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Forum Name: Gun of the Week
Topic ID: 73
#0, GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Gryphon on May-28-17 at 10:39 PM
LAST EDITED ON May-28-17 AT 10:40 PM (EDT)
 
Starfleet's latest has some problems.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#1, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by CdrMike on May-29-17 at 00:15 AM
In response to message #0
I've always been preferential to the Mark VI, aka the "assault phaser" myself. If you're gonna have a quasi-military organization, might as well make the sidearm look the part. Better than those "dustbusters" that the boys in R&D have on the drawing board.

#2, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Mercutio on May-29-17 at 00:27 AM
In response to message #0
LAST EDITED ON May-29-17 AT 01:09 AM (EDT)
 
This is another result of tensions between the civilian mandate and resolute "we're not a military, goddamn it" part of Starfleet and Federation culture and the "we're out there getting shot at all the time and we use a military hierarchy, who the hell do you think we're kidding, Brenda?" part of it.

This has produced some interesting push-and-pull over the years and a lot of design compromises driven by deeply riven ideologies. Some of them are fairly benign; the first five or six Starfleet Chiefs of Staff imported and re-established the tradition for legacy, staid, elegant but ever so slightly boring ship names from the old United Earth Space Forces (and before that, wet-navy) traditions, which is why the ships have a lot of place names and one-word virtue names (Enterprise, Excelsior, Valiant, Defiant, etc.) rather than the more arts-fartsy names some of the more avant-garde members of the Federation Council sometimes advocate for. The Betazoids, for example, periodically push for ship names like Spirit of Unity Undaunted or The First and Last Argument of Fools and they never quite seem to make it out of committee.

Conversely, the "science first, shooting never if we can help it" wing of Starfleet has often controlled the (civilian, politically-appointed) position of Secretary of Starfleet, which has significant control over ship design and outfitting. This is why Starfleet vessels are known for their robust science facilities, oversized scanner and comm systems arrays for ships of their size and class, their efficient engines optimized for long cruises rather than the highest possible flank speed or best possible maneuverability, and for their general massive overengineering compared to the starkly utilitarian "this is a warship, meant for war" ship designs of other major star nations.

The Phaser Mark IV Type 2 represents what happens when these two factions collide in a... less than productive way. The form factor was designed in about two days by a cadre of human, Betazoid, Deltan, and Trill Production Design (as in, stage and screen production) majors pursuing their B.F.A's at the Daystrom Institute's College of Art and Design in the 2250s.

It wasn't ever intended to even be submitted seriously or sourced for procurement; rather, said Production Design majors were tasked with producing a form factor that would look really smoking hot when their buddies doing post-doc work over at the Institute proper went to stand before the Procurement Board, mated a Phaser Mark IV, Type 1 to their "big battery pack, an(d) enhanced accelerator-emitter array" attachment, and asked them to approve it for production, if you please. The probably apocryphal story is that the artists were told "look, just give us a place to put the button that looks slick as hell. You'll get course credit."

And they certainly managed that! The idea was that once the technology was approved, they'd get actual engineers and some experts in industrial design, not a pack of undergrads, to come in and give it a facelift, make it fit-for-purpose.

One problem. The Procurement Board loved it. Not the technology; that got sort of a "yeah yeah, it does what you said it would do, gold star" response. But the shell the technology was encased in.

And the Starfleet Procurement Board, as well as their patrons and backers on the Federation Council and within the Federation itself, was just beginning to embrace a tendency towards batshit insanity at this point in time.

Seriously. There was about a four or five decade span during the late twenty-two hundreds when the Federation went through a period of what can only be termed "aggressively barely functional aesthetics." Style ruled the day. If you were a woman in Starfleet and maybe wanted to wear some pants instead of an extremely elegantly tailored miniskirt that had been tailored just for you? Well that was just too bad. If you were any gender (or none at all, in the case of at least two Federation member species) and you wanted pockets, or a utility belt, or a place to conveniently rig out a gear load that was more than just what you could fit in your two hands or a single holster, again: too. bad. That "wasn't the image" they wanted Starfleet to project. Everyone was supposed to look like a smartly dressed go-getter in their slimline minimalist outfits with their art-deco inspired gear, and they weren't supposed to have too much of the latter.

