Alyeska wrote:As to the issue of firepower before ICS. In my history of VS debating I never ran across a serious argument for firepower above low GT in range (specifically 22 GT). Anything claimed higher then that was either a calc on a source that was never used in debate or brought up by a troll who was quickly gotten rid of. Talking with Chris I have also heard from him from his time at ASVS that nothing was seriously talked about above low GT range.
Now for the claim that this was always an ultra low end claim.
A: Its pure bullshit
B: No one actually bothered to tell the Trekkies that this is what was going on
Either way its not looking pretty for the Warsies. They are either lying now or were moving the goal posts years ago without telling the opposition. Comes out to the same result when you look at it from the Trekkie perspective now days.
Last time I had this debate no one was able to come up with links at SB.com to threads with claims higher then low GT. And I trust Chris when it comes to his talking about things at ASVS.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=37 ... ut=gplain
From:
xris@iafrica.com (Michael January)
Subject: Re: Star wars is fake !
Date: 1999/04/16
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars
On Thu, 15 Apr 1999 20:35:07 +0100, "Lord Edam de Fromage"
<
Lord_Edam@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Michael January wrote in message
><
3714e2f7.10977661@ct-news.iafrica.com>...
>
>Aaron said that as well. How big is a Victory? how decrepit was the target
>etc? And Aaron said only one VSD was destroyed.
From Curtis Saxtons Page:
Page 63; Darksaber:
Kratas took Warlord Harrsk's flagship to the point of a phalanx
formation. The Shockwave was larger than the other Star Destroyers,
more heavily outfitted with high-energy weapons. The Shockwave
targeted and fired, obliterating a sixth Victory ship.
end quote
Shockwave was a variant of the Star Destroyer slightly larger than an
Imperator class star destroyer, but not even close to the size of an
executor class. This is made clear elsewhere in the novel.
>
>>>Yes, but it must take extensive damage on that precise spot to kill the
>>>Borg. Remember how it went in FC?
>
>
>>With your piddly weak little ships, yes. One ISD is easily the
>>equivalent of most most of that fleet. I doubt that the combined
>>firepower of the fleet adds up to 14000 megatons in a single
>>broadside.
>
>
>Care to provide the actual calculations for that 14000 megaton broadside?
>Other posts have indicated it is doubtfull in the context you are trying
>to use here.
The calcs are available at
www.stardestroyer.net
Similar calcs at
http://www.snowhill.com/~by/
Several different events are calculated (steaming of planets, BDZ,
asteroids, plus quotes from Slaveship, Shield of Lies, and other
novelisations, and weapon descriptions from Star Wars: Incredible
Sections, Star Wars: Essential guide to Weapons and technology)
All of these taken as a whole agree that the power output of a single
light turbolaser cannon is in excess of 3 megatons, possibly as high
as 138 megatons CONSERVATIVELY.
Heavier cannons range from 174 megatons to 17 gigatons CONSERVATIVELY.
So 14000 megatons is conservative. I think I first calculated this as
a total of light cannons plus heavy cannons using some of the
CONSERVATIVE figures available on this page.
Slaveship SPECIFICALLY mentions weapon recoil in the gigaton range
(for a single cannon) and that it has special force-fields to assist
in dissipating the recoil.
>"The Battle of Endor was also an unusual situation, due to the presence of
>the
>Death Star and the subsequent "point-blank-range" battle, which probably
>made it difficult
>for either side to use full-powered weapons for fear of damaging
>themselves. "
>
>If they did not use all their firepower at close quarters in a pitched
>battle above Endor, why would they against a Borg cube?
They didn't use full power because of the proximity of their own
ships. Close range is a subjective statement, the normal range for SW
ships is much further than Endor. If you are to be believed then ST
ships REGULARLY do face each other over distances of scant hundreds of
meters, and I don't think anyone on this NG believes that.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3A ... put=gplain
From: Kazuaki Shimazaki <
krasnaya@netvigator.com>
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars
Subject: Nice Arguments, guys
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 19:14:35 +0800
Whooo.... Nice arguments. Did you guys really sit in front of your
computers all day typing up responses?
It'll be nice to be able to quote all your shots and countershots, but I
couldn't. Its like trying to record the exact ballistics and impact
positions of every bullet in the Battle of the Somme
Just to sum up your argument, IX Jack, an apparent Trekkie, contends:
1)Using the most appropriate definition in the dictionary (not the one
that shows up first, but the one that fits him best), a possibility
exists that the ISD version of the BDZ might not slag every last square
millimeter of the planet into molten rock.
2)He proposes that it just means all populated areas and all resources.
