The Die is Cast, ICS, and a retrospective on vs. debates.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

BIG DISCLAIMER:

My objective here is to just provide information to versus fanfiction authors so they can base stories on these calcs to make them both "plausible" and interesting, rather than one-sided stomper adventures, because I've seen the amount of fun fanfiction of Star Trek vs. Star Wars totally disappear since ICS was published, and I regret that rather severely as it was, to me, the truly entertaining part of the versus debates.


I was heavily involved in Star Wars vs. Star Trek versus debates for a long time, and was responsible for some maximal size scalings for the Imperial fleet. A lot has changed in Star Wars since then. I pretty much tuned out after ROTS and didn't revisit things until perhaps the past two months. The versus debates were functionally ended by the insertion of the 200 gigaton turbolaser estimate into the Acclamator stats in the Incredible Cross Sections.

One problem with them however is that they were a decidedly high-end estimate of Star Wars firepower. Extremely high end--excessively high end, one could argue. Looking back, this troubles me somewhat, because for a long time we did argue, as debaters are wont to do (and there was nothing wrong with it), for low-end estimates of Star Trek firepower.

It would be only fair to observe that if we are to accept 200 gigaton yields for medium turbolasers that we necessarily also accept the maximum possible energy output for Star Trek. And this is very much higher than what is commonly admitted. We have examples from both TOS and The Die is Cast in DS9, and they both suggest a rather substantial capability on the part of Star Trek.

The 200 gigaton level for a quad turbolaser bolt is simply a statement. It is, quite arguably, on exactly the same level as the idea that 20 Romulan and Cardassian ships could "destroy" the crust in an hour, and the mantle in 5 hours, of a habitable planet. Therefore, we will hold them to be equally valid and see what comes of it. The rationale is straightforward: 200 gigaton turbolaser bolts are substantially in excess of what is seen on the screen. So is the stated capacity of Star Trek energy weapons from TDIC.

Star Wars pictoral analysis shows firepower much more powerful than Star Trek pictoral analysis based firepower. This isn't in dispute, and I haven't become a Trekkie. What I am trying to do is inject some life back into the vs. debates and a more sensible comparison of the two universes. What attracted me to the "warsie" side of things was first of all that Star Wars depicts an immensely old, immensely sophisticated civilization on a galaxy-spanning scale. Star Trek is about a young civilization.

But I do not really think that Star Trek displays a level of firepower, or general technology, much worse than in the days of Xim the Despot in Star Wars history. There is still some real grounds for comparison.

One of the most important things to do at this point is to have a geology lesson. The mantle is not liquid. The temperature of rocks in the mantle is already much greater than the melting point of the rocks in the mantle. It is held a solid due to lithostatic pressure, not due to its energy content. Or, to put it simply, you can make the mantle liquid simply by eliminating the lithostatic pressure on it. You do not need to heat it up.

This puts the claim of being able to destroy the mantle in 5 hours, which otherwise sounds extremely powerful, into context: The crust is 5 - 120km thick, and the lower part of the lithosphere is 50 - 120km thick and composed of rigid rock. It would be quite possible for a civilization like those shown in Star Trek to create deep shelters inside the upper lithosphere; this provides the necessity of the Romulan-Cardassian fleet to continue firing to "destroy the mantle" quite amply: The objective is to destroy enough rock to remove the lithostatic pressure so that the planet experiences liquifaction.

More generally, "destroying" the lithosphere (the crust+solid mantle) essentially destroys the tectonic plates. This is a relatively more sensible proposition and in shattering them one expects a massive volcanic overturn layer. This would be analogous to an artificially induced "mantle overturn" like has occurred naturally in the past on Venus.

Total heat flow at the surface of the Earth from convention is around 4.0E+13 W. Of this only something like 8.0E+11W is actually released by volcanism. This is about 2% of the total; but that's not all the energy involved because the other 98% doesn't exclusively radiate out through the crust. The amount of energy that is being stored per second in Venus, a very similar planet, for a major mantle overturn event, is probably about equivalent to the energy involved in both volcanism and driving plate tectonics on Earth.