Frankly, even the holsters were regarded as something of a grudging compromise; they ruined the lines of the pants, you know.

They didn't quite take this to the point of total madness; stuff still, you know, worked. The underlying design of everything was strong and functional. But the implementation was pretty dangerous at times; Starship interiors even had quite a lot of directional and warning(!) signage stripped from them in order to minimize clutter. The Constitution-class cruisers were astounding ships, but god help you if you wandered into engineering without already knowing precisely how close to the warp core it was safe to stand, because Starfleet sure as hell wasn't going to do something as gauche as paint a line on the deck to let you know.

The worst of this design philosophy was pared back by the twenty-three hundreds, but it still continues in an attenuated form. Even the Dominion War didn't manage to kill it dead; it just seems baked into the Federation's DNA for some reason.

Bit of a digression there. So yeah. Basically, a bunch of artists cobbled together a design for a military weapon that was never intended to be taken seriously, and it ran right into the buzzsaw of a rising political and aesthetic movement that, while well-intentioned, was in many ways actively dangerous to the safety of a lot of people.

They all got A's, tho.

-Merc
Keep Rat


#3, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by drakensis on May-29-17 at 02:56 AM
In response to message #2
That... makes a frightening amount of sense.

#10, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by McFortner on May-29-17 at 06:21 PM
In response to message #2
And the Klingons took this and ran it up to 11. They apparently WANTED their designs to be as dangerous to the victim as the user. Hell, it's a miracle they survived the first decade of their atomic age.

Even the closest to a "safe" weapon design is the Romulan disruptors and Bajoran phasers of the 24th century. And those trigger guards are not only designed along the entire grip length, but are almost far enough from the said grip for an elephant to fire.

The safety culture died a short, early, painful death in the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".


#15, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Gryphon on May-29-17 at 08:49 PM
In response to message #10
>The safety culture died a short, early, painful death in the Alpha and
>Beta quadrants.

Probably fell to its death from an inadequately handrailed catwalk.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#20, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by StClair on May-30-17 at 04:35 PM
In response to message #2
(( Just wanted to say, I loved this attempt at an in-universe explanation. :) ))

#29, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Matrix Dragon on Jun-01-17 at 07:12 AM
In response to message #2
>This has produced some interesting push-and-pull over the years and a
>lot of design compromises driven by deeply riven ideologies. Some of
>them are fairly benign; the first five or six Starfleet Chiefs of
>Staff imported and re-established the tradition for legacy, staid,
>elegant but ever so slightly boring ship names from the old United
>Earth Space Forces (and before that, wet-navy) traditions, which is
>why the ships have a lot of place names and one-word virtue names
>(Enterprise, Excelsior, Valiant, Defiant, etc.) rather than the
>more arts-fartsy names some of the more avant-garde members of the
>Federation Council sometimes advocate for. The Betazoids, for example,
>periodically push for ship names like Spirit of Unity Undaunted
>or The First and Last Argument of Fools and they never quite
>seem to make it out of committee.

The committee's newest member, that guy from Bajor, is clearly having far too much fun with it. I'm still sorry they shot down his suggestions of Sufficiently Advanced Technology and Series of Unlikely Explanations.

>Frankly, even the holsters were regarded as something of a grudging
>compromise; they ruined the lines of the pants, you know.
>
>They didn't quite take this to the point of total madness; stuff
>still, you know, worked.

Then the 'pyjama pants' incident happened. According to the stories I've heard, the idea originally involved smart-fabrics that were still in the design phase at the time. When the fabrics turned out to A) Not work as intended, and B) Cost an absolute fortune on top of that, the idiots behind it all went ahead with a budget version that quickly earned the hatred of almost everyone in Starfleet. Some near-human species apparently couldn't even put it on without assistance. The backlash was so bad that it killed almost every last bit of control the 'fashion!' movement had over Starfleet uniforms until the 2350s started the problem all over again.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter


#30, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by mdg1 on Jun-01-17 at 08:47 AM
In response to message #29

>The committee's newest member, that guy from Bajor, is clearly having
>far too much fun with it. I'm still sorry they shot down his
>suggestions of Sufficiently Advanced Technology and Series
>of Unlikely Explanations
.