Everyone else, since apparently 80% of the people here are Warsies, come
in big wedge-shaped Star Destroyers and contend:
1)There are other definitions in the very same dictionary, where "world"
means "planet".
2)Mike Wong's claim is backed by multiple redundancies, all to the same
order of magitude and in fact Curtis Saxton also agrees to within one
order of magnitude..., so it PROBABLY means the stuff that he said...
3)In fact, the number is conservative, for it didn't account for a great
many things that would have INCREASED THE NUMBER.
Here's my view on the matter, if anyone wants it:
1)IXJack shouldn't have tried to shake a fundamental pillar of Imperial
power and its supporters without more unequivocal evidence. He might as
well have tried to contend that the Death Star didn't destroy Alderaan.
I wonder how long he's been here. If he was a newbie, I might put up a
hypothesis that says that he thought he'll find lots of supporters on
this board.
2)The Star Destroyer's guns can be set on many different desired power
settings, and a ship that can melt an entire civilized world into slag
fulfills the BDZ definition of reducing the world to slag.
3)The reason why 436 or so ships are required for a full BDZ group is
probably because most planets got SHIELDS around them. If the Hoth
shield, a primitive, ad hoc and crude affair, can withstand bombardment
by Vader's elite Death Squadron, with at least 5 Imperators surrounding
an Executor, which is in itself worth anywhere between 5 (if you take
the false 8km quote and RPG stats) to possibly dozens (if you count the
little bumps all over the hull in the film) when it comes to bombardment
firepower, as well as all those TIE Bombers and Fighters...then a full
up planetary shield may be plenty more powerful, to the point hundreds
of ships may be required. A more mathematical calculation can be done
next section.
4)People that seriously watch ANH seem to swear that the Alderaan shield
deflected the Death Star energy beam for at least 1/10th second. If we
assume the beam lasted one second (I don't watch it to the same detail),
and blowing apart Alderaan AT ALL (not even at the speeds in the film,
and Alderaaan looks pretty Earth-sized or it can't support humanoids)
requires about 2.2E32 joules, that means the shield stopped 2.2E31J
before the burst capacity was exceeded and the shield gave way... If the
beam lasted TWO seconds, it'll still have taken 1.1E31J to overwhelm
it...
5)Following the above, we have now determined a number for the shield's
capacity. Guess what? Even if you take the Mike Wong calcs (IXJack, just
think of it as a generosity for now), the BDZ basic requirement (without
calculation for thermal loss) seems to be 2.2E24J for an Earth size
planet, delivered within 1 hour. That's something like 1/5,000,000 of
the power needed to overwhelm the shield. Even with FOUR HUNDRED STARDESTROYERS (close to 436 and easier to calculate), it would take an
incredible 1.25E6 HOURS to saturate the shield, if it doesn't RECHARGE
itself. If you really have to know, 1 million hours is around 104 Earth
years. Obviously, that isn't really practical!
6)The shield can't be THAT strong? Well, this stuff came from people who
freeze frame ANH to find out exactly how Devastator (the one chasing
Tantive IV) and the Avenger in TESB somehow looked different! And
besides, remember that 2.2E32 is the absolute MINIMUM. Given the speed
that it REALLY blew in the film, the energy is more like 1E38J (at least
according to Wong, but I guess it can be determined mathematically), so
even if the beam was blocked for 1 MILLIONTH of a second, it may already
have blocked the 1.1E31J listed above...
7)Now that we solved the problem of how strong the shield is, let's head
back to #5. Having the Imps having to put 400 Star Destroyers around a
system bombarding it for 104 years to get past its shields is obviously
impractical! We have SOME alternatives. We can believe that there are a
few special ships in the fleet armed with things meant to break the
shield open, like Torpedo Spheres. Whatever those are, they would have
to be mighty powerful, like thousands or hundreds of thousands of times
stronger in OA firepower, like a superlaser similar to the Eclipse Star
Destroyer. Or, and I'm sure, IX Jack, that you've seen THIS one coming -
the Star Destroyers in GENERAL are even stronger than we all
thought...nasty, nasty.
The second theory fits in well with Dodonna's briefing, with that half
the Imperial starfleet quote thingee. The 1E38J would get divided into
25,000 Star Destroyers and it wouldn't look pretty. It would also fit in
well with the Star Wars Technical Journal, claiming that the hyperdrive
in the ISD consumes as much energy in a single hyperjump as planetary
civlizations use in entire lifetimes. You can look in Mike's site to see
how its done, but in the END, you'll find that even if you assumed the
civilization to be only 10,000 years old, with an average power
consumption of 3.02E21J (they're more advanced than we are, and more
populous - this number was based on Earth using an extrapolation of
America's energy usages), you'll find that a hyperjump takes 3E25
joules.
