the further it traveled.
Think of it as starting small, and rapidly growing to full size, and then gradually getting smaller the further it flies without hitting anything.
Also it's theorized that the Plasma Torpedo got caught in the Enterprise's warp bubble since it makes sense, as opposed to it flying in warp speed on it's own.
In DS9 there is mention of physical components for the torpedo, and in TOS the Enterprise has to be at warp to outrun it.
My guess is the torpedo 'casing' is on the inside, functioning largely like a photon torpedo, but with a magnetic containment device that holds a super compressed plasma shell around the torpedo, in TOS it was very basic and later in trek it increased in quality.
Upon impact, that field is dropped, probably dropped from the front to channel the blast foward, but the sudden release of compressed plasma would do the damage, and if it gets thru shields it burns thru most physical matter.
The dissipation could be explained as the plasma provides power for the guidance casing, as the power avalible drops the field expands to reduce the power required for containment.
When discussing plasma weapons, the question must be asked, "a plasma of what?". The vessel firing the weapon must carry some sort of matter to be ionized into a plasma. Essentially you would need "plasma ammo". Xenon is a frequent suggestion since it is the heaviest of the noble gasses.
Modern High Explosive Anti-Tank weapons use copper to form the plasma jet. It doesn't have to start off as a gas, you can also create plasma from superheating minerals/metals.
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 True that it doesn't have to be a gas. Theoretically any matter will form a plasma when heated to ionization, hence the question "a plasma of what?"
It could be more or less whatever you need. Remember in Trek that Replicators are commonplace and the universe at large is in a post-scarcity state. You can literally take waste material from the ship (or the crew), and use the raw matter to turn it into almost anything by reconstituting it's molecular structure in near any form. So a Replicator attached to the weapon itself could easily be tuned to specifically emit a quantity of Xenon, or whatever they use, contain it in an electromagnetic field and ignite it. This could work for both torpedoes and beams, just by altering the delivery system.
Couldn't it also make sense to have a "conventional" torpedo that uses a power source to contain plasma around it (generated by the ship before firing) to allow a guidance system and boost range by constantly producing the magnetic fields to keep the plasma from dispersing? I feel like this would also allow the torpedo to travel faster.
Wet navy torpedos do damages due to the incompressibility of water,this directes the explosives forces in to the ship which being filed with air can not stop the explosive force form entering the hull's air filed space allowing water to flood in the space or breaking the spine of the ship splitting it in half thus sinking it.
If I may suggest, admitting we are discussing fiction of course, I have aways believed that the plasma torpedoes had a physical core, a device to generate the containment field and guide it.
Imagine that the ship generate the plasma and then infuse it inside the core containment’s field just as it launches.
Then the propulsion is a combination of plasma being vented from controled “holes” oppened in the containment field with subspace fields (to reduce overall inertial mass).
So, that explains why the PT looses potency as it travels, and explains why the plasma does not spread in the vacuum.
Of course it’s a shame the writers seemed to have forgotten all about PT from TNG show on.... we could have seem the concept better refined.
they get mentioned several times in DS9, and even appear as Kazon weapons in VOY. dialog in DS9 implies a physical weapon. their visuals are just similar to photon torps but with different colors.
Regarding your physics, the magnetic field collapsing is NOT the entire electromagnetic field collapsing its simply the excited state that collapses. Also gravity does NOT cause the electron to orbit the nucleus indeed it's basically neglible here. Its electro static attraction that keeps the electron near the nucleus except in the case of plasma which is so hot that the electons spend much of their time being hit off the atoms. Its likely that the main energy source when the plasma collides with a starship is the electron affinity released when the plasma cools back down espacilly if the plasma is a heavy atom like uranium. Hope that helps! Alternatively the 'additional damage' caused could be some kind of fusion interaction between the plasma and the other ships duranium hull.
In essence Ummdustry is correct as gravity is considered weaker than literally the Strong and weak nuclear forces, one of which are overridden in plasma states, however once stripped of electrons the only two forces left on the governing of matter is the strong and electromagnetic, the latter we have extensive information on how to manipulate even if we fundamentally still have no idea what it is. Gravity becomes an issue if you have several googles of metric tons of the stuff. Yeah remember Google is a measurement stat.
I also say Romulans had no control over gravity as a power source while knowing they had singularity drives. Soo much for my google reference.
@@steelgreyed The number is googol not google and several googols of tons would be the mass of the known universe... with 50 extra zeros added.
@@phunkydroid I hope you adjusted your glasses after writing that.
Firing Plasma in a magnetic bottle - Plasma torpedoes are basically Scifi Molotov Cocktails ^^
That is a good point about their being almost no risk of harming yourself with your own weapons.
I would think if someone was to apply post 24th Century advancements to Plasma Weapons they could make for a very interesting weapon - if wrapped in a warp sustainer field or even generated directly by the warp core into a prefire chamber and then beamed directly to the target in whatever shape is required. I like the idea of a Torpedo being a semi-solid ball on the end of a Tractor beam chain used to knock around a ship until it's shields collapse and then the full energy is released to splash on to the enemy's hull.
So much better, I'd like to see how you describe the Tau'ri 304 since its one of the few ships in syfy with a bizzare mix of technology. Though I really wish the size was retconned to what it really is and that's 680 meters in leangth this has been perfectly consistent throughout the franchise but everyone just assumed it was 225 meters. Until Trek yards compared the actual CGI model to the Enterprise E CGI model and discovered its a lot bigger then previously thought and makes a lot more sense.
Sorry for rambling, keep up the good work.
According to the FASA Romulan Ship Recognition Guide, there is only a single plasma launcher on the Winged Defender Cruiser type one, though there are also eight beam weapons, four of which face forward. The type two carries no plasma launchers but does have two forward-facing photon torpedo launchers. Nice video.