Was that Banek Yan? The guy who said that Starfleet needed a touch of culture, but later resigned due to what he called 'special circumstances'?


#4, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by NHO on May-29-17 at 08:40 AM
In response to message #0
Hm. Genom's E-11 repeater blaster carbine next, please?

#5, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by JFerio on May-29-17 at 10:51 AM
In response to message #0
Nicely summing up the problem when one designs a prop without a proper knowledge of gun discipline and use.

I am also partial to the "Mark VI" used in Star Trek VI, because it seems to cover a couple of the problems, like it has a real physical safety toggle, and no "secondary trigger" from having a smaller phaser locked into a "booster handle". In other words, it looks like it might be a real weapon, not just a hunk of gun-shaped plastic. The "tracking plate" in the grip was a nice added touch, and they actually used it to keep track of the props for check out.

To date, none of the phaser designs (or any other species' variant thereof) include any sort of trigger guard, and TNG and later Type 2 models suffer the added problem of "I don't want it to look like a gun" without thinking about why the gun shape is actually a thing; they were definitely bending it back into a gun shape in Voyager because they were finding that the actors couldn't actually point the things any more than vaguely in the direction they intended to fire, plus where the hells do you put a trigger guard on it. And don't even try to pass it off as "fingerprint recognition" tricks; when you want a trigger guard, you want a real one the operator can actually rest their trigger digit onto so they themselves know directly that they have that digit OFF the trigger entirely, plus keeps that same trigger from being pressed at all when it gets bumped.

And the Type 1 pretty much fails on so many levels, except possibly as a concealable, defensive-only sidearm. You don't want to rely on it for active combat. That's one of the few things TNG effectively got right with the idea; it wouldn't be an external module in a weapons system, it would most likely be a completely separate weapon, issued when the Type 2 would be provocative and/or obvious.


#6, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by mdg1 on May-29-17 at 11:16 AM
In response to message #5
LAST EDITED ON May-29-17 AT 11:17 AM (EDT)
 
Actually, one of the later phaser rifle designs (debuting in First Contact, IIRC) did have an actual trigger guard. But the sidearms still used the old "dustbuster" design.

#7, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Gryphon on May-29-17 at 02:29 PM
In response to message #5
>Nicely summing up the problem when one designs a prop without a proper
>knowledge of gun discipline and use.

It's funny, really, because I didn't set out to do that. I've always liked the pre-TNG pistol phasers, particularly the Star Trek III/IV type (as seen here), so I just thought it would be a cute gag to get a toy one and do a straight-faced GotW about it. But when I sat down to get the pictures and figure out what I was going to say about it, I started handling it like an actual weapon, and I immediately realized that as a weapon, the design is garbage. In any world where whether you hit the target, or commit a negligent discharge, or even get the thing to work at all is determined by factors other than what it says happens in the script, a Star Trek phaser would be a hopelessly compromised solution.

I know this is not exactly a dramatic revelation. Star Trek's technology has always been more about how it looks than what it's supposed to do, because at its core, Star Trek is basically high fantasy with the magic dressed up like technology. We all knew this, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself. I'd just never considered this particular bit of in-story technology in this light before, so it was a bit of a surprise.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#8, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by JFerio on May-29-17 at 05:25 PM
In response to message #7
>>Nicely summing up the problem when one designs a prop without a proper
>>knowledge of gun discipline and use.
>
>It's funny, really, because I didn't set out to do that. I've always
>liked the pre-TNG pistol phasers, particularly the Star Trek
>III/IV
type (as seen here), so I just thought it would be a cute
>gag to get a toy one and do a straight-faced GotW about it. But when
>I sat down to get the pictures and figure out what I was going to say
>about it, I started handling it like an actual weapon, and I
>immediately realized that as a weapon, the design is
>garbage. In any world where whether you hit the target, or
>commit a negligent discharge, or even get the thing to work at all is
>determined by factors other than what it says happens in the script, a
>Star Trek phaser would be a hopelessly compromised solution.