9)Now a Star Destroyer probably DOES NOT feel TOO much strain doing a
hyperjump in which is has to come up with 3E25 joules of energy in a
short period of time. Even if you assume a short charging period... We
can see that OBVIOUSLY that there should be no strain on at least the
power generation mechanism, which seems to be commonly described as a
"mini-sun", to provide 2.2E24 joules within one hour... The only thing
that might be stopping it may be the bracings.
10)That's where Slave Ship comes in! The gigaton rating mentioned there
may well be for light turbolasers or God forbid, Falcon style quad light
cannons! Everyone seems to agree that Mike was being awful generous
(except for you, IXJack) to assume that the "laser cannons" mentioned
were heavy turbolasers! Or you can take another interpretation and think
that by "giga-tonnage range" explosions, they could have meant one that
said 999.999 gigatons. That would also serve my purposes PERFECTLY!
Conclusion: Mike Wong's estimate was extremely conservative. For the
Warsies that got themselves stunned by this argument, and calling it
radical or impossible, I am not saying this is fact. This may not yet
even qualify as a THEORY. This is a hypothesis based on a particular
interpretation of the necessary information, and is meant to show our
friend IXJack out there what happens when people interpret the facts in
a similar manner, but in a way towards Star Wars. And as a Appendix:
1)Why does it matter anyway? You're really just trying to turn a billion
to one to a million to one. The planets in SW are often heavily
urbanized, but let's say we're only slagging one third of the total
surface area of a Earth-sized planet overall. That still means over 200
million TW of power for one hour duration, with the heavy turbolasers
having yields of 24 million TJ per shot (12 million TW average) and
190,000+TJ per shot for light turbolasers... We still got more
firepower. Do you REALLY think that the Enterprise-D, who gets rocked by
2.1MJ disruptor blasts (Wayne, you know about this) care whether it got
hit by 24 million TJ or 72 million TJ. It'll get wiped out either way!
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8e ... put=gplain
From:
seanbig@my-deja.com
Subject: Re: [Tech] A simple comparison.
Date: 2000/04/24
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars
In article <
02c9689e.c82a3c7f@usw-ex0108-063.remarq.com>,
Commander Thelea <
LusankyaNNOLuSPAM@Aol.com.invalid> wrote:
>
> People have constantly thrown about figures, twisted figures
> around, and made claims based on obscure incidents.
>
> I, however, am going to make my own simple statement regarding
> Imperial Firepower against Alpha Quadrant firepower.
Good deal.
>
> In "The Die is Cast" it is stated that it would take 30 top of
> the line Romulan and Cardassian ships one hour to destroy the
> crust of a planet.
>
> Let us assume that this means vapourize.
Allow me, if you may, m'lady...
A few minor corrections are in order. First, the quotation was:
"Computer analysis indicates the planet's crust will be destroyed
within one hour; and the mantle, in five."
Second, I know you don't have a copy of the episode at hand
(so this is easily forgiveable!), but the number of ships was 20,
not 30. Moreover, there were 6 Warbirds and 14 Keldons present,
so the Cardassians outnumbered them more than 2 to 1. These
were uprated Keldons--Dukat mentioned that "Those are faster
than any Keldon-class ships I've ever seen!" ("Defiant," DS9)--
but my guess is that they were still quite inferior to the
Warbirds; e.g., Defiant herself was able to dispatch one of
the Keldons without suffering serious damage ("Defiant" again),
but I doubt she'd fare quite as well against a Warbird. Given
this, one could say the fleet was probably about equal to the
same no. of Galaxy-class starships, Vor'Chas, etc.
I'll go into the vaporization assumption below...
>
> A Base Delta Zero operation, it is generally agreed, takes one
> hour, and melts the crust of the planet.
I'll accept that for this discussion. But again, a bit more
below...
>
> Vapourizing requires 8.34 times the energy that melting does.
>
> Hence: Because there were thirty top of the line Starships
> engaged in this operation against 1 ISD doing a job 8.34 times
> LESS intensive.. We come out with what is essentially one ISD
> being the equal of four top of the line warships from the Alpha
> Quadrant, namely, Romulan Warbirds, if we assume the Cardassian
> Keldons and Romulan Warbirds had roughly equal firepower; The
> Romulans had more ships there, anyway.
As I said, the firepower might be roughly on par, but there is
a disparity in the quality of the two ship classes. Also,
without trying to be redundant, since there were only 20 ships
in that fleet, that'd make 1 ISD roughly equal to 2 to 3 capable
Trek warships WRT planetary bombardment.
>
> This is the absolute minimum for the Imperial firepower
> advantage.
