INTRODUCTION
Particle Displacers, now commonly known throughout the Alpha Quadrant as "Transporters", represent today the primary means of entering and exiting most Empire vessels not docked at a port facility or landed on a planet.  This allows for more flexibility in the designing of vessels because they are not necessarily required to be able to land.  It can also be of benefit to the vessel's hull structure by not subjecting it to the stresses associated with atmospheric entry and landing operations.  All large vessels today are equipped with a number of transporter stations to handle all transport needs.

The Vor'Cha-class vessel has 28 stations installed in pairs.  Four of these are normally configured for molecular-level operations to move cargo and inorganic matter, two being on Deck 17 next to the Hanger Deck and the other two on Deck 18 in the forward cargo hold.  Organic transport subjects require the device be set to operate at the quantum level to ensure survival in the transport process.  The cargo units can be reset to quantum resolution if needed.

IKV ghop qeylIs is equipped with different types of transporter units:

The Vor'Cha-DaH'HoS variant retains all 28 standard six-man transporters of the Vor'Cha design arranged in pairs, four of which are normally configured to molecular resolution for cargo transport purposes.  One of the transporter rooms normally built in the fuselage has been relocated to the Main Bridge Module.  This will be the only unit able to service the module if separated from the rest of the vessel.  Another one has been moved to the Forward Weapon Module for the same reason.  Thirty-five transporter emitters are scattered around the hull of the vessel, providing 360 degrees of coverage for transporter operations.  This allows for a loss of up to 40 percent of the transporter arrays and still maintain 360 degree coverage.  Dedicated transporter buffer computer memory storage has been increased 10% due to installation of more efficient transporter buffers.  Range of the standard transporter is 20,000 kellicams.  Each pair of Standard Transporter units shares a single Sampling Buffer Container (SBC), usually located directly under the transporter chamber.

Rapid Marine assaults are made possible by the installation of 15 Mass Troop Transporter (MTT) units on Deck 16 in addition to the standard transporters.  These units are designed with high-volume scan-only phase transition coils.  These transporter units are only capable of egress from the ship for minimum transport time & power usage and to minimize troop insertion time.  They can also access the transporter buffers of the standard transporter units to minimize overall transport time.  This results in a 31% reduction in payload capacity but a 50% increase in system throughput in a quick-insertion operation.  The range of the MTT is 30,000 kellicams.  When utilizing the transporter system to beam down Marine equipment (tanks, artillery, etc.), use of the pattern buffers for the cargo and personnel units is reallocated for insertion operations.  The buffers of as many MTT units as needed are utilized to accommodate the mass of the equipment.  If transporting personnel with their equipment, MTT buffers will be used for the personnel, followed by standard transporters.  Recovery operations cannot utilize the MTT units since they are only capable of beam-down, however the pattern buffers may be used if desired.

In addition to the other transporter facilities, there are two  special-purpose prototype transporter systems (with two specially-built hull transporter arrays) allocated to boarding enemy vessel bridges/installation command centers (C&C - Command and Control) using specially-trained "Death Team" personnel.  These transporter stations are located on the port side of the primary Marine staging area forward of main engineering.  These systems have revived the "silent operation" approach of the earliest Empire-designed transporter systems.  They do not make the noise associated with modern-day transporters, a side effect of the additional safety measures built into the transporters.  Additionally, the glow of this transporter beam is noticeably dimmer than that of the standard transporter system.  The removal of these safety protocols from the materialization/dematerialization routines has accelerated the transport process by an average of 18%.

This transporter system routes the matter stream through the vessel's phasing cloak device (see CLOAKING SYSTEM in the WEAPONS section).  By channeling the matter stream through the device, troops are able to be beamed into enemy positions through any defensive shielding they may have in place.  Because the matter stream will be quickly phased back into normal space once it emerges from the transporter hull emitter, it is necessary for the vessel to be within 350 kellicams of the target at the time of beaming to ensure that the dephasing of the matter stream does not happen while still outside the enemy's shields.  It is a common practice to make use of weak points in shields to make the chances of successful transport as high as possible.  When not in use with the phasing cloak they function as MTT transporter units, sharing the same operating range and only being capable of beam-out from the vessel.

It is important to note that the phasing device cannot be used for transporting functions while it is acting to phase cloak the vessel itself.  This is partially due to a problem in the interface between the phasing cloak and the transporter module added to it having a tendency to disrupt the matter stream while passing through the phasing system.  Due to the amount of memory space required to operate the phasing cloak in either vessel masking mode or phase transporter mode, all the software for each mode of operation cannot be loaded at the same time.  The phasing cloak control processor is normally only loaded with the software utilized for either form of operation.  When given orders to prepare the system for operation in either mode, the Operations officer will load the remaining software appropriate for the requested operating mode.  Deleting the "transient" software for one mode and loading of software for the other mode takes approximately three seconds to perform.  Part of the transporter-specific software includes programming intended to overcome problems in the module add-on causing degradation in the matter stream.  It is hoped that improvements to the module will overcome this problem.  In the meantime, extra software has been installed to fix this problem.  It is also hoped that, as operational experience is gained in the use of the device in both vessel cloaking and transport modes, it will be possible to improve the efficiency of the control software to the point that both functions can be performed at the same time.  Such a capability is of obvious advantage to vessel operations in a combat environment.

At one point an attempt was made to utilize a device developed by the Romulan Empire that had phased Starfleet and Romulan personnel out of normal space.  In simulated operations, the anyon radiation burst required to return transported subjects to normal space had dissipated in strength to a level too weak to return the subjects to normal space.  The radiation was further dissipated by the shields of the target.

The Science/Medical area contains one six-man transporter pad for scientific personnel usage or emergency medical evacuation operated by an Engineering technician.  This station is manned at all times in any type of Alert Condition, otherwise an operator is "on-call" for duty at short notice.  It can also be operated by any suitably trained science/medical staff.  Any reprogramming of the transporter biofiltration system software may be performed on the sickbay transporter unit, which can then be duplicated in all other units.  An extra biofiltration system has been installed to help ensure no contaminants are brought aboard.  The biofilters can be operated separately from the rest of the transporter system so that specimens can be transported without the biofilter system trying to neutralize them.

The removable lab modules are also equipped with transporter facilities intended to transport specimens to and from the vessel while operating separated from the vessel.  It is capable of transporting a mass equivalent to one person at a time.  They operate from auxiliary generators connected to the module.  It should be noted that virtually all systems except life support generally must be powered down to allow the built-in transporter system to operate.  If the host vessel (or another ship) is acting as the primary transport operation agent, power will not need to be redirected from other systems of the lab module.  The mass limitation is also no longer in effect.

There are four main stages to a transport operation.  Using the example of beaming off the vessel to a remote location, these stages are as follows:

Major transporter system components are listed here:

TRANSPORTER LIMITATIONS
There are limitations to the operation of the transporter system.  They include:

Duty Cycle.  While the transport operation takes about four seconds to perform, the buffer requires approximately 70 seconds to cool and reset.  Transport beam conduits allow any transporter pad to utilize any sampling buffer, allowing a chamber to be reused immediately.  There are normally fourteen sampling buffers in use during transport (twenty-eight stations operating two pads paired to one buffer), allowing twenty-five transport operations before a pause is needed for resetting.  This results in a transport rate of 26.6 six-person transports per minute or approximately 1600 persons per hour.