# Canon/Fanon reason why weapons miss in Star Trek **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 16, 2014, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809 "2014-03-16T01:40:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/21 "2014-03-16T04:33:38Z")
> [@Kenm](#): > > Why couldn’t they lob nukes at each other? . . . They have antimatter. Nukes are just firecrackers compared to antimatter. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/22 "2014-03-16T04:48:52Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > They have antimatter. Nukes are just firecrackers compared to antimatter. Let’s hope it’s as powerful as mankind ever gets. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/23 "2014-03-16T05:34:55Z")
I’ll take a crack at handwaving a few of these. AFAIK, none of these explanations are canon or even fanon. They’re just the best BS I could come up with on the spot. > [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > They have ray guns in the 24th century and miss? How? How can there are no aiming aids? > > In Insurrection they have this bazooka thingy with sigths and yet miss and they can’t reliably hit the relatively slow-moving drones. Don’t get me started into why they never use sweeping motion. > > Even ships miss in close encounter. The ECM race between the Federation and the Empire eventually culminated in both sides abandoning sophisticated aiming aids for their hand weapons. The ECM was just too good–if you tried to use computer-aided aiming at a target that had it, you were effectively _guaranteed_ to miss. The final straw came when countermeasures were developed that could actually trick the targeting circuits to trigger an overload condition. After that, it became common practice to disable the aiming aids, and eventually, the weapon design was changed to eliminate them, saving power and weight. After the war was over, they could possibly have gone back to using targeting aids against enemies unlikely to have the tech to turn it against them. However, in the course of the war–and after–plenty of their ECM tech got spread around to other races. You could never be sure your target didn’t have it, and it only took one mistake to blow you up. Pretty much all spacefaring races abandoned targeting aids; they just weren’t worth the risk. As a result, hand phasers, disruptors, and so forth are little more accurate than current-era pistols. Ship-to-ship weapons still use computer-aided targeting, of course; the timing and distances involved make manual targeting impractical. ECM is still a major factor; every shot fired in a battle between relatively even opponents is effectively a complex chess match between the ship computers, as they detect, anticipate, and attempt to counter each other’s counters. Ship AIs are hardened enough that actual sabotage is almost impossible, and the chess matches are even enough that they often come down to which AI has the most crazed biologicals on board tipping over the table with “evasive maneuvers”. > [@silenus](#): > > Still, they never address the “sweep” issue. We’ve seen crewmen use a phaser to cut through a door, so the things are capable of cranking out quite a bit of energy for a sustained period. So why did no-one ever just chop up their target ala lightsaber? The hand phasers can’t produce a sustained beam at any significant range–you need a heavier weapon for that. “The Menagerie” showed us a tripod-mounted phaser capable of it, but the tripod sort of implies it would be unwieldy as a handheld weapon. A heavy rifle might be usable that way, as **Dale Sams** says, but it probably won’t handle it for long. The setting used to cut through a wall is sustainable because it’s operating at extremely close range. > [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > I’d be mightily surprised that there aren’t several ocassions where that has happened. Even if in a lower setting, there isn’t even a smudge on the wall. Warp-capable ships generally have hull integrity fields, which help support the ship’s structure under maneuvers. These fields extend to interior bulkheads and floors, making them somewhat resistant to phaser fire. To damage a bulkhead with a phaser requires killing the field to that section, a close-range cutting beam, or high-power ship-to-ship weapons. > [@PSXer](#): > > in Balance of Terror the Romulans have nukes that normally are only used for self-destruct but I think they shot one at the Enterprise as a last-ditch effort > > of course the Federation is too advanced to use such weapons anymore Nukes aren’t such hot stuff (pun totally intended) in space. Without a lot of junk around them to burn, produce fallout, and so forth, nukes mostly just create bursts of radiation…and space is already full of hard radiation. If you can’t protect yourself from the gamma from a nuke, you have no business trying to go any significant fraction of light speed. Bear in mind that we, at our present level of tech, have explored the idea of detonating nukes at point blank range for _propulsion_ in space. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/24 "2014-03-16T05:54:51Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Let’s hope it’s as powerful as mankind ever gets. Actually, it’s supportable to claim that the Warp Drive itself is a deadlier weapon than even antimatter bombs. It can actually distort space-time. Such an effect, if weaponized, might make a large-scale distortion field – a space twister or space ripper – that could ruin a planet by altering its physical scale, even only slightly. Imagine, if you will, the earth suddenly expanding in one direction – say an axis running from Venezuela to Indonesia – by a mere fifty feet. A tiny little distortion, right? But there would be cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunami, as the earth tried to settle back down into proper sphericity. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/25 "2014-03-16T05:56:52Z")
