Phasers

Phasers convert power (usually from a warp core) into concentrated bolts of energy.

As Starship VL is based partly on our dream of owning our own Starship Enterprise we have used the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation to display an example phaser bank layout. 

A Galaxy class starship has 11 Type X phaser banks in normal operation. Three on the upper side of the saucer section, one on the lower side of the saucer section, two on the upper side of the engineering hull and five on the lower side of the engineering hull. A twelfth phaser bank on the engineering hull is only visible once the saucer section has separated.

 

 

 

 

 

Power for the phasers is drawn from either the warp core or in emergencies from the battery banks. Power can be diverted to any of the phaser banks (if they are not damaged) but each has a limited arc of firing and a cool down period. Therefore, a phaser bank on top of the ship may be used to fire at an enemy, and when it starts to overheat then ship can be rolled over so that phaser banks on the underside can be used to continue the attack.

Phaser banks come in a variety of sizes from the small Type 1 (1 GW of power) to Type X (40 GW of power). The actual amount fired can be varied to disable smaller vessels or to conserve power if the warp core is offline. This power can come from any of the ships power sources (Warp Core, Batteries, Fusion Reactor or even Solar Arrays). Of these, only a Warp Core is capable of providing sustained phaser output.

Each phaser array has a firing arc (typically +/- 45 degrees) and a maximum amount of power throughput and temperature. Phaser banks can fire at any target within their firing arc, however their firing arcs may be restricted by the ships hull. For example: a phaser bank mounted on the top of a ship cannot fire at a target below the ship. Of course the ship can turn and roll to bring different banks to bear.

Phasers can be aimed at objects using the Targeting System. For objects that have been scanned at Scan Resolution 5 (see short range scanners), the phasers can be aimed at the individual sub-systems (such as weapons or engines). This will attribute almost all of the damage to these systems.

Phasers cannot be fired unless a target has been locked on by the targeting system.

When a phaser bank is fired the operator chooses how long of a burst to fire. These might be 0.1 second (for very weak targets), 0.5 seconds, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds or continuous firing. If a phaser bank overheats during firing then it will stop firing.

By default the power setting for the phasers will be the maximum allowable power, however this can be set to a lower limit if required (e.g. 2,000MW against a weaker foe – or to conserve power).

Each phaser can be set to a specific harmonic frequency (measured in MHZ). Normally this is defaulted to 350 mhz however it can be set anywhere in the range 200mhz to 500mhz. If the phaser frequency matches the enemy shield frequency down to two decimal places) then the phaser blast will pass straight through the shield.

By default the computer will chose to split the firing between all of the phaser banks that face the target if the phaser banks are grouped together (See Targeting System). Individual phaser banks can be switched offline, this will prevent them from firing.

Going to Red alert will automatically bring all phaser banks online.

Going to Green alert will automatically take all phaser banks offline.

Each phaser bank has a health value which affects the total amount of power it can throughput. This calculated as maximumPowerMW = NormalMaxPower * (Health – 50)/50.

When the health of a phaser bank drops below 50% it cannot be used until it has been repaired.

Phasers cannot be fired while at warp.

Power Requirements

The phaser banks themselves do not require any additional power beyond what is being channeled through them. 

Upgrades

Research can be applied to phaser technology to reduce the speed at which the banks heat up (45 Kelvin per second per GigaWatt by default), to increase the maximum allowable temperature of the phaser banks, to increase the cooldown speed or to increase the maximum power output of the phaser bank.

 

Dev Notes

Each phaser bank starts off at 70° Kelvin. For every 1 second of 1 gigawatt of power going through that phaser bank it heats up by 45° K. Therefore 5 seconds of a 9 gigawatt burst would raise the temperature to 2,070° K. Once the temperature of the phaser bank reaches the maximum allowable temperature (2,100°K) it will stop working until it has cooled down to at least 1,800°K. Phasers cool down (when not being fired) at a rate of 10°K per second. They do not cool down below 70°K. This means that our phaser from before cannot be fired again until 30 seconds of cool down has passed (although another phaser bank could just as easily be used).

This also means that the Type X (40GW) phaser can realistically only be fired for 1 second unless some serious research is done o improve phaser technology.

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Phaser effectiveness diminishes over range. I was tempted to just divide the power (MW) by the distance (KM), however this would provide a very unhappy balance where medium range shots (1,000KM) would be underpowered and very close shots (10KM) massively overpowered.

I have therefore decided that phaser fire uses the following formula:

This would mean that a 9000MW blast at 10,000 km (long range) would have an effect of 418MW (a very minor blow).

At 1,000 km (medium range) it would be 900MW.

At 100 km (short range) it would be 2,000MW

And at 10 km (very short range) it would be 4,180MW (a devastating blow).

As phasers are continuous weapons, the effective power of the weapon is recalculated every tenth of a second to correct for the varying distances between the vessels.