Indeed, my 'retconned' version is at least a type 3. The type 1 could have a bank of disruptors in the legs but no doubt the weapons pods would look quite different., and you could put the plasma launcher just under the 'head'. My headcannon: perhaps an early design meant for photon torpedoes, but due to technical difficulties while the hull chasis was ready, the photon launchers were NOT, but they were ready by the time of the type 2. And then somewhere along the line later (perhaps turn of 24th century) we get the version you see in this video, which could fit either in those lower weapons pods.
I like the idea of that a lot. Thanks for clearing it up for me.
The split version is from Star Fleet Battles (SFB), a semi-licensed version of starship combat that follows an alternate timeline, and thus not canon. Paramount has pretty much disavowed the Star Fleet Universe (SFU), but cannot abolish it due to an "in perpetuity" license granted in the seventies for starship blueprints.
This version of plasma torpedo has a small physical device inside the torpedo that maintains the containment field for the plasma and provides guidance to the target. It consumes plasma energy to sustain propulsion at a high warp speed, thus weakening the warhead the farther it goes. They come in a variety of sizes, and all but the smallest can be split inside the arming chamber into smaller warheads, each with its own guidance/propulsion device, but at a much higher cost of energy. 'Standard' plasma torpedoes in SFB lack the enveloping feature, but they can be overcharged with extra plasma in the arming chamber, also with a much larger energy cost, and this version is equipped with an enveloping detonation system. Further, all of these versions can be degraded by phaser-fire, but with only limited effect. With no physical form to impact, most of the phaser energy passes right through the torpedo, only partially disrupting the containment fields.
Plasma tactics vary between using standard torpedoes to break (or penetrate) a facing shield for follow-up with direct-fire weapons, or using enveloping torpedoes to grind all the shields down, making them easier to penetrate with later attacks. Shotguns are typically used to deal with smaller units attacking in waves. A single torpedo would be vast overkill for a single fighter, while leaving the others unharmed. Shotgunned torpedoes can take out anywhere from 2-5 fighters, depending on the size of the original arming chamber and energy used.
A very versatile weapon system, but as in the video, one that is very slow to arm, is very large and heavy, and can consume very large amounts of energy. If the initial torpedo(es) do not destroy or significantly damage the target, the plasma-armed ship is very vulnerable to counter-attack.
+jeffprime To follow up on what Jeff said, in SFB the plasma torpedo has the longest arming sequence of any of the heavy weapons. A Disruptor (used by the Kzinti, Lyrans, Klingons, Tholians, and others) can be fired every turn. Most other heavy weapons such as the Photon Torpedo can only be fired every other turn (it takes two turns to fully arm). The Plasma Torpedo takes *three* turns to arm, with two exceptions:
(1) Type-D torpedoes (the weakest) don't need arming, but they are in limited supply (4 per launcher, with 1 or 2 reloads). They're used primarily for anti-fighter defense, since they can be fired one per launcher per turn.
(2) Type-G, type-S, and type-R can be "fast-loaded" as a Type-F (the second weakest) in just two turns. I could be wrong about the type-G, but the S and R can definitely be fast-loaded.
In regards to "shotgunning": It takes the whole three turns to arm, but a Type-G can be fired as two Type-F torpedoes; a type-S can be fired as three type-F torpedoes; and a type-R can be fired as five type-F torpedoes.
An old Winged Defender heavy cruiser from FASA days :-)
Kick butt weapons in Star Trek Starfleet Command games.
I fear them.
Modern HEAT(high explosive anti tank) weapons use a plasma jet that projects out anywhere from 0.3 to 0.9 meters from a shaped charge warhead...made from Cu(copper).
The destructive force of the plasma can be disrupted by an explosion coming outwards from the armor(hence why they developed ERA...explosive reactive armor).
The plasma torpedoes are possibly the most mysterious "major power" weapons i have ever seen in ST (Borg not included for reasons). This is augmented by a relatively small exposure they have in the shows and the movies. AFAIK they were only used in the original series, and then only by the Romulans (who by the 24th century converted to photon torpedoes). They were present in some games though, and this is where most of out info comes from. In the series, aside from the name, we can establish three major properties:
1. They are very powerful and damaging, both the shields and ships;
2. They are very slow to rearm;
3. They appear to have limited range.
Secondary canon, games and inspired SF works seam to offer some explanation for all of these, but i'll try to stay "in lore". Do note, this entirely my interpretation, based on very little information.
I. I think plasma torpedoes are in fact "torpedoes" and not plasma pulses or beams. The reason why i think this, is that in ST we do meet species that use forced plasma cannons and plasma energy weapons, and on every occasion, these are not referred as torpedoes. By exclusion, this would imply the Romulan plasma torpedoes are actually powered, guided and propulsed warheads of some sort;
II. Their very short range implies they lose their yield over time for some reason. On screen their firing sequence looks like a slowly growing blob of shimmering semi transparent gas (which fits the plasma attribute). Why would this cloud of plasma (presumably around a guided and propulsive core) lose it's damage potential over time? Two main reasons, wither the plasma "leaks" over time and the torpedo dissipates, or the plasma simply cools down as it travels the vacuum of space, the gas normalizes, stops being plasma and then leaks again. Or maybe it's both;
III. Why are they so powerful? Aside from being apparently rather large in diameter when fully charged, they would have to be either very hot (much hotter then the increase in temperature that a material would go through as a result of gamma ray bombardment - like when a photon torpedo detonates), or they would have to possess some other means of destruction. We have arguments for both of these hypothesis'. The fact that they take so much time to rearm, means they take a huge power drain on the ship systems. This in conjunction with a cloaking device, would make them almost exclusively ambush weapons (which they kinda appear to be in TOS). So maybe it is just a very large, very very VERY hot "ball" of gas. However, there is another kind plasma that most ships have and that isn't either the electro plasma used by the power transfer system or the fusion plasma generated by the impulse engines. And that is warp plasma. The plasma that runs through the warm coils. This is by far the most powerful plasma used aboard a conventional star ship and it comes almost directly from the matter - antimatter reaction in the warp cores. I'm not sure if this plasma possesses any other properties (the warp fields are actually generated by the coils, the plasma is just a power source), but if this is the plasma used for the torpedoes, it would explain 2 very important things. First, it takes quite a bit of time and fuel to generate it if you run out of it. This means it could only be used for short periods of time and you won't be pushing high warp while using the torpedoes. Second, it may explain why they weren't used in the TNG era. By this time the Romulans converted to singularity cores to power their ships. This means no matter anti matter generated plasma. Their warp coils must still be powered in some way, but are never shown how.
