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Pulling out the secret weapon
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Are these phaser rifles actually better? It never seems like they’re any more powerful or accurate than the handheld versions.
A rifle is more stable than a pistol, even when recoil isn't a part of the equation. More mass means it needs more force to change the direction it's pointed in, plus the stock can be braced against the chest/shoulder to make it less dependent on keeping arms steady.
Plus I'd imagine more space gives it more versatility. The hand phasers are enough to vapourize a person, but the rifles can likely do that more times with less overheating or increase power even more to overwhelm shields or vapourize larger or more stable things.
But yeah, overall power and accuracy are whatever the writers deem them to be. If Piccard needs to take out three enemies while not taking out two others, it doesn't matter if he's ordering Worf to hit them with the ship's phasers from orbit or throwing rocks.
My complaint isn’t that the rifles aren’t conceptually be better. It’s that you never see this in the actual media. They are a plot device to show “we are super serious now” but then they never seem to be better than the normal phasers. You never see a situation where oh the normal phaser sucks but once I switch to my rifle the situation is solved. Unless there is an example of this.
In First Contact, they only got a couple of shots out of the rifle and then used them as melee weapons. Well how about just give everyone a bat’leth to begin with?
i chuckled at lower decks just calling them "big phasers"
Maybe they have a higher energy capacity, so more shots can be fired before recharging it?
Citation needed. I don’t recall a case of this being demonstrated.
Star Trek isn't hard sci fi, as long as it isn't completely ridiculous the writers will alter devices to fit the plot.
So if the writers can just make things fit the story, I don't see why we can't do the same. After all, it wouldn't be weird if a larger device has a larger storage capacity as well.