Hmmm...I dunno. I think the 2.5 to 1 Trek/ISD ratio holds about
right in this context, since we truly can't say a BDZ represents
a minimum or a maximum, even with the one hour assumption.
I say this *because* of the ISD's firepower, ironically. Since
her heavy guns are truly awesome, one ISD is capable of unleashing
many dozens or hundreds of gigatons in a matter of seconds.
Even if we factor in the time the Destroyer would need to circle
the planet which, given what we know about their accelerative
capabilities, should be a matter of minutes itself, the SD
*should* be able to totally and utterly destroy nearly _all_ of
the planet's population. To be sure, every major concentration
of people could've been targetted and annihilated. I doubt many
could survive the first few salvos.
As such, I believe the premise behind BDZ timetable arguments
is somewhat flawed. Many believe that the operation must take
an hour or less because beyond that length of time, a significant
portion of the planet's populus could have escaped. But *if*
the ISD has multi-gigaton rated TLs at her disposal--and I accept
that she does, based on other things--then in the early minutes of the
operation, the ISD's first few volleys would kill most of the planet's
lifeforms! Consequently, there would *be* no need to complete the
operation in a big hurry. The Destroyer could take her time in melting
the surface after most of the people were gone; what is dead,
after all, cannot evacuate.
Some might say that I'm not taking into account planetary shielding,
but then again, so what? Mike Wong has pointed out at I Want YOU!
that the shield used by the Rebels in TESB wasn't a particularly
advanced one, yet it was able to "withstand any bombardment"
from the Death Squadron. Therefore, if another planet was
so equipped or, heaven forbid, they actually had a _better_ shield,
the ISD couldn't even *begin* the BDZ. It'd be pointless.
So I see that as a big non-issue. BDZ-able planets are those that
are not defended; otherwise, something on the level of the Death
Star is needed to penetrate the shield and blow the planet apart.
>
> Other incidents for Star Wars send this number higher.. In some
> cases, much higher, but one cannot argue with the facts, and for
> those of you who like Dialogue over FX, well, that was a
> Dialogue statement regarding the Romulan/Cardassian ships'
> capabilities.
I'm curious: which incidents set the bar higher for Wars? For
Star Destroyers, BDZ might not exactly set a firm firepower down,
but they certainly tell us that they have nowhere near the power
of a Death Star. (As for what was said in ANH--Solo and
Dodonna's quotations, respectively--one can only interpret those
with a small pinch of firmness and a truckload of pretty baseless
speculation. A good example is making the assumption that "one
DS1 equals half of the Imperial fleet," when that's clearly NOT
what was said in the Rebel briefing. Dodonna said the DS had
"a firepower greater than half the Imperial Starfleet." Greater
than could mean many, many things; moreover, one would also be
assuming too much if they decided 55% or whatever of the Starfleet
could destroy the planet with one collective volley, with the
same kind of destructive effect [read: violent explosion of
the planet], and so on.)
Dialogue can be okay, but TDIC and Dodonna quotations are entirely
different animals. One uses specific figures, none of which leaves
much to the imagination, whereas the other makes a highly generalized
claim that's open to a wide variety of interpretations.
As for FX, it should be noted that the shot of the 20 ship
fleet firing on the surface *wasn't* as long as some make
it out to be. Indeed, before the crust could have started
to "vanish from the continuum," the camera cuts back to
Enabran Tain, Garak, and the Romulans. Moreover, since
phasers and presumably disruptors as well don't do their
stuff via heat transfer, we *shouldn't* have expected to see
a violent change on the surface as some have argued, at least
in one to two seconds; i.e., given that a sizable portion of that
planet's surface was hit, several seconds may have been required
for that material to "vanish." When we see disruptors fired
at people, like in Trek III, the disintegration is "creeping,"
slowly coursing through the target until it is gone. I'd
imagine that something bigger would take even longer to undergo
the same process, even when we're looking at weapons powers
far beyond that of a handheld weapon.
Anyway, point being, it's a bit hasty to conclude anything
from those visuals, except perhaps that which we _already_
know to be the case: phasers and disruptors aren't heat transfer
weapons.
>
> I just thought to settle those ridiculous claims of Federation
> firepower advantage once and for all with a simple method even
> the dumbest of completely idiots that infest this place can
> understand.
>
> Nothing complex about it... Quick, dirt simple, accurate, and
> comprehendable for ANYONE.
>
> I just felt that such a comparison had to be made for the sake
> of the less mathematically able persons on ASVS.
>
> Marina O'Leary
>
> "Ut Veniant Omnes!"
In spite of the small errors WRT "TDIC," it's a good thought,
one with which I largely agree. Good thoughts...
Will