Any way, sorry for the long post....but the video got me thinking and i let myself go :D
Thats okay! Just let yourself go all you want!
+ilejovcevski79 I suggest you read the reply from jeffprime further down. He explains why plasma torpedoes get weaker over time, at least in the non-canon game called Star Fleet Battles (which is based on TOS). However, I will say that you are almost exactly right!
That was a very good read mate, thanks! I would have omitted it if you hadn't pointed it out to me.
It is a ball of plasma, held in a force field generated by a small robotic torpedo. Thus, it can track a target, but loses energy based on distance. Imagine a small probe, generating a force field filled with plasma. The plasma torpedo is bigger than a photon torpedo, so the plasma energy is spread across more shield emitters. Thus, the plasma blankets a shield, whereas photon torpedoes and phasers have a smaller blast radius.
Plasma would be a large positively charged ball of matter. Extremely hot. Upon impact it could try to rob nearby electrons from anything it touches/melts through. This would disrupt power systems. Electricity would be arcing everywhere, grounding to the plasma ball. It would look like Star Wars ion cannon.
Dude I love your videos so much, very well done.
Cool! There any tachyon based weapons and/or tech?
In Star Trek Online it's described as plasma torpedos melts the targeted ships hull, leaving behind a lingering plasma fire which deals damage over time after the explosion.
Please make a video about deflector shields, and how they work
DS9 establishes that plasma torpedoes have at least some form of physical ammunition, as the Romulans were stated to be stockpiling plasma torpedoes on one of bajor's moon's in the episode "Image in the Sand". the same episode establishes the weapons used high concentrations of trilithium. this suggests they are a physical projectile of some kind, and likely were even in TOS.
since trilithium is known from other episodes to be a very power explosive (TNG's "starship mine") as well as be able to effect stellar plasma reactions (Generations, DS9 "by inferno's light", in both cases where they were part of a weapon capable of causing a star's fusion to collapse destroying the star).
at a guess, the weapon uses trilithium to amplify the power of plasma (likely created from a fusion or M/AM reaction). the version seen in TOS "balance of terror" was probably an early model with more of an area effect design. when we see them mentioned again during the romulan attack on the enterprise in TOS "The Deadly years" their visual effect and damage is more in line with the federation's photon torpedoes. the DS9 dialog implies that the photon torpedo like weapons we see the romulans use in TNG and DS9 were supposed to be Plasma Torpedoes.
interestingly, Diane Duane in her Rihannsu novels (which are sorta side canon to even the other trek novels) refers to the old plasma torpedoes as using "matter implosion technology" in the novel "the empty chair" which is described as using energy fields to weaken molecular and atomic bonds. since one of the properties of real world plasmas is the dissociation of molecular bonds in matter due to the ionic properties of the plasma (above and beyond that which the thermal energy alone would account for.) this would seem to be a reasonable interpretation of Spock's claim in "balance of terror" about the plasma enveloping the target than imploding it.. the plasma was configured to weaken hull metals, and set up for area effect to surround the target in plasma, causing the hull integrity to weaken and the ships own mass to cause it to collapse.
presumably the later versions switched to a more limited area effect in order to inflict damage in a shorter time, at the expense of a more confined damage area.
Regarding physics, plasma weaponry always over-estimated, and magically powered up. However, in reality they would be ineffective because, they would have brutally low energy conversion efficiency.
So plasma is basically a soup of free ions, so basically contains nuclei and electrons. The reason is why don't these fall back to the normal matter state is that the electrons have such a high kinetic energy (heat motion) that they could escape much farther away from their nuclus (meters away), than their low temperature counterparts ("this is why free") (yes i know electromagnetic has an infinite range but it has an inverse square law). So this is the plasma, a pretty simple concept, without any magic.
To get a good understanding of the basic behaviour of plasma, without external electromagnetic interaction, it is just an ideal gas (the same ideal gas concept as in thermodynamics). What makes the behaviour of plasma extraordinal is its interaction with electromagnetism, because of its free, charged components (it's simple to understand the behaviour of one charged body, but when you have "zillions" of charged particles, then it becomes overwhelming). Under electromagnetic effect, it shows a brutally complex behaviour, but still there isn't any such magic like in star trek, and of course its behaviour can be infered to the dynamics of charged bodys under electric or magnetic field. Gravity doesn't plays any role in plasma dynamics.
Nevertheless, the overall plasma can be ionised or neutral (when you have equal negative and positive charge in matter).
So, in order to get a reasonable range for plasma weapons, you have to keep together your plasma before it hits the target, you have to create a self-sustaining containment field. Because without such field it would disperse in space like any other normal gas would. A practical way, do this via electromagnetism, like in tokamak reactors, but mother nature also done a nice example for such a field: ball lightening.
However such containment field is very volatile, when it disrupts, the plasma disperse like an ordinary gas. And of course can contain low-density plasma.
Plasma weapons in sci-fi are just catapults of plasma balls, that throw them at the targets. There are plasma beam weapons but they are much more senseless then their "ball thrower" counterpart, because these cannot have containment field, thus they have to collimate the velocity of the particles of the plasma at a magical effectivity to reach reasonable range (it is not impossible because there are some example in nature for plasmabeams: relativistic jets of black holes or neutron stars, but incredibly difficult), otherwise the plasma just disperse.
So when the such plasma ball from a weapon collides into solid material, its containment field disrupts, and the material within the ball just splash on the solid object. But it is not just figuritively splash, it literally splash, like a water bomb would splash, except it wont remain on the solid object for long because it woud immediately escape into space (it would be tha same as you would throw a gas ball at a wall). No magical enveloping effect, no magical energy releasing collapse, no magical subatomic collapse effect.
