Why do plasma torpedo's destroy Federation ships with 1 hit, but a Tri-colbolt torpedo does even change the enemy's shields?!!!!!

Well... they should'n if you play on Normal or advanced... In Elite this is sometimes the case, but thoose you can shoot down.

I notice the plasma torps the Romulans fire will take down my shields considerably.... then again almost any torpedo hit by any enemy takes my shields down WAY more than my own torpedos will do to theirs. I think there is something wrong with the way torpedos of any type work vs player shields.

ya its because you are on elite pve, i think pvp should have the same damage to shields settings as pve on elite does.

if you cant handle the heat get out of the elite kitchen

LOL- I was 1-shot yesterday by a Borg Cube. It certainlly gave me a shock and I submitted a bug report on the possibility that the damage model may be set too high.

The computer plays by a slightly different set of rules than the average human player, I've seen a single AI-Miranda disable two of my systems in the same engagement, what are the chances for that to happen?
So the reason consists of two words: "just because".

You want to talk about crazy damage.........Undine Plasma torps. Now THAT is crazy damage!

Indeed, last time I went up against one they were doing 1-2k+ damage per second after it hit me.

The "trick" for NPCs seem to be that they do full damage against shields with kinetic weapons. That makes Plasma Torps pretty devestating - even if you bring up a sliver of shields, it might not be enough.

I think that's pretty lame and deprives the game of an interesting gameplay aspect- trying to restore your shields just in time to defend against a torpedo hit.