Which, indeed, is part of the problem. It's designed to serve the story (unlike most firearms in TV/movies), and to look "cool". It doesn't necessarily follow that it would make sense. Having the pistol grip boost the endurance/output of the Cricket (that was the nickname for the TNG Type 1) looks cool, doesn't necessarily play out as logical because it, at least, adds another potential point of failure. Also, in at least one episode of the original series, a phaser is shown being destroyed, and about the only reason not to try to use the Type 1 that was part of it was possibly the damaging of the emitter.

>I know this is not exactly a dramatic revelation. Star Trek's
>technology has always been more about how it looks than what it's
>supposed to do, because at its core, Star Trek is basically
>high fantasy with the magic dressed up like technology. We all knew
>this, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself. I'd just never
>considered this particular bit of in-story technology in this light
>before, so it was a bit of a surprise.

Most of the Trek universe is like that. Like wandering around in shirt sleeves right next to the antimatter reactor; no real-life organization is going to let any crewmember near that thing without serious anti-hazard measures taken, on account of the slight chance its going to "spring a leak" (TNG: Drumhead, where when the hatch blew off, if proper safety protocols were being followed I doubt they would have had engineering crew in for radiation burns). You just happened to find an avenue that I haven't seen most people exploring in print, so to speak, although I'm sure some other firearms people have noticed how garbage the design is from a usability and safety standpoint.


#9, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Gryphon on May-29-17 at 06:13 PM
In response to message #8
>Having the pistol
>grip boost the endurance/output of the Cricket (that was the nickname
>for the TNG Type 1) looks cool, doesn't necessarily play out as
>logical because it, at least, adds another potential point of failure.

Ha, I'd forgotten that TNG had the keyring-flashlight model as well as the dustbuster. Least visually satisfying prop ever.

Also, semi-relatedly, I've just remembered that (at least on the original TV series) the pistol grip does make the phaser more powerful as well as longer-lasting. It's a plot point in the episode with the Horta ("The Devil in the Dark").

>Most of the Trek universe is like that. Like wandering around in shirt
>sleeves right next to the antimatter reactor; no real-life
>organization is going to let any crewmember near that thing without
>serious anti-hazard measures taken, on account of the slight chance
>its going to "spring a leak"

To be fair, the engineering crewmen do wear radsuits in the movies. In the TNG era, the fact that emergency forcefields were pretty much instantaneous and ubiquitous was used as the justification to save all that money omit specialized engineering PPE. Which is an idea that got kicked around for the original series—in the episode where spacesuits first appeared, the script called for some kind of handwave about personal forcefields instead, but the producers decided it would require too extreme a suspension of disbelief. Which may have been the only time anyone involved in the production of Star Trek ever said that. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#12, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by JFerio on May-29-17 at 06:58 PM
In response to message #9
>>Having the pistol
>>grip boost the endurance/output of the Cricket (that was the nickname
>>for the TNG Type 1) looks cool, doesn't necessarily play out as
>>logical because it, at least, adds another potential point of failure.
>
>Ha, I'd forgotten that TNG had the keyring-flashlight model as
>well as the dustbuster. Least visually satisfying prop ever.

And they stopped using it for precisely that reason. It could tend to look like the phaser blast was coming from the actor's fingers unless they made it a point to refer to/show the phaser being drawn.