(Of course the containment field store energy, but it completely converts into the kinetic energy of the particles.)
These plasma projectiles have two type of destructive effect: kinetic effect, and thermal effect. The fun thing is that if you want to augment one effect, you have deteriorate the other. For example you want higher kinetic effect, to do a larger punch on the hull, then the best way to do, is fire it at higher velocities, because increasing the mass of the projectile is not option due to the nature of the containment field. However the thermal effect of the projectile is depends on the temperature and the time for heat exchange which is the time duration when the plasma matter contacts the solid object. The faster plasma projectile the less time for heat exchange. The greater thermal effect, the lower kinetic effect. This is why it has an awful energy conversion efficiency, because the most of the heat goes into waste, not in the target, and the kinetic effect is diffuse (not like a wedge shaped solid projectile).
Gas balls are pretty awful projectiles, they cannot produce concentrated forces, like solid projectiles. However if you have a great amount of gas in your balls (that is inachievable in plasma weapons, or senselsess to achive), that is concentrated, then you can achive an effective shockwave when released, this is what high explosives does at a much cheaper cost and higher efficiency.
So plasmaweapons basicly just can create a spectacular fireworks. A nice eyecandy, nothing more. They are useless in atmosphere because drag force immediately disrupts the containment field. And pretty easy to defend against a plasma projectile: just throw in front of it a some material with high heat capacity, like water. The ball will disrupt, the water will absorb a large amount of heat and also it will turn into gas (if the ball has enough heat energy) and creating an explosion, which is further scatter the remains of of the plasma ball, and catalisate its dispersion.
Then of course it is a good question that what will be plausible weapons of future. I would answer, the good old laser weapons (or any kind of collimated photon emitter technology), and the railgun. In terms of mechanical destruction, the railgun undoubtly wins, because the kinetic energy of the projectile completely converts into the irreversible deformation of the target object's material, if it don't fly through the target. It can cause a highly concentrated destruction. Thus achieving the highest possible energy conversion efficiency of destruction. However if you afraid of the projectile just flies through the target, then pick expansive munitions, these ensures that the material of the pojectile wont escape out of the object, before it converts its energy into destruction.
However collimated photon weapons shouldn't be underastimated. These devastate by concetrated thermal effects: overheats a small portion of the target, which will explode. Thus much of the power converts into waste heat. However has some serious advantage. Its projectiles are the fastest things in the universe, the target cannot percept the firing, before the impact of the projectile. If you choose wisely the frekvency, then you can minimize the the energy loss and scattering of the beam in a certain medium (air, water) or directly attack the inner parts of the without wasting much energy on the outer shell (this depends on the target's inner structure).
But, if you want a plausible, and effective weapon, that uses plasma for its destructive effects, then I suggest nowadays thermonuclear warheads. These warheads converts their material nearly instantenously into superheated, superpressured plasma ball (and of course radiation of many kind), and causes destruction via the shockwave effect of the expansion of the plasma ball (and of course thermal radiation). Brutal, and effective, but it is low at energy conversion efficiency (much of the energy is wasted).
Botond Kalocsai
You are talking bullshit
"In reality they would be ineffective because, they would have brutally low energy conversion efficiency."
You are using conversion level of our reality and timeline, you fucking idiot, that is not the case of their time-line, you idiot. And laser-weapons are shit because you can deflect it with reflexive-coating.
I don't have my reference books anymore and the memory isn't as good as it once was so apologies for what may be a basic question. How SMALL could a warp engine be made? In any generation of the ST universe? I know there is a warp field generator in the photon torp casing, but no drive. I was thinking use a small M-AM generator to power both a warp drive and a super-powerful plasma containment field to counter the slow speed and range of the plasma torpedo. It would also have the effect of adding a small kinetic element to the attack.
The smallest we know is the one mounted in Ranabouts, which is the size of a small wardrobe.
Hmm, so something along those lines COULD be done in a relatively small volume. But as others have pointed out in the comments, shields have gotten to be extremely effective -vs- plasma weapons.
Balance of Terror kind of establishes the Plasma Torpedo has tracking device (unless it's attracted magentically to the Enterprise) because otherwise the Enterprise while going at full reverse warp could have diverted their course .000001 degrees and the torpedo would have missed. Also ST TMP, V'ger's torp has a guidance system in one of the releases. The scene is cut during most versions where Sulu calls out evasive maneuvers. I'm also assuming the Klingon's fire a Photon Torpedo at the V'ger Torp having previously detonated Romulan torps.
Plasma torpedoes Romulans most situational weapon.
couples rather well with being able to choose when and where to engage.....
Plasma torpedo is a traditional type equipment on the starship. This was first to developed to starship in the 1940s on the earth.
Really cool video
A V-30 Winged Defender heavy cruiser carries a 28-pt. long range "plasma weapon' or 2 RP-3 aka 10-pt. torpedoes with 4 V-9 heavy disruptors via ST:TRPG......Ironically my starship Capt. who also commanded a Chandley class heavy frigate used a maneuver called "the Morrison Maneuver"(his namesake) where he basically "parried" (like a shield blocking a sword attack) the plasma weapon off of 2 shields(stbd and fwd) and then fired his 2 fwd photons with phaser array into the Defender blowing down its shields, doing severe damage and crippling it........self-destruction iminent!
If the tractor beam is removed at point of impact I would put my money on the plasma dissipating in a pretty unremarkable fashion on impact.
Just an idea, the reason they fell out of favor is because shields became too effective against them as the technology advanced. They couldn't advance plasma torpedoe tech because it's just…well, plasma.
At the time of TNG, ships could skim the surface of stars (and the Enterprise went inside after a software patch to its shields) so obviously "modern" shields are more resistant to plasma. Maybe the magnetic effects are automatically delt with in modern ships.
