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[Neonivek]

Also remember what Star Trek has taught us...

The more advanced your weapons the weaker they become.

[smjjames]

Scary huh?

Smjjames:
Some trasferric elements are very useful for life, like cobalt (b12 needs this), copper, and zinc. Others may have roles as catalytic agents in a biogenesis.

For carbon based life, yes, there could very well be other chemical paths to life that we don't know about.

Though the fewer elements available, the harder it would be to get started, let alone get to anything complex.

Also remember what Star Trek has taught us...

The more advanced your weapons the weaker they become.

I don't get it.

[Neonivek]

In Star Trek a lot of the time the "Sci-fi" guns suck (even when set to kill)... but in the show bullets are almost always deadly.

Culminating in a "Future gun" (as in... far FAR in the future from Star Trek) that could barely phase someone.

Kind of making you wonder why people don't just use bullets... if center mass shots with phasers set to kill... just sort of... burns them a little.

[helmacon]

Well thats just some sci-fi nonsense. Arrows kill things better than rocks, guns kill things better than arrows. Whatever we invent next will likely be much better at killing people than guns are.

[NJW2000]

You could probably extend that to chlorine gas and then nukes.

I hope the thing that's better than nukes at killing people doesn't come soon.

[Neonivek]

Well thats just some sci-fi nonsense. Arrows kill things better than rocks, guns kill things better than arrows. Whatever we invent next will likely be much better at killing people than guns are.

That isn't actually the reason why. It is what I shall call "Narrative deadlyness"

In most fiction a Laser gun is as deadly or more deadly than bullets on paper... A Super powered punch might be as powerful as a tank cannon.

However the important part is how deadly they FEEL. A character can take a 100 ton punch through a brick wall easy, they might be a little winded... But a knife wound to the chest? nope!

[TempAcc]

Actualy, I'm pretty sure the enterprise is fuckoff deadly powerful, it just doesnt exercise its military power most of the time. Photon torpedoes are serious business, and I'm pretty sure some episodes have made the enterprise to be powerful enough to destroy entire biopheres. Considering the kind of tech star trek shows us, they could prob have far more deadlier weapons, but it doesnt make much sense in that kind of setting to have those kind of weapons.

[Greiger]

I was always under the impression that the reason star trek guns were underpowered was for two reasons.

• The guns are variable.  I have not watched many star trek episodes I admit, but every starfleet gun I have seen has settings everywhere from tickle to facemelt.  Real world 'guns' that can do that currently are less guaranteed lethal than a bullet in even their most lethal settings.   And even in a life or death combat situation, I imagine setting the things to be just barely lethal extends the number of shots you can fire in a combat situation.  So a miscalculation or someone a bit tankier than expected would take the hit and keep going.
• Every starfleet gun I've also seen appears to be basically a pistol.  I've never seen anything that looks like what I'd expect of a main combat weapon even in the hands of security.  It seems kinda like the equivalent of going into the woods and expecting to stop an angry pissed off bear with nothing but a .22 pistol.

[Neonivek]

You haven't seen the Starfleet phaser rifle have you?

Ones that someone later goes on to say how terrible they are.

[Lord Shonus]

Using published sources, the most reasonable yield for a TNG-era photon torpedo (if you don't take a badly worded line from the tech manual at the idiotic face value instead of what they obviously meant) is ~64 megatons. The Enterprise-D can fire 16 of this in a single volley.


@Greiger

Phaser Rifles appear in a few movies and episodes (although, like most hand phasers, they have no sights and would be impossible to aim), while sometime in Deep Space 9 actually decent rifle-type weapons showed up during the Dominion War arc.

[smjjames]

Actualy, I'm pretty sure the enterprise is fuckoff deadly powerful, it just doesnt exercise its military power most of the time. Photon torpedoes are serious business, and I'm pretty sure some episodes have made the enterprise to be powerful enough to destroy entire biopheres. Considering the kind of tech star trek shows us, they could prob have far more deadlier weapons, but it doesnt make much sense in that kind of setting to have those kind of weapons.

The only episode that I know of which have made something powerful enough to destroy entire biospheres was one which some alien civ had terminally damaged their biosphere and the Enterprise crew was attempting to save it (got saved by a young Q demigod who was forced to make a choice whether to use her powers or not).

There was another which they re-seeded the ozone layer of the homeworld of a species that had destroyed theirs with some sort of invisibility shield.

So, really, which episodes are you referring to, out of curiosity.

[Neonivek]

Me personally?

[smjjames]

Me personally?

Not sure who you're responding to (also, new page on 25 posts per page setting, so, your post is the top of a new page).

[Neonivek]

Do you want me to find episodes where someone took a kill shot center mass and was kind of hurt? or took a stun shot center mass... and was not stunned?

[TempAcc]

General Order 24 of the original series is pretty much the source of it all. Its a special fleet command order to a federation starship to destroy a planet. Apparently all startship tier federation vessels have that kind of destructive potential.

EDIT: the episode in which the order is given is called "A Taste of Armageddon"