>Also, semi-relatedly, I've just remembered that (at least on the
>original TV series) the pistol grip does make the phaser more
>powerful as well as longer-lasting. It's a plot point in the episode
>with the Horta ("The Devil in the Dark").
>
>>Most of the Trek universe is like that. Like wandering around in shirt
>>sleeves right next to the antimatter reactor; no real-life
>>organization is going to let any crewmember near that thing without
>>serious anti-hazard measures taken, on account of the slight chance
>>its going to "spring a leak"
>
>To be fair, the engineering crewmen do wear radsuits in the movies.
>In the TNG era, the fact that emergency forcefields were pretty much
>instantaneous and ubiquitous was used as the justification to save
>all that money
omit specialized engineering PPE. Which is an idea
>that got kicked around for the original series—in the episode
>where spacesuits first appeared, the script called for some kind of
>handwave about personal forcefields instead, but the producers decided
>it would require too extreme a suspension of disbelief. Which may
>have been the only time anyone involved in the production of Star
>Trek
ever said that. :)

I actually do miss the radsuits from the movies; they made a lot of sense. They'd have still made sense even in the TNG force field omnipresence. Kind of like I wouldn't want to be standing in an open shuttlebay in anything less than a full-on spacesuit, even as reliable as Trek Tech is. :)

Back to the Type 1 phaser. In the original series, it didn't have a pushbutton trigger. It actually was fired by pressing a dial from one end to the other. The Christmas ornament they put out a number of years ago of the TOS Type 1 actually replicated the raising panel and that it wouldn't "fire" until you reached the end of the dial travel. It made a LOT of sense from a "you want to be sure you're going to fire" and "not firing when it's bumped or dropped" standpoint.

Here's a pic of the "firing position". https://www.yourprops.com/movieprops/original/yp_510ed8d5375214.75401370/Star-Trek-The-Original-Series-Type-1-Phaser-1.jpg?x

>
>--G.
>-><-
>Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
>Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
>zgryphon at that email service Google has
>Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#25, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Mercutio on May-31-17 at 01:30 PM
In response to message #9

>To be fair, the engineering crewmen do wear radsuits in the movies.
>In the TNG era, the fact that emergency forcefields were pretty much
>instantaneous and ubiquitous was used as the justification to save
>all that money
omit specialized engineering PPE. Which is an idea
>that got kicked around for the original series—in the episode
>where spacesuits first appeared, the script called for some kind of
>handwave about personal forcefields instead, but the producers decided
>it would require too extreme a suspension of disbelief. Which may
>have been the only time anyone involved in the production of Star
>Trek
ever said that. :)

I have to wonder if what changed was FX technology and budget.

It probably wasn't that hard for them to add the shield shimmer effect that would indicate "a shield is here" or "the shield is under stress because something like a phaser is hitting it" to various scenes in post-production in TNG, which meant that when you said "there's a force field" the viewers at home could see the force field, have a sense of its presence and effect.

That sort of stuff was a hell of a lot harder in TOS, when saying "there's a force field" would often mean either "take our word for it, it's there" or additional and potentially tricky work in post.

-Merc
Keep Rat


#11, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by eriktown on May-29-17 at 06:44 PM
In response to message #8
Of course, the Vulcans had something to say about all this. The Vulcan Ministry for the Promotion of Long Life (Motto: Safety Is Logical) lodged repeated protests with Starfleet demanding that something be done to address the constant stream of negligent discharge and friendly fire incidents. Even when Starfleet Medical itself threw its weight behind the Ministry's request, the sheer weight of bureaucracy and military procurement during this period caused attempts to replace the notoriously hazardous Type IV and Type VI phasers to stall hopelessly in committee.

In the end, three factors finally caused a groundbreaking shift in phaser technology that has gradually made its way into firearms utilized by all the major Alpha Quadrant species. These were, in rough order of priority:

1) The first true industrial replicators came online, greatly reducing the difficulty of procurement and logistics and reducing the cost to near-zero - Starfleet could now roll out new equipment to its officers by, essentially, releasing a software update;
2) Improvements in sensor and CPU technology that permit heuristic image processing in real time, with the development of extensive rulesets around target identification.
3) Mounting horror over the pain and suffering caused by these weapons sheerly by accident led the Vulcan Science Academy to relax its usual proscription against weapons research in this one instance. The VSA convened a special task force made up of its best and brightest and gave it a truly difficult mission: find a way to make phasers safer... that humans will actually accept.