You can make photon torpedoes more powerful by sticking more antimatter in it. You can't make plasma torpedoes more resistant to magnetic shielding.
In effect, they become obsolete.
As a side note, I wonder if there's ever been a mix up on a Federation ship where humans, using English, order some plasma to be delivered, and the doctor is looking at a magnetic container full of superheated gas, while the engineer, in confusion, is holding bags of pale yellow blood components.
LMAO, yeah I would agree that eventually the limitations of a plasma torpedo compared to a photon torpedo, especially range and speed, would explain why the Romulans liberally use photon torpedoes by the 24th century instead.
As long as you have functional shield technology plasma is by far the weakest weapon available. Without shield technology the damage yield to tech required is staggering.
@@steelgreyed Yep, and mostly because plasma is easily dealt with even by the most primitive of electromagnetic shielding. Even lasers are more effective against shields.
All that being said...given the advanced alloys that a starship such as the Enterprise is made of, shouldn't it NOT burn up in an M class planet's atmosphere? I mean c'mon! Even our current ceramic shuttle's tiles survive reentry, how did the Enterprise burn in the Genesis atmosphere then-when just a couple decades earlier it survived going around the sun at incredibly close range to travel back in time to prevent history from changing?
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 Well the Enterprise was probably not burning that much. The re-entry burning effect happens even if the object is not burning. It's just the atmosphere heating up.
Also the fact that half of the ship saucer had been blown off exposing the interior did not help much defending it against the heat of entering a planet atmosphere.
In ds9 didn't the romulans use a physical plasma torpedo, perhaps as a means of self contained mechanism, to overcome the limitations of the original.
which torpedo is more powerful: plasma torpedo or quantum torpedo?
I don't understand how relatively low powered electromagnetic fields (or grav/tractor fields or whatever) can be used to shape and direct plasma while relatively high powered electromagnetic fields (or grav/tractor fields or whatever) such as those in a ship's deflector shields cannot. Plasma weapons should bead and flow around shields like water poured on an oiled surface.
Loved the fact that you opened with a Winged-Defender vs. a Chandley............................
Sound affects are from Klingon academy! Cool!
How is this not more popular than others (you know who you are), i will never know. The quality is so much better than them and not as biased.
Westley Gomez I like to come from behind muhuaha...hahahahaha!!!!!
I presume you meant how is this less popular. :)
You are correct. And i wondering if I can contact you regarding starships tactics and compare notes.
in physics their are more the 4 states in normal life about 6 and a bunch in esoteric places. I like the ones with color change (it doesn't actually change color just a way to describe it to the uninitiated) most of the 'esoteric' ones are theoretical but some have been proven.
A plasma torpedo that is maintained and even guided over distance by a... Torpedo. Go figure. You only have a limited number of shots but you have more range. But then and standard Anti-matter charge is just as effective. As a close range weapon, Plasma weapons are one of the best weapon to have, that and a Railgun/Gauss cannon.
I feel it’s more likely that the plasma torpedo have a physical core, a small probe with its own Propulsion, and just enough battery to sustain a magnetic containment field. When the torpedo hits, the core probe get destroyed, so the plasma expands from the containment field and cause severe damage.
just move sideways. easy.
Plasma torps have been shown adjusting flight path to follow targets.
They must have some sort of propulsion system which can steer and accelerate - and which can change warp speeds.
They must have some sort of onboard sensors (or communications) which can identify and track programmed (or directed) targets.
Not sure how you'd engineer all those features into a ball of plasma which doesn't contain physical devices.
Amazing! Thanks for this.
please do the tactics of the uss defiant
*sigh* Oookay ok ok...
It's Whizz - whoosh - Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom whoosh isn't it ?
PREPARE FOR RAMMING SPEED!!!
The weapon effect comes from plasma. The weapon is not made of plasma (except in games).
In other words, it is a torpedo with a plasma effect warhead.
Accordingly to star trek legacy when wing defenders plasma torpedo is in the beak area the 2 leg Canons are it's disrupters
All you have to do is go sideways instead of running away from it......
I never really bought that the weapon in Balance of Terror was the same thing as a plasma-torpedo. The weapon in Balance of Terror was a dumb-weapon consisting plasma. A plasma torpedo is a smart weapon that uses plasma as a warhead. It might have an advantage over a photon torpedo in that with enough momentum, the plasma continues forward in a blast cone, whereas a lot of the energy of a photon torpedo gets wasted, exploding in all directions.
+AMC2283 Well... you're at least partially right. The weapon used in Balance of Terror (based on the novels) was what the Romulans called a plasma *mortar* ... so it was probably unguided, but otherwise was a plasma torpedo. In Star Fleet Battles (a non-canon tabletop wargame based on ST:TOS and ST:TAS), it would have been a Type R Plasma Torpedo, which was the Warbird's *only* weapon, until the Klingons gave the Romulans phaser and warp technology as part of the Treaty of Smarba.
Tractor beam controled??? So you could use a stronger tractor beam to send it back into attacing ship or whatever else you would like to do with it...
Electrons are not attracted to atoms as a result of a gravitational force. They are attracted to atoms because the nucleus is positively charged and the electrons are negatively charged this creates an electrostatic force between them.
