chenr@tilt.FUN (Ray Chen) (11/14/84)
First off: fighting at warp speeds. A warp drive creates a warp in
space as well doing something to compensate for relavistic effects.
(At least, the current one does, the so-called Time Warp, or Quantum
Warp II drive (I'm not sure about that name))
The phaser beam, which is a beam of particles in phase with the light
beam (hence the name phaser, phased-particle laser) was made possible
by the increased concentration and control of power resulting from
matter/anti-matter reactions due to the discovery of the dilithium
"focus".
While things travelling inside the warp field are travelling faster
than light relative to things outside the warp field, inside the
field, the speed of light is still a limit. There are, of course,
interesting problems of possible doppler effects when a light beam
enters the fields but no one has bothered with figuring out what
the situation is. I doubt if there's a problem. Anyway, you can
see what I'm getting at. Inside the fields, the speed of light is
faster than that of the ship. Then, when the beam leaves the area
affected by the field, it "slows down" relative to the ship's field.
So, you now have a situation in which the targeting must be down
relative to the warp fields and the ships as there are probably
curvature effects also. However, it's not as bad as people have
been making it out to be. Your beam leaves you, going very fast,
slows down as it gets farther away until it's at its slowest
(relatively speaking) when it's midway between the warp fields of the
two ships, then it picks up speed again as it enters the other guy's
warp field. Note that this probably takes a LOT of computer power.
Now as for space combat, in the old days, (pre-Time Warp days, warp 4.8
was the maximum limit) people fought by dodging in and out of real and
warp space as there computers weren't so hot either. Warp space was
for primarily manuvering and real space was for firing. Fights were
often long chases until one guy realized he was going run out of power
soon. With advent of the duotronic computer, fighting at warp speeds
became possible. Nowadays, the things are getting more sophisticated
as the increased control over warp fields enable people do to things
like do somersaults with the warp field and the latest trick is to
extend your warp field until it either intersects the other guys or is
so close it doesn't matter and THEN fire. (For a great description of
a "modern" battle, read The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane, a protoge of
David Gerrold.)
A note about deflectors, phasers, and transporters. The Federation
transporters have a super-carrier wave polarized in space-plus (or
something like that, see The Final Reflection for details by John
Ford). It's possible that deflectors could be one-way for something
like a phaser beam. What's more likely, though, is that the deflector
grids (which are on the skin of the ship) around the phasers and photon
torpedo tubes can be selectively lowered for brief instants of time.
Howver, they didn't build this in to the transporter because
1) transmission time is too long, thus posing a danger to the ship
2) or control isn't so hot. Your signal could go splat against the
deflector if the grid malfunctions or if the signal is a bit
off target. The Federation is paranoid about personal safety.
Cheers,
Ray Chen
princeton!tilt!chenr