In the end, the solution the Vulcans presented was unique. Rather than building a conventional sight, trigger guard and safety into the weapon, they proposed taking care of the entire matter in the traditional Vulcan way: with software. The prototype they eventually offered Starfleet reflected the design aesthetic of Vulcan engineers who preferred to deemphasize the phaser's weaponized nature and give it the appearance of something more like a tool. The Vulcans succeeded so brilliantly that one of the Starfleet officers noted its strong resemblance to a form of handheld cleaning appliance once popular on Earth before janitorial bots became ubiquitous. As for its safety and aiming systems, the Vulcans provided a complex but comprehensive solution in a surprisingly robust package: a sophisticated wide-field sensor suite embedded in the muzzle of the weapon tied to a threat analysis and detection system that veered dangerously close to true AI alongside a variable-geometry emitter array that could fire a full-power particle beam anywhere in a 90 degree cone in front of the weapon.

The results in testing were dramatic. By simply pointing the weapon *in the vague direction of the target* and pressing the trigger button, the weapon would actually correctly detect the intended target using its pattern matching heuristics and calibrate the energy required to produce a certain effect on that particular target to achieve extremely consistent effects across materials, then direct the beam in the appropriate direction - and even track and hold the beam on target as it evaded, all without requiring effort on the part of the user. This effect can often be seen when studying recordings of Starfleet officers in combat during the period. For instance, here is an archival photo of then-Commander William Riker demonstrating the correct shooting stance with a Type I 'Cricket' using the new targeting system:

Note how the muzzle of the weapon is tilted upward while the beam fires at the target directly ahead. Commander Riker aims upward in order to give the phaser's targeting sensors, which are located just below the emitter, a complete view of the intended target so that it can attempt to detect the optimal point of impact.

Upon deployment of the Type I 'Cricket' and Type II 'Dustbuster' phasers, negligent discharge rates dropped by 90% overnight (thanks to a fingerprint sensor and drop safety added to the trigger) and friendly fire incidents dropped to almost zero with the weapon itself gaining the ability to detect friend from foe. The project was deemed an overwhelming success, so much so that the Romulans quickly stole and adopted similar technology. (The Klingons, of course, thought that - like most Vulcan ideas - it took all the fun out of life).

That's not to say the initial revision was without problems. The Vulcan scientists who developed the new targeting system neglected to consider cases where the definition of 'friend' and 'foe' becomes hazy, and as such the new phasers initially refused to fire on people wearing Starfleet uniforms - which poses significant problems in a galaxy that includes tailors trained by the Obsidian Order, not to mention all manner of mind-controlling, shapeshifting, and just plain weird lifeforms out there in the black.

Fortunately, the new replicators allowed Starfleet to push revisions to the design out rapidly (and coincidentally gave birth to a revolution in Starfleet uniform design, leading to a series of major revisions to the duty uniform over the course of just ten years, a process that would have previously taken that long for just one single change to be made). The design has since been deployed throughout the Federation and well beyond, seeing success in service from the front lines of the Omega Quadrant to the unknown reaches of Delta. The latest Starfleet service phaser incorporates adaptive emitter technology gleaned from the Borg, who are beginning to grow concerned that they, not the Federation, may soon be assimilated.


#13, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Nathan on May-29-17 at 07:02 PM
In response to message #11
There's also another factor in favor of the Type II that's rarely brought up in the literature, for the simple reason that most publicized materials focus on humanoid-crewed ships:

The 'dustbuster' form factor is a lot friendlier to nonhumanoid manipulation apparatus. I mean, sure, it's still not great for, say, a Sulamid, but it's a lot better than a Mk IV. Have you ever watched a Sulamid try to manage a pistol grip with its tentacles? I'd think long and hard about coming in line of sight of one armed with a Mk IV hard-locked to setting 1, let alone any of the higher ones.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!


#14, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by eriktown on May-29-17 at 07:06 PM
In response to message #13
Absolutely true. The Lugach Test is now the standard for determining suitibility for deployment among nonhumanoid crew for most pieces of portable equipment. Ensign Lugach, a Horta, naturally emphasized durability as well as usability when designing his famous test.

