Federation Commander

[Itharus]

I think it might have been a couple years ago that I asked this question, and someone remarked that it might be addressed in one of the periodicals put out... sadly, I disappeared from the hobby due to some medical issues for a while and never found out if it was addressed or not.

The question revolved around photon torpedoes and how they are overcharged and whether they have a physical component or are just basically a ball of annihilation-reaction plasma hurled out into space.

So... are they basically a highly refined plasma bolt? Or are they a little physical canister of anti matter that goes pop when it hits something?

Thanks!

[djdood]

The first couple of paragraphs in FC rule 4C describe the photon torpedo in quite a bit of detail.
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[Itharus]

Going by memory here, but IIRC it does mention it has some anti-matter in magnetic bottles but I don't believe it really elaborated more than that. I'll check in a bit though.

...has the rulebook been updated in the last couple years? My download is kind of old and my print copy is even older LOL!

[mjwest]

The latest version of the rules are the Rev 6 version, which was done in ... checking ... HOLY ****, 2011! Wow! Did NOT realize it was that long ago!

But, regardless, that specific part of the rules, the (4c) introduction, probably hasn't changed from the Rev 0 rules.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Itharus]

OK the forum is for some weird reason eating my post... Not sure how to stop this.


"1. I just confirmed that the FC reference rulebook is amazingly user friendly to navigate with key strokes, so that's awesome! Kudos.

2. "The torpedo is loaded from the ship

^^^ Everything after this point is being deleted.

[Sgt_G]

The problem is this board's software can't read "curly" quote marks / apostrophes. If you copy/paste from Word with these, it chops off the post, just as you have seen.

Trek-BBS used to have the same problem. Maybe they found the right setting to fix this, but I suspect they have a newer version. If I were ADB, I'd have to wonder if it's worth upgrading just for that minor issue.


Back to the quest: what are photon torpedoes? In my mind, thus totally unofficial, there is a small physical item, smaller than a bread box, that is placed in the launch tube. This powers and maintains the magnetic bubbles and also acts as the proximity sensor to detonate the warhead.

There are two bubbles in the warhead. The small one, perhaps the size of a fist, has anti-matter. The larger outside bubble is then filled with tachyon-enriched plasma from the warp drive (or AWR). When the torpedo is launched, the fuse-box opens a tiny hole allowing some warp-plasma to be released, propelling the warhead at high-warp speed (up around Warp Ten). When it senses the target, it drops the smaller bubble, allowing the matter / anti-matter explosion.

In an overloaded warhead, it has the same amount of anti-matter but more warp plasma, making for a denser mix and increasing the number of reactions and thus a larger explosive yield.

My idea of the small fuse boxes works whereas the ST:WOK coffin-style torpedo doesn't work because they're small enough any ship can have a large number (100+) per tube. The coffins are too big, which would restrict the number a ship could carry and thus would have to be accounted for, like drones/missiles are now.
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Garth L. Getgen

Master Sgt, US Air Force, Retired -- 1981-2007 -- 1W091A

[Itharus]

Thants for the tip! It was the damned apostrophe in "ship's" that needed to be changed > Here's the post I was trying to make:


1. I just confirmed that the FC reference rulebook is amazingly user friendly to navigate with key strokes, so that's awesome! Kudos.

2. "The torpedo is loaded from the ship's power sources in a launch tube with encapsulated antimatter, then fired at the enemy. When it strikes the target, the antimatter is released and causes an explosion. " -- 4C, FedCom Reference Manual

So... how's that exactly? The ship's power source is an antimatter reactor, no? Aren't the impulse engines run by their own fusion reactors? Hell, aren't there auxilliary fission reactors and batteries to boot?

So what's being loaded? Deuterium/Tritium/Heavy-Water? The substances that provide fusion or do work as gas or plasma? And if the AM is encapsulated until impact... that implies either a mechanical component that's physically at the heart of a ball of... something... or some AM that's in a self sustaining containment field that breaks on impact for whatever reason. You'd basically be poppin' some mass of something out of a big rail gun that has an AM payload in the middle.

How do you overcharge that and why would it use more energy?

Now... if you were to pump reaction mass into the chamber, drop some AM into the mass, and funnel enough power from the ship's systems to generate a containment field that would hold the annihilation reaction long enough both in the tubes and while in flight to be useful -- that would make sense for the power draw. The overcharge (higher AM to Mass ratio*) would just make a stronger blast that needs more energy to contain and expel... making the photon torpedo little more than an ultra-high velocity AM pumped plasma bolt.

*I'm assuming less AM than Mass because the energy released by annihilation is immense and would not only make a ball of hard radiation and exotic partiles, but the energy would also make a big ball of plasma out of the amount of mass not liberated by the AM itself.

Sorry, just nerding out a bit. Surely others have wondered, too?

[Itharus]