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Cloacing Device
Device which makes a starship invisible for naked eye and sensors. The cloaking device is used by Romulan and Klingon warships, but the Delta Quadrant race called the Voth and the Breen also use it.An energy screen is formed by generator coils. Particles and radiation are bent around the ship, making the ship undetectable.
However, this property of cloaking is a potential detection manner. Particles cover a longer way because of their bending. An observer outside would notice that photons that are affected by the cloaking field arrive later than photons that are not affected. This is compensated by accelerating them at temporarily to FTL speeds when they touch the outer regions of the field. To mask the energy emissions from the ship itself, the ships systems are powered by 'nullifier cores', which dissipate the energy that is used. The Treaty of Organia forbids the Federation of using cloaking devices, but the Federations made a compromis in the form of the StealthDrive.
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Schields
The shield system provides the modern Starship with its principle protection against both violent natural phenomena and enemy weapons fire. Most shield systems are composed of highly focused spatial distortions which contain an energetic graviton field. The shield itself is projected by a set of transmission networks located on the hull of the ship; when matter or energy strikes the shield, field energy is concentrated at that point to create an intense localized spatial distortion.
The shape of the field can be varied at the discretion of the tactical officer - the most common configuration is a set of curved fields which interlock to form a large bubble over vessel, although some users prefer to make the shields closely match the ships hull. In the former case shield burn-throughs are more likely, as the shield must enclose a somewhat greater volume. However, in the latter case those burn-throughs which do occur are much more damaging as they are directly adjacent to the hull. Most of the information on this subject is highly classified, but since even individual vessels are known to utilize both configurations, it appears that bubble shields are preferred under certain tactical situations, conformal shields under others.
Shields are carefully tuned to create windows which allow matter and energy to pass through under certain specific circumstances - for example, visible light below a certain intensity is allowed to pass through unhindered. This allows the crew of a vessel to see out whilst the shields are up - or more importantly, to use visible light sensor systems. This window renders the shields invisible to the naked eye under normal circumstances. Other windows exist to allow sensors and weapons to operate through the shields.
Impacts on the shield cause Cerenkov radiation to be released, often perceived as a flash of colour which "lights up" the shield, rendering it briefly visible. To an observer it appears that the intruding object bounces off the shields - in fact the spatial distortion becomes so great that the path of the object is radically altered, and to an zero dimensional observer on the incoming object it appears that it is the starship which has suddenly changed location while his/her course is unchanged.
For over a century after the invention of the shield it was impossible to use transporters to beam to or from a shielded location, but to an extent this limitation has now been circumvented. In general sensor and weapon windows are insufficient to allow beaming; whilst technically there is nothing to prevent a ship opening a window in its own shields of sufficient size to allow transport, in practice such windows are almost always large enough to be detected and exploited by enemy vessels and it is far simpler just to drop the shields briefly altogether. The more modern Starfleet shield designs have now reached a point at which transporters can be operated via a large wide frequency window which is briefly opened over the hull emitters. This gives greater flexibility in using the transporter during high threat situations, but it remains a somewhat risky proposition - should an enemy score even a near miss on such a window the effects on the ship would be considerable.
Beaming through an opponents shields is an altogether more difficult proposition, but this can be accomplished successfully if the transporter operator has a detailed knowledge of the shield configuration s/he is attempting to beam through. A notable example of this is the occasion when the USS Enterprise managed to beam a crew member on board the USS Phoenix whilst that vessel was engaged in unlawful operations within Cardassian space, or the Defiant's use of the transporter to board the Constitution class USS Enterprise whilst that ship was modulating its shields for sensor operation . Such operations remain the exception rather than the rule, however - and against the unknown shield configuration of an enemy vessel, beam through remains impossible.
The most recent advance in shielding systems is the Regenerative shield. This system is in use with the most modern generation of Starfleet vessels, and was employed by the Dominion in the planetary defence network around Chintaka. The regenerative shield allows a portion of the enemy fire to be diverted through the shield generator to reinforce the shield layer - the amount of damage that a weapon impact does is thus greatly reduced. The effectiveness of the reinforcement depends on the shield generator design, but typically the effectiveness of a shield will be increased several fold by the addition of regenerative capacity.