#16, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Gryphon on May-29-17 at 08:51 PM
In response to message #13
>There's also another factor in favor of the Type II that's rarely
>brought up in the literature, for the simple reason that most
>publicized materials focus on humanoid-crewed ships:
>
>The 'dustbuster' form factor is a lot friendlier to nonhumanoid
>manipulation apparatus.

Well, yeah, but nobody on Star Trek has that, so the point is a bit moot. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#17, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by ebony14 on May-30-17 at 12:17 PM
In response to message #16
>>There's also another factor in favor of the Type II that's rarely
>>brought up in the literature, for the simple reason that most
>>publicized materials focus on humanoid-crewed ships:
>>
>>The 'dustbuster' form factor is a lot friendlier to nonhumanoid
>>manipulation apparatus.
>
>Well, yeah, but nobody on Star Trek has that, so the point is a
>bit moot. :)
>

And a number of the nonhumanoid species in Starfleet really don't need a phaser. I mean, can you see a Horta using one of those things?

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


#21, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by Peter Eng on May-30-17 at 04:42 PM
In response to message #17
>
>And a number of the nonhumanoid species in Starfleet really don't need
>a phaser. I mean, can you see a Horta using one of those things?
>

Emergency rations?

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#18, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by MuninsFire on May-30-17 at 01:30 PM
In response to message #8
Not to mention the hazardous situation of having high-energy conduits and endpoints sitting around the command deck.

This has increasingly been bothering me for some time now - the very fact that the consoles -can- explode on the command deck indicates that they have vastly more power running to those specific endpoints than is at all appropriate. This is not a safe situation!

A much more sane design from a safety standpoint would be to have low power control consoles that link via optoisolators to the various systems that they control - that way, a "flashback event on the plasma conduits" or whatever would burn out a chunk of wall someplace -other- than "right next to a critical crew member" and would have zero possibility to propagate up to their console to blow up in their face and kill them.

I've had a few folks moot the notion that the explosive consoles are somehow intentional to 'inform' the captain of the state of damage of the ship - but this is nonsensical; when the ship is critically damaged is precisely when you'd need your crew to be most capable, rather than writhing on the floor with burns and such. A "health bar" style display on the main screen would do that job just fine without the need for exploding consoles.

And this also brings up another fun notion - the likelihood of a false-positive signal on a ship going on an ostensible peaceful five-year mission is going to be non-negligible. So the Enterprise is ticking along past a perfectly normal nebula at Warp 5 when all of a sudden the nav console gets hit by a stray cosmic ray and decides to blow up - now you've got Kirk sounding red alert and firing phasers and photorps all over to eliminate a threat that doesn't exist, on a ship that can no longer navigate.

I don't know what kind of lunatics they had doing health and safety reviews in starfleet, but they should have been fired.


#19, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by mdg1 on May-30-17 at 02:29 PM
In response to message #18
Or, you know, FUSES.

(I had the same problem with all those "Black Ice" countermeasures in cyberpunk novels. Not ONE decker thought of putting a circuit breaker between the deck and his brain?)


#22, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by MuninsFire on May-31-17 at 00:40 AM
In response to message #19
The one explanation for that that I've come to peace with is that it's not so much a high current or anything like that, but a malicious pattern - like photosensitive epilepsy. Your counter-ICE programs filter most of those out, but the really effective guys would have new patterns that your stuff wouldn't be able to detect perhaps.

#24, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by mdg1 on May-31-17 at 02:20 AM
In response to message #22
Sounds like a basilisk, a la David Langford.

#27, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by MuninsFire on May-31-17 at 05:29 PM
In response to message #24
Yes, very similar notion.

#23, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by SpottedKitty on May-31-17 at 02:20 AM
In response to message #18
>I don't know what kind of lunatics they had doing health and safety
>reviews in starfleet, but they should have been fired.

Inside the torpedo casing, or duct-taped to the outside...? <eeeeeeevil grin>

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.


#26, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by MuninsFire on May-31-17 at 05:28 PM
In response to message #23
Yes.

;-)


#28, RE: GotW 46: Phaser Mk IV
Posted by McFortner on May-31-17 at 07:14 PM
In response to message #23
Superglued.


Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".