"Energy of plate tectonics calculation and project" by NH Swedan suggests the energy of the 'tectonic engine' of the planet is 1.29E+19 J/yr or 4.0E+11W. Collectively this means that the energy Venus is not successfully rejecting by the lack of a tectonic regime, leading to mantle overturn events, is about 1.2E+12W. With a mantle overturn event every 300 million years, Venus would have stored 1.0E+28 J of energy for such an event to occur. This is approximately 5,900 times the energy required to melt the surface of a planet to a depth of 1 metre based on Dr. Curtis Saxton's calculations.

If rough surface destruction takes 1 hour, and the destruction of the mantle a further 5 hours, a total energy input for 20 ships over 6 hours would yield an average firepower (we assume higher for a D'Deridex and lower for a Keldon) of 2.3E+22 W. If a mantle overturn event is every 500 million years, this goes to 3.8E+22W.

Comparing to the 200 gigaton turbolaser rating.

We may take it that a quad turbolaser with a 200 gigaton yield per shot is comparable to the beam trench notch cannon on an ISD-I. These medium bolts were about 3 - 4 times smaller than the largest turbolaser bolts observed by Dr. Saxton in scaling for the size of turbolaser bolts from a Star Destroyer. Maximum rate of fire observed from a turbolaser on a Star Destroyer has been one round per 2 seconds. Therefore an average figure is about 300 - 400 gigatons/second per heavy gun mount. With the secondary guns producing something like a trivial 11% of the total energy consumption of the guns, the rest going to the 64 primary heavy turbolaser cannon, 21,000 gigatons per second is a lower bound and 28,000 gigatons per second is an upper bound. At the lower bound this is 8.8E+22W, and at the upper bound this is 1.2E+23W, though this assumes the medium guns fire at the same rate as heavy ones; they may fire up to four times faster, which would drive the upper bound to more like 1.6E+23W.

The end result of this is that if we're using maximal calculations for both the Galactic Empire and Star Trek, we actually get extremely similar power figures for both Star Wars and Star Trek. However, this is based only on firepower. If we use the acceleration of the Star Destroyers scene in the Battle of Endor, we get noticeably higher figures for the Star Destroyer's total energy output: Around 1E+25 W based on Dr. Saxton's calculations for typical density of a warship and the 3,000g acceleration observed.

However, my calculations for Star Trek firepower have been relatively conservative with the set of assumptions made and rounding potentials; they may have also intended to complete the entire attack in only 5 hours, not six. Collectively this means a true "maximum upper limit" for the energy output, including both shields and weapons and drives, ancillary systems, etc, of an average Alpha/Beta Quadrant ship is probably more around 1.5E+23W, in the same way that for a Star Destroyer this figure is based on firepower alone around 2.5E+23W for shields and weapons alike, and closer to 1E+25W for observed acceleration. We can assume however that the acceleration in question was truly a "full emergency thrust" situation to trap the Rebel fleet quickly; it was probably conducted without energy shields and weapons up to maximize speed, as anything else would imply that weapons are a trivial component of power generated on an ISD, which is irrational. If the ~1.0E+25W for a Star Destroyer's total power output based on acceleration is accurate, then it would almost certainly require firepower to be at the higher end, around 1.6E+23W, with shielding probably double that if we assume that the designers rationally wished to provide equal particle and energy shielding. This still means that something like 75 - 80% of an ISD's energy output is actually going to engines and ancillary systems, though certainly that isn't unreasonable with the enormous power outputs of real life warships also being essentially almost entirely directed to engines in percentile terms.

Based on this, an actual comparison of maximal firepower levels between Star Wars and Star Trek could actually allow for the ISD to only have ~65 - 70 times the energy production of an averaged Keldon/D'Deridex and has about 5.3 times the volume as the averaged K/DD. This would suggest that the energy density per-tonne of a Star Destroyer is actually only about 12 times greater than that of a Star Trek vessel. In terms of firepower density, the Star Trek ships would actually be slightly ahead -- 1.26 times the firepower density of a Star Destroyer. But this isn't likely for the simple reason that the K/DD's were firing warheads; the Star Wars firepower is based entirely off of energy weapons, and we know from EU sources that Star Destroyers have missile