Electrons have a negative charge and nucleus has a positive charge. This makes a central potential dip centered in the nucleus to which electrons wish to fall. This is an electromagnetic phenomena, and at this scale gravity is negligible. Why do electrons not fall to the center? Contrary to what many might say, it is not similar to the orbit of a planet. We do not have forward motion and a bent circular path from the electro motive forces. We know this becuase this would imply acceleration of a charge, and we also know that an accelerating charge looses emerge to the emissions of electromagnetic waves. Instead we find that the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle shows that we can not both be certain of both the position and velocity of an electron, which shows that the electron cannot fall into the center of the nucleus. When we use the Shrödinger equation we can see that electrons have probable stable states at certain energy levels. Electrons will habitate these levels becuase it is extraordinary unfavorable to stray from them. What you may be thinking of is something called electron degeneracy which is what supports white dwarves (it is when the main force opposing the claps of matter agains the gravitational force is the fact that electrons occupy every available quantum state), or simply what keeps planets from collapsing, the electromagnetic repulsion between atoms. This explanation is incredibly limited, but it’s difficult to discuss quantum mechanics in a TH-cam comment section
Indeed it is, I ddint expect to go there but it seems we've arrived at quantum mechanics. Okay so an electron cannot fall to the center of the nucleus but would the sudden 'resumption' of the electron orbits trigger some kind of energy release such as, some gamma radiation perhaps? Certainly photons. I at least know shifting orbits release those. :D
The name quantum mechanics comes from quanta of light. Electrons can absorb specific frequencies of light to jump energy levels. Energy levels refer to different allowed obits that have different endothermic favor abilities. This election is said to be in an excited state, and there are some other processes that can cause electrons to enter excited states as well. When an electron demotes energy levels it emits a packet of light, a quanta of light. The amount of energy contained in the quanta of light is the difference in the energy levels of the orbitals the electron moves between. The greater the energy gradient, the higher the frequency of light that is edited. It certainly is possible for gamma rays to be emitted like this, but I do not know of any occurrences of this happening of the top of my head. It also is possible for an electron to enter the nucleus of an atom. It just is remarkably unlikely, but i do recalling having to calculate that probability of a one proton hydrogen atom one,I unfortunately do not recall what the probability was. An instance in nature where it is probable for electrons to enter the nucleus is in super novas. Stars hold their shape thanks to the balancing of gravitational pressures and radiative pressures. Once nuclear fussing in the star's core stops, this radiative pressure begins to lesson, causing the core of the star to collapse. As it collapses, the energy and density in the stars' core increases, which could allow for new nuclear reactions in the core to happen, stoping the collapse of the core. If this does not happen, the core can be supported by electron degeneracy which I covered in the original comment and form a white dwarf. If the star is massive enough, the forces collapsing the core can be so great that electrons begin to be forced into the nucleus of atoms, merging with protons to form neutrons. This will allow the star to continue to collapse until there are only neutrons and these neutrons occupy every possible quantum state. We now of neutron degeneracy, and if this stops to collapse of the core we are left with a neutron star. If there is enough mass to overcome neutron degeneracy there is a theory that suggests that the neutrons could desiccate into quarks or form something called a strange star, but otherwise the core collapses into a black hole.
Wish Starfleet would come out with plasma based weaponry to add to ship's arsenals.
The NX class starships of the 22nd century were armed with plasma cannons before these were replaced by phase cannons.
Cool!
does boes einstein condensate count as a state of matter ?
when you're able to make several pounds of the stuff and throw it an enemy, no level of shielding in the world can help its seeping freezing destruction, especially since they're assuming a much more energetic foe, however making that pound is the problem.
also I have issue with a weapon system literally defeated by liquid water, or even liquid hydrogen for that matter. in short getting to near absolute zero is easier than 90,000 Kelvin. A condensate weapon's effects. yay! they're wet or slightly colder.... than they were during normal space flight....
Yes, that's the 5th state. And there are actually 6 states of matter. The last being the Fermionic condensate.
@@occamsrazor1285
Six that we know for now . Not to mention that there is a 7th one, called Dark Matter.
Interesting idea about the damage. One additional, since the starships are in space, one would think that their hulls would be close to the temperature of space - in other words VERY cold. Now imagine heating that up to the temperature of the sun in milliseconds using a plasma torpedo. That, in itself, should instantly vaporize the hull. Even deflectors should be unable to stop this.
sciguyjeff interesting theory.
Your statement if flawed. Pouring hot coffee inside the thermos would not become suddenly cold (over time yes) because it IS separated from the outside. On the reverse, you are saying the outside of the thermos would become hot because of the liquid poured inside. This would cause energy consumption to be extremely high since the ship would be constantly losing heat to the hull. Ideally there would be a vacuum - as in a vacuum flask - separating the interior from exterior so that this would not happen. As a result, the outer hull would be exposed to the cold of space. Space is not an insulator. If it were, Earth would be ice as we would receive no energy from the sun. In certain conditions, there would be convection, certainly conduction at times. Radiation, always. This is why we see objects that radiate. An asteroid, for example, would be detected, at best, by reflected radiation. Nonetheless, my hypothesis would be true for objects away from sources of radiation. The outermost planets, moons, asteroids and comets are examples. Unless, for some reason you want to waste energy, a ship's outer hull would be equal to the space it is in contact with. HOWEVER - regardless, the point was that a plasma weapon would immediately heat the hull to the temperature of the sun and vaporize it.
Considering there are people on this thread considering Condensate weapons, this is by far one of the more reasonable questions. This being said plasma is VERY susceptible to an electromagnetic field, and in the form of a shield its good until you have to come up with somewhere to store this extra heat you've channeled and encapsulated, and the shield's idea of spreading it over the entire frame only makes this heating problem worse.
A thermos in this field of questions is directly comparing the insulatory effect a defense has against a burning attack. If the damaging effects are contained and dissipated, literally nothing happens. Plasma has very few things outside a magnetic field that it can't literally burn into non-function. (see gravity effects as mentioned above.) Irony is the deflection or containment of the effects of a matter-antimatter reaction also fall into this question. which is why they are both weapons.
Unfortunately, this theory can't hold up because the episode "Balance of Terror" actually gives us a good working theory for how the weapon works:
"SPOCK: From the outpost's protective shield. Cast rodinium. This is the hardest substance known to our science.
(He crushes it with his hand)
SPOCK: Lab theorizes an enveloping energy plasma forcing an implosion.
This is nothing like rapid thermal expansion, it is in fact a weapon that uses plasma to *crush* targets, which means it is place an enormous amount of mechanical energy on shields and the alloys making up the hulls of starships. And the fact that it was able to do this to a fully shielded base that was a mile-deep on an asteroid made of almost solid iron is scary as hell. This is hundreds of gigatons to multiple teratons of energy.
That poor Chandley....
