Something that I started wondering, when I watched that TNG episode where someone tries pointing lasers at the Enterprise, is if they could still be a viable weapon in the star trek universe if you put enough energy into one. Like, barely-space-capable species laser weapons might barely be noticable to the shields, but if you had like, a laser with a significant fraction of a star’s energy output pumped into it, or just a billion of those primitive laser-wielding ships, surely the shields have got to give eventually
XKCD has the prototype
Theoretically you can put any amount of energy into a laser, as long as you can redirect and synchronise waves. And as several stars and black holes have gravities and stuff that can affect the starships, it seems evident you should be able to charge a laser enough to damage any USS starship.
And as the phase cannons seem to output 80-500 GJ, you should be able to match that fairly easily with 10 grams of matter annihilation or a second of about 10e-15 of the energy output of a sun type star.
Interestingly enough, phase modulation of a laser weapon makes more sense than of a particle beam (which the phaser weapons are), and also you don’t suffer from recoil like from phasers.
