I think we have three basic questions here.
Can the Enterprise be harmed by lasers? Can the Enterprise be harmed by nukes?
Can phasers penetrate gravity warping shields? Can photon torpedos penetrate gravity warping shields?
Lasers would not even pierce the ‘navigation shields’ of a -D ship. I’m assuming this is the micrometeorite deflector style shields, which may or may not be forced to lower during a transport.
I’m going to note that early in the Enterprise’s career, large ground-based lasers were used, but they seem to have been obsoleted some time in the past.
Nuclear weapons detonated point blank in front of the 1701 resulted in minor injury and some electric disruption.
I’m going to say that by the time of the -D, they’re mostly ineffective.
Apparently, the Constitution-class could take 90 photon torpedos at once.
Photon torpedos are matter-antimatter weapons. One of them can do considerable damage to an unshielded ship. What would the effect of a photon torp hitting a Honorverse ship be?
This bit comes up a lot in discussions like this, but people forget the context. In context, they were speaking of the kind of lasers that could be found in the Trek universe, and fitted onboard a small ship. Trek civilizations seem to go from lasers to other weapons at a fairly low level of technological advancement; so saying that a weapon is a laser is a lot like saying in the modern world a gun is a black powder cannon, it implies all sorts of things about the technology and power level involved. And the size of the ship adds its own constraints.
In other words, being immune to the kinds of lasers to be expected onboard a small Trek ship doesn’t mean you are immune to a huge Honorverse superdreadnaught graser or the Ringworld defense laser. They wouldn’t expect a laser to be that powerful any more than you would expect the previously mentioned black powder cannon to fire nuclear cannonballs.
It would go splat against a sidewall. Against bare armor I expect it would seriously damage or destroy the ship - assuming it got though Manticoran point defense.
In Balance of Terror the Enterprise is seriously messed up by a nuke detonating at close range. Kirk had the phasers fire to detonate it before it hit. It is stated that had he not given that order it would have been much, much worse.
The same argument also holds for nukes: Anything an antimatter photon torpedo can do, a sufficiently-powerful nuke can also do. “Sufficiently large” might be very large indeed, but then, Honor’s nukes are very large indeed.
For comparison, typical nuclear missiles used by Manticoran ships have a yield of between 15 and 40 megatons, while Trek photon torpedoes appear to have a yield of around 64 megatons. So the Trek weapons are individually more powerful, but only by at most a factor of 4 or so. On the other hand, though, the BC-413 Nike could launch 52 of those missiles in a single salvo. So a single salvo from the Nike is equivalent to 13 photon torpedoes from the Enterprise.
Now, now. This is Kirk’s Enterprise we’re talking about. They had Saurian brandy and Romulan ale and… something green. It was Picard and his generation who were stuck with synthehol.
Funny, by sheer coincidence, I was just watching that episode.
Apparently, they didn’t detonate the nuclear warhead until it was 100 meters away. How in heck they let it get that close, one can only guess – presumably it’s because of Trek’s “make sure everything’s close enough to see before you shoot it 'cause it looks better on film” rule.
The episode also made no mention of Enterprise’s deflector shields (although the communications from asteroid outpost 4 mentioned their own deflectors). It’s probably because the episode was lifted from The Enemy Below and real navy surface ships don’t have deflector shields. (The phasers also acted suspiciously like depth charges.)
Until Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, it wasn’t clear that photon torpedoes were physical objects at all. In fact, in the wargame Star Fleet Battles, which is based on Franz Joseph’s TOS Technical Manual, photon torpedoes require energy to arm and fire but there is never an ammunition limit.
Since Star Trek II made Star Trek into Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE, I suppose it involves some Ensigns packing extra anti-matter into one of the torpedoes with a ramrod. Pretty dangerous work, but of course, that’s why they have Ensigns.
In their defense, the original, micro-pouch edition of Star Fleet Battles didn’t have rules for overloading torpedoes.
It was the original micro-pouch rules that were based on the TOS technical manual. Every edition after that, including the Designer’s Edition where overloads were introduced, was basically taking liberties.
One missile, yes. Sure. Assuming it’s oriented correctly to flee, the engines are ready for warp, and everyone is on their “A” game.
But warships in Her Majesty’s Navy don’t just launch one missile. They launch missile pods. Lots of them. Often from externally mounted racks they can flush in seconds, before they even start to bother with the internal launchers. And every one of those missiles has a laser fueled by an exploding nuclear bomb. If memory serves, a large Manticoran cruiser can launch salvos of hundreds of missiles.
So, yes. If the Enterprise is correctly positioned and situated to flee, warp drive will enable it to do so. But God have mercy on the crew of that ship if it cannot or does not jump to warp - because Lady Dame Honor Harringon, Admiral of the Fleed Harrington, Death-Destroyer-of-Worlds Harrington, most certainly will not.
Ah, but do Royal Manticoran warships have targeting software that can track a grav source headed toward them faster than c ?
And even if they do, do the missiles have that capability? Can the missiles even track grav/impeller sources? The Honorverse Wiki entry for “missile” is silent on what kind of tracking systems are aboard a missile, and whether they can track impeller emissions or instead rely on onboard radar. If they cannot track grav sources, they will be completely blind when faced with the U.S.S. Enterprise closing in on them at Warp 1.1.
In the novels, the Manties find a way to use faster-than-light means of communication, via gravity waves. So: yes.
In the later part of the Manty-Havenite war, the Manties installed Gravitic transmitter/receivers on their missile to be able to guide their missiles post launch.