2:29 Noise in space?
Electrons are not separated from the nucleus by an electromagnetic force. If anything, the negatively charged electrons would be attracted to the positively charged protons. It is a quantum mechanical effect that excludes electrons from the nucleus. The nucleus is too small, too confined of a space.
In FASA's game plasma weapons could not be fired while cloaked. And of course could not be split.
Lets write some house rules :D
+Petra Meyer +Resurrected Starships
Well, that's FASA's game. In Star Fleet Battles, plasma weapons *can* be split, but the decision has to be made on the final turn of arming. A type G plasma weapon can be split into two Type F torpedoes, a type S can be split into three type F torpedoes, and a type R can be split into five Type F torpedoes. A type-F torpedo has a base warhead strength of 15, but is most effective within 12 hexes and totally dissipates after 15 hexes. (Each hex represents 10,000 kilometers.)
However, this requires a *lot* of energy, and a fully-armed plasma torpedo cannot be "held in the tube". If you don't launch it by the end of the turn - for example, if the target(s) cloaked or you took enough damage to disable your fire control - all you can do is vent the plasma into space and start the arming sequence again.
By way of providing an example, let's look at the Type R plasma torpedo, the most powerful in Star Fleet Battles. It has a base warhead strength of 50 (for comparison, the Enterprise's shields have a strength of 30, not counting reinforcement). It costs 3 points of energy for the first and second turns of arming.
For the third turn, it costs 5 points of energy to fire it as a normal type R, or *ten* points of energy to fire it as an enveloping torpedo or a "shotgun". An enveloping torpedo has twice the strength, but when it hits, the damage is divided equally across all six shields. So it would have a strength of 100, which is 16 points of damage per shield (with the remaining damage divided as equally as possible).
The Warbird, which is what the Romulans used before the Klingons provided warp technology, *barely* had enough power to fire the Type R torpedo, which was its *only* weapon (it didn't even have phasers). It had 6 points of Impulse power, and 6 batteries. So:
Turn one: Spend 1 point of energy to cloak, 1 point of energy for life support, 1 point of energy to move at sublight (speed 1), which is as fast as the ship could go, and put the other 3 points into charging 3 batteries.
Turn two: Same as turn one. (You can skip this turn, but your batteries will be empty after firing the torpedo.)
Turn three: Now that the batteries are charged, instead of putting three points of energy into charging the batteries, you put them into charging the torpedo.
Turn four: Same as turn three.
Turn five: 1 point of energy to cloak (you're going to decloak, but you want to start re-cloaking as soon as possible after you fire), 1 point of energy to move, 1 point of energy for life support, and 1 point of energy for fire control. This leaves them 2 points of impulse power and 6 points of battery power. It costs 5 points of power to finish arming the torpedo, some of which is going to have to come from the batteries.
So, the sequence of battle: Spend five turns charging the batteries, arming the torpedo, and moving into position. On the last turn, decloak, fire (ideally from a range of 5 hexes or less), and immediately start cloaking again. You can't use fire control while cloaked, but it takes 5 impulses to decloak and 5 impulses to re-cloak after you fire. From that range, the torpedo will hit before you lose fire control again.
Then the Klingons provided warp technology and phaser technology as part of the Treaty of Smarba. The Warbird was refitted with shields (strength 25), four phasers, and 20 points of warp energy, and was called the "War Eagle". It still had 6 points of impulse energy and 6 batteries. The problem with warp engines is that it takes more energy to cloak. So now you're looking at 6 points to cloak, 2 points for full shields, 1 point for life support, and 3 points for the first round of arming the torpedo. Another 4 points if you're going to charge the phasers too. (Once charged, the phasers stay charged for 50 turns or until they fire, whichever comes first.) That's all your impulse power and half your warp power. But at least you could move at warp speed, usually speed 10 to 14.
I don't think we've ever seen split-warhead plasma torps on screen.
Although we have seen photons and phasers and even deflectors get configured, modulated, modified, and adapted in all sorts of versatile ways. And I doubt Romulans would continue preferring plasma torps if they have too many disadvantages and limitations compared vs other weapons (like photon torps).
sorry to ruin this for you but those two big guns are cannons not torp launchers. Star trek treats plasma torps like molotov bombs and if you fire one and youre too close your ship will burn as well. Go into sto and get stuck on a target and fire big high yield plasma and see that you will get the plasma burn debuff as well.
Nice! Here is the Minds.com link www.minds.com/newsfeed/875694012562096128 As for my own thoughts on the matter... In my universe, the plasma torpedoes are actual torpedoes, that are fired and track the target until right before the hit the warhead is spooled&fired upon the target in a form of a plasma funnel. It is concentrated and does not envelop the target but rather aims to breach the shields and melt the hull. Certainly, there are races who use the weapon in a different way and tactics vary greatly, but with enough insight, such torpedoes can have multiple implementations on the battlefield. In my second book of the Starshatter series, I describe a lengthy spaceship battle.
Do the Borg use plasma torpedoes ?
Luc Fauvarque I'm not sure. They have big scarey green torpedoes though, might be plasma but look like photon, maybe both!
I don't think we ever had any on screen confirmation of the Borg weapon's nature, except for the cutting beam, which seams to be some kind of laser used after a target has been rendered completely shieldless and preferably immobilized. We know they have shield draining tractor beams that seam to adapt (or try to) shield form and frequencies. And we've seen them use some greenish blobs. Both the blobs and the tractors have been shown to destroy enemy vessels, but i can't recall if they were ever explained in any way on screen. The tractors could of course be some kind of directed graviton emitters that either hold or tare apart ships. The blobs could be anything from some kind of torpedoes to some kind of pulse energy weapons (capable of being used in warp).
somewhere in some game, they use something called 'gravremetric' torpedos, in STO they use plasma
They are called PHOTON torpedoes.
Resurrected? I saw the red matter as THIS BUT ON STEROIDS can do a video on this. what is the same, what is the difference.?