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Phasers
The phaser is the standard Federation beam weapon system. This type of weapon came into common use c.2255, replacing the laser weapons then in service. Phaser is an acronym for PHASed Energy Rectification, a term which referred to the original process by which stored or supplied energy was converted to another form for release toward the target without any need for an intermediate energy transformation. Although this term is something of a holdover, it remains true in modern phaser systems. Phaser energy is released by the rapid nadion effect. Rapid nadions are short lived subatomic particles which can liberate and transfer strong nuclear forces within a class of crystals called fushigi-no-umi.
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Type 4 |
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The type 4 phaser is a medium sized device fitted to small vehicles such as shuttlecraft. |
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Type 10 |
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As of 2364 this was the heaviest weapon in use aboard Federation vessels, comprising the main armament of the Galaxy class starship.
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Typer 12 |
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Previously designated as the 'Type 10+' for security reasons, the Type 12 phaser has been used in dedicated planetary defence arrays and as the main armament of heavy fortified star-bases since 2263. It was considered that the Type 12 was unsuitable for use on a starship platform because the energy requirements of the array where too high and the supporting hardware too bulky. However, by 2268 the power plant of the Sovereign class had grown large enough to support Type 12 arrays in place of the planned Type 10 models; technical improvements had also allowed for considerable shrinkage in the size of the equipment. The main phaser armament of the new Sovereign class starship therefore comprises Type 12 phaser arrays as does the armament of the Prometheus class currently under development. These are the most powerful phaser weapons currently in use by the Federation.
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Pulse Phaser Canon |
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It has long been recognized that the initial impact of a phaser strike on a shield system is the most damaging part of the firing sequence. Many cultures have sought to increase weapon effectiveness against shields by developing pulse cannon - that is, weapons which fire large numbers of tightly packaged bursts rather than a continuous stream. Early Federation vessels such as the Constitution class where equipped with such pulse cannon, but the weapon is not without its drawbacks; the hardware involved tends to be very difficult to manage precisely, resulting in much poorer control over the beam characteristics. The Federations starship design ethic has always stressed that full control must be maintained over all weapons at all times, in order to allow non lethal force to be used in starship combat situations; in addition, many scientific experiments use weapon systems to apply energy in controlled amounts to external phenomena in order to study reactions. Given this, the Federation gradually moved away from pulse cannon. The refit given to the Con-stitutions in the 2270's removed the pulse firing feature from that class, equipping them with a 'rapid burst mode' which was something of a compromise between pulse and continuous phaser beams. Further designs continued to de-emphasize the pulse firing feature, although all basic phaser hardware is capable of firing relatively short bursts and this has remained a feature of Federation combat tactics.
With the development of the USS Defiant, the pulse phaser cannon was finally reintroduced to Starfleet. Defiant is a warship, pure and simple; her designers had no real interest in conducting experiments, and the attitude towards the level of lethality of her armament could perhaps best be summed up by the phrase 'take no pri-soners'! Defiants main armament comprises four heavy pulse cannon which fire very tightly confined bursts of phaser energy for maximum impact on shielding systems. High overall energy delivered over a very short period combines with a high firing rate to produce a performance against modern shield systems which can best be described as devastating.
On her first active mission the Defiant faced a group of Dominion Attack Ships; these vessels had successfully withstood several minutes of fire fighting with a Galaxy cass starship, but Defiants phaser cannon cut through their shields within moments. Subsequent combat experience has shown the value of this weapons system, which is currently being developed for use in other vessels.