Personal fanon theory: The Federation and it’s culture are generally so peaceful and aggressively non-militaristic, and their military strength so wedded to the power and glamour of The Fleet’s capital ships, that Starfleet’s close-quarters combat training—and to an extent, even their equipment—is actually rather poor. It’d be like if you took the command crew of a modern Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force submarine, and deployed them as infantry or police, using only the weapons they had onboard the boat. Personal “offscreen” theory: While it’d be _possible_ to depict a plausible, detailed method of phaser combat consistent with the weapons the series has shown, it’d interfere with the type of stories the writer’s are trying to tell. (Translation: They’re generally too lazy, rushed for time, or just don’t care.) ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/26 "2014-03-16T06:19:39Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > **Canon** : The intended target takes “evasive maneuvers.” > **Realistic fanon** : Most of the various crews would be dead if their opponent’s weapons **did not** miss. That’s not what fanon means. “Fanon” would be an explanation that makes sense in-universe, but isn’t actually mentioned anywhere in that - i.e., it’s made up by a fan. Canon would be the same, except that it actually shows up in the source material. So for example, if the reason was “In Episode 23, Spock mentions that even the best phasers have a 50 feet margin of error”, that’d be canon, but if some fan theorized “well, maybe the phaser technology just has a margin of error due to impurities in the dilithium focusing lens” that’d be fanon. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/27 "2014-03-16T06:38:17Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > “The Menagerie” showed us a tripod-mounted phaser capable of it, but the tripod sort of implies it would be unwieldy as a handheld weapon. At that point, the weapons were lasers. It wasn’t decided to use the term “phasers” until they were filming the second pilot. Obviously, significant advances in weaponry had been made in the thirteen years between Talos IV and Spock’s court martial. :rolleyes: The laser cannon was nevertheless able to channel the ship’s power, “enough to blast half a continent.” Any way you look at it, that was one helluva powerful weapon! :eek: A phaser rifle was used in the second pilot, but was never shown again in _ **TOS** _. What I could never understand was how phasers (or any other pure energy weapons) could work at hyperlight speeds. Or how photon torpedoes could apparently accelerate to near lightspeed as soon as they exited the ship. 😕 Final thought: How come Archer’s _Enterprise_-NX had phaser cannons, but Pike’s NCC-1701 was still using lasers? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/28 "2014-03-16T06:53:56Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > What I could never understand was how phasers (or any other pure energy weapons) could work at hyperlight speeds. They don’t. Actual engagements all seem to happen at sublight speeds. Warp maneuvers during combat are unusual–recall Picard’s Maneuver. > [@](#): > > Or how photon torpedoes could apparently accelerate to near lightspeed as soon as they exited the ship. 😕 Photon torpedoes are similar to the SCCAM missiles in Alan Dean Foster’s _Commonwealth_ stories: they consist primarily of an stripped down ship drive set to overload. Without any need to keep mushy creatures intact (or really, hold together at all for very long once fired), the torpedoes are free to accelerate as fast as the drive can push them. The bright glow we see while the torpedo is in transit is largely from the overloading engine. When they hit, the impact breaks what little structural integrity remains, and the antimatter fuel reacts all at once, turning the bulk of the torpedo into a burst of star-hot plasma. > [@](#): > > Final thought: How come Archer’s _Enterprise_-NX had phaser cannon, but Pike’s NCC-1701 was still using lasers? :dubious: A time-traveling Vulcan did it. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/29 "2014-03-16T10:11:57Z")
As for why not just rig the _Enterprise_ with the _Iowa_ battleships’ guns, let’s say it’s due to manpower limitations. Each turret aboard one of those battleships required around 80 people to operate, though much of that could be eliminated by using transporters to move the ammunition and powder around instead of having to use a complex arrangement of elevators, racks, and heavy lifting. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/30 "2014-03-16T12:51:02Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Let’s hope it’s as powerful as mankind ever gets. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/31 "2014-03-16T13:25:49Z")
One thing I took away from the Culture series is that the deadliest weapon in any sufficiently-advanced culture’s arsenal is suborning the enemy - when starships are run by AIs (or near-AIs as seems to be the case in Trek) then you’d be _mad_ to ever allow direct ship-to-ship communication with any hostile or unknown vessel - the risk of having your systems taken over is too great - I mean, the Enterprise (all flavours) regularly gets taken over by alien species/energy beings/super-advanced godlike crewmembers, so you can’t tell me its anti-virus systems are _that_ great. So I’m surprised weapons directly targeting the enemy ship systems (memetic weapons, a la Banks) aren’t mentioned more often. I mean, that approach would render Great Balls of Hot Plasma (TM pending) pretty redundant. Something the B_attlestar Galactica_ reboot got right, I think. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/32 "2014-03-16T13:29:57Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > They don’t. Actual engagements all seem to happen at sublight speeds. Warp maneuvers during combat are unusual–recall Picard’s Maneuver. Recall “Elaan of Troyius,” where a (temporarily) disabled _Enterprise_ has as much chance as “a garbage scow against a warp-driven [Klingon] starship.” With the problem solved, Kirk orders Sulu to “pivot at warp 2 and bring all tubes to bear.” Recall also “The Changeling,” where NOMAD’s energy bolts travel at warp 15. **WTF?!?** :eek: ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/33 "2014-03-16T13:34:58Z")