Romulans took the Plasma Spaz perk very early and forsook many other beneficial perks.....lolz
Episode idea, do a show on the FASA universe Romulan V-8 Bird-of-Prey:
www.ststcsolda.space/romulans/V-8/V-8.html
I have something in mind. I have a very old low poly v-8 model I considered using this episode, but would have to spend some hours redoing the texture work on it. I would like to do a battle breakdown of the first battle between Enterprise and this ship. LOTS to unpack there.
Resurrected Starships 👍👍👍
Now the big question... What the fuck is a quantum torpedo?
If you want to learn the details of plasma torpedoes you would want to go to the original source material, Star Fleet Battles. For example, they are not guided by tractor beams. That probably comes from Star Trek Online, and computer game people are generally idiots.
It would take me several pages to explain plasma torpedoes, but a few major points is that they are self guided seeking weapons, not guided by tractor beams... that is a silly notion that sounds like it was just made up by the idiots who make Star Trek Online. There are several different sizes of plasma torpedo launchers, all of which can arm a plasma torpedo of any size up to that launcher size. In addition to this "downloading" function, they have four modes of operation. Standard, Shotgun (which you covered here), Enveloping (which is an option, not the standard load), and Bolt (a direct fire option).
Plasma torpedoes also "lose power with range". They are very powerful if they hit shortly after being launched, they eventually completely dissipate if they don't find a target within their fairly limited range.
Like many aspects of Star Trek lore, plasma torpedoes were defined by Star Fleet Battles. Gene Roddenberry did not create much of the lore of Star Trek, especially when it came to the military aspects of it. He was just plain wacky when it came too the military and insisted that "Star Fleet is not a military organization" and that the Federation was a superpower that didn't have a military. This, and the fact that Paramount did not like or trust him, is why he was pushed back to being just an adviser after The Motion Picture. He actually had very little involvement with any of the movies after TMP and was more of an adviser and "figurehead of the universe". This is why you hear him complaining about the movies being "too militaristic" and not liking Star Trek V. Obviously, if he was in charge like most people think he was, he wouldn't be complaining about the movies not being what he wanted them too be.
After TMP Paramount looked to the published works of Franz Joseph, Lou Zocchi, and Stephen V Cole to guide them when it came to the military aspects of Star Fleet... since Gene was just plain wacky when it came to his ideas about that. For example the Enterprise is not a "Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser" because Gene Roddenberry said so, it was that because Franz Joseph said so. The Star Fleet Universe were the Franz Joseph inspired games, and most of what you call "Star Trek lore", when it comes to Star Fleet, the ships, fleets, navies, and "engineering lore" comes from Franz Joseph and Stephen V Cole, not Gene Roddenberry.
Gene Roddenberry called Wrath of Khan "too militaristic" because it had been based on Franz and Steve's work, completely ignoring him. You can see it in Wrath of Khan... the ship displays on the bridge screens are Franz Joseph's blueprints. The militaristic nature of it all comes from SFB. SFB was also used to choreograph everything happening in space, leading to the legendary dig/jab at the game recognized by all SFB players... "His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking".
And this is one of those cases where the original source material is the Star Fleet Universe, which is where plasma torpedoes (and most military aspects of Star Fleet, including weapons) were defined. So if you want to know how plasma torpedoes actually work, just read about them in SFB and ignore all other sources. Franz Joseph and Steve Cole are what is "canon" when it comes to Star Fleet, ships, fleets, and weapons. Paramount went with them over Gene Roddenberry, which shows in the movies. You can see it in the movies, which are decidedly militaristic (Franz & Steve) and not at all Gene Roddenberry's literally delusional "a superpower that doesn't have a military" which was a primary reason he was pushed back to adviser status after TMP.
Kavik Kang I know I read they were guided by a tractor beam but I cannot remember the source but it wasn't STO. So then with no tractor, I couldn't find it in your reply, how do they home in on targets? Perhaps...programmed plasma circuit?
That's certainly not your fault. Star Trek lore is a jumbled mess, partly because what the fans believe about how it all came to be and the reality of how it all came to be are two completely different things. Gene Roddenberry was not the saint that the fans believe he was, Paramount didn't like him much but always supported whatever he wanted to tell the fans... no matter how far from the truth it was. In reality Franz Joseph, Steve Cole, and the Star Fleet Universe were as influential over Star Trek as Gene Roddenberry was. So, of course, were the various writers and directors, of course. After TMP Gene was really just an adviser that was often ignored. The actual "Roddenberry Star Trek" is the entire original series, TMP, and the first two season of TNG. Other than that, he actually had very little involvement with the rest of Star Trek.
It's been so long since I've looked at "how plasma torpedoes track targets" that I can't remember how Steve Cole said that worked from memory. However, it would involved the targeting systems of the ships in some way because that is the case with all SFB weapons. Franz Joseph was a real-world aircraft designer who also reverse engineered capture foreign technology for the Defense Intelligence Agency. So Franz, Steve, and the SFU always base things on real-world military technology. Plasma torpedoes, for example, are very resistant to hostile "electronic warfare" which is represented in the game by the weapons themselves having 3 points of ECCM before even considering the EW status of the firing ship and target.
I thought I'd put this link here. If anyone reading this has never seen the original Franz Joseph blueprints before, you can see them at all at this link. If you look further on this web site, you can also find the complete Franz Joseph Technical Manual. These two things were the very beginning of what today you would call the "engineering lore" of Star Trek. It all actually began with Franz Joseph. Gene Roddenberry knew nothing about engineering and his vague description of the warp drive, and how nacelles needed to be placed on the ship to function, were about his only contribution to that aspect of the lore of Star Trek.
www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/star-trek-blueprints.php
Plasma is many times more effective than phasers. When Enterprise first encountered Borgs in Federation space, Shelby hinted that the plasma weapons which were meant to deal with Borgs are still in development. So stop spreading bullshit that plasma weapons are weak. If they are good enough to fend off the Borgs, then they belong to pinnacles of ST-Universe-Weapon-Technology.