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Photon Torpedo
The Photon Torpedo is a powerful, long range weapon which has been in use aboard Federation Starships for over one hundred and fifty years - early models differed from today's weapon only in the level of sophistication and the power of the warhead. Today the weapon most widely used by Starfleet vessels is the Type 6. This weapon comprises an elongated elliptical body some 210 cm long and 76 x 45 cm across. The torpedo masses 247.5 kilos when not loaded. The warhead of the photon torpedo comprises a maximum of 1.5 kilos of antimatter and 1.5 kilos of matter. These are divided into many thousands of small pellets suspended in a magnetic field - smaller yields can be achieved by reducing the number of such pellets in the torpedo.
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Quantum Torpedo
The quantum torpedo is a replacement for the photon torpedo among some of Starfleets newer Starships. It utilizes a Zero Point Energy warhead which is much more effective in penetrating a combat shield system than the traditional matter-antimatter reaction. Somewhat surprisingly, much of the hardware for the quantum torpedo originated with Starfleets scientific research division; the reason behind this lies in the configuration of the quantum torpedo. A standard torpedo uses part of its matter / antimatter warhead to extend the range of the weapon. Since the ZPE system can not (yet) be used to power a warp sustainer engine, replacing the warhead of a photon torpedo with a ZPE device would automatically lead to a large drop in effective range and manoeuvring capability. When it was decided to initiate development of the quantum torpedo, Starfleet was faced with an imminent threat from the Borg and needed the weapon as quickly as possible. It was therefore decided to base the new weapon on the Class VIII / IX warp capable probes. These were already fitted with a matter-antimatter powered warp sustainer as well as a large instrumentation package and onboard guidance systems. By removing the instruments Starfleet was able to install a ZPE warhead separate from the matter / antimatter tanks, overcoming the range drop-off problem. The Starfleet quantum torpedo is therefore approximately equal in size and considerably superior in flight performance to a Mark 6 photon torpedo.
The Cardassians are known to have developed a version of the quantum torpedo which equips their Dreadnought class drone missile. It is also known that the design schematics of the quantum warhead developed by Starfleet were scanned by unauthorized personnel at least once during the development of that weapon, and it is now thought that an operative of the Obsidian Order was able to copy this data and escape with it. The Cardassian version of the quantum torpedo was apparently developed by replacing the matter / antimatter tanks of a standard photon torpedo with a ZPE warhead. Although this does confer the increase in warhead effectiveness on the weapon, it is at a cost; without the matter / antimatter tanks to fuel the sustainer engine, the flight performance of the Cardassian quantum torpedo falls well below even that of a Mark 6 photon. This makes the weapon unsuitable for use as the primary torpedo armament of a fleet vessel while still leaving it suitable for the short range defence system of a device like Dreadnought.
The Cardassians were working on creating a device similar to Starfleets quantum torpedo to equip their fleet units, but during the war with the Klingons many of the Cardassians main weapons research centres were destroyed and their personnel killed. Today the Cardassians lack the resources to mount a major weapons development project and are continuing to use standard photon torpedoes. It is not known if they have shared the technology with the Dominion, but the Dominion vessels were not known to employ quantum torpedoes during their recent war with the Federation.
Most quantum torpedo launchers are simple modifications of photon launchers. The first model introduced on the Defiant was a quantum version of the Pulse fire torpedo tube, which can fire an average of one torpedo per second. The Sovereign class introduced a quantum burst fire tube - a variant on the type 4 photon burst fire model capable of launching a dozen torpedoes simultaneously.
Also introduced on the Sovereign class is the rapid fire turret; this allows torpedoes to be fired directly at a target, rather than having to manoeuvre toward it after launch - a measure which cuts down the torpedo flight time against targets at short range. The Sovereign turret is capable of firing four torpedoes per second, a rate of fire higher than any other model of torpedo tube in service.
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Transphasic Torpedo
A weapon for which the Borg had no defense as of 2378. The transphasic torpedo was developed in an alternate timeline in which the U.S.S. Voyager was lost for 23 years rather than seven. In that timeline, Admiral Kathryn Janeway of the year 2404 came back to 2378 to provide her former starship with this technology to repel the Borg while passing through a transwarp hub. One or two transphasic torpedoes fired at a Borg Cube would instantly annihilate it.
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