> [@magnusblitz](#): > > That’s not what fanon means. “Fanon” would be an explanation that makes sense in-universe, but isn’t actually mentioned anywhere in that - i.e., it’s made up by a fan. Canon would be the same, except that it actually shows up in the source material. > > So for example, if the reason was “In Episode 23, Spock mentions that even the best phasers have a 50 feet margin of error”, that’d be canon, but if some fan theorized “well, maybe the phaser technology just has a margin of error due to impurities in the dilithium focusing lens” that’d be fanon. Not what it means? Really? So if energy weapons work as they supposed to and hit and killed the protagonists in all episodes in which they were used, fans wouldn’t be opposed to that? Not a very well conceived response. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/34 "2014-03-16T13:40:13Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > in Balance of Terror the Romulans have nukes that normally are only used for self-destruct but I think they shot one at the Enterprise as a last-ditch effort > > of course the Federation is too advanced to use such weapons anymore Actually, the Romulans used the nuke as part of a ruse to make it appear that their ship had been destroyed. They jettisoned the nuke along with miscellaneous debris and the Enterprise actually detonated it when Spock discovered among the debris and Kirk ordered that it be fired upon. Why the Enterprise allowed the debris from a destroyed vessel to get so close to it is simply hand waved by the episode. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/35 "2014-03-16T14:09:58Z")
I’m watching Nemesis and they have a big gunfight at full power inside a ship. Missing a lot even at such close ranges, never causing any damge to the plastic covering in the ship. My .38 would’ve been more useful. Of course, there a scene where Piccard has an amining device called plot and he is 100% accurate. He also breaks his phaser rifle hitting an enemy. Was it made with the same plastic as a bad Chinese knockoff of a Power Rangers gun? ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/36 "2014-03-16T14:28:57Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Recall “Elaan of Troyius,” where a (temporarily) disabled _Enterprise_ has as much chance as “a garbage scow against a warp-driven [Klingon] starship.” With the problem solved, Kirk orders Sulu to “pivot at warp 2 and bring all tubes to bear.” A ship with warp drive has a major advantage over one without it precisely _because_ the actual fighting takes place at sublight. It has vastly better options for maneuvering between exchanges, being able to warp to different locations in the combat space between shots. The actual firing takes place while the ship is out of warp, however. Note that Kirk says “pivot at Warp 2”–he’s ordering a brief warp maneuver, changing the positioning of the ship, not a continuous warp movement. He’s having Sulu rapidly redirect the ship to establish a clear line of fire for the torpedoes. Note that the original question was about energy weapons; photon torpedoes are warp-capable and presumably usable against a ship employing warp maneuvers. Intersecting warp fields is sort of like crossing the streams, though. Either the ship or the torpedo needs to be sublight at launch, and it should probably be the ship, because BOOM. Thus, a ship needs to drop out of warp to fire either energy weapons or torpedoes. > [@](#): > > Recall also “The Changeling,” where NOMAD’s energy bolts travel at warp 15. **WTF?!?** :eek: NOMAD had been upgraded with technology well beyond anything the Federation possessed. Among those upgrades was presumably some form of subspace-based energy weapon. Energy travels faster in subspace than ships do in warp, hence the possibility of real-time subspace communications across distances that would require days or weeks for a ship to traverse. Federation-level tech can manage broadcast and maybe somewhat directional casting through subspace, but apparently has not managed to weaponize it. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/37 "2014-03-16T14:30:36Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > Actually, the Romulans used the nuke as part of a ruse to make it appear that their ship had been destroyed. They jettisoned the nuke along with miscellaneous debris and the Enterprise actually detonated it when Spock discovered among the debris and Kirk ordered that it be fired upon. When the Romulan Commander gives the order to include the warhead in the jettisoned debris, it’s clear he intends to detonate it and destroy the _Enterprise_. It’s really not clear in the televised episode if Kirk et al. beat him to the punch and set it off prematurely, or if they were a second or two too late in taking defensive action against it. (It blew up less than 100 meters from the _Enterprise_.) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/38 "2014-03-16T14:32:34Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Photon torpedoes are warp-capable and presumably usable against a ship employing warp maneuvers. Why, then, were photon torpedoes warp-capable and the much larger shuttlecraft not? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/39 "2014-03-16T14:35:00Z")
This, BTW, is an awesome website: [http://www.startrekhistory.com/index2.html](http://www.startrekhistory.com/index2.html) I _love_ the Deleted Scenes feature! :o ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809/40 "2014-03-16T14:40:57Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > NOMAD had been upgraded with technology well beyond anything the Federation possessed. Among those upgrades was presumably some form of subspace-based energy weapon. Assuming that photo torpedoes _are_ warp-capable, the time in which they reached NOMAD was even shorter than that for the energy bolts reaching the _Enterprise_. This means they were traveling \*faster \*than warp 15. A Federation starship cruises at warp 6, and goes faster than warp 8 only in cases of, e.g., extreme emergency. We’re to assume then that photon torpedoes are vastly superior to starships in terms of warp capability??? :eek: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canon-fanon-reason-why-weapons-miss-in-star-trek/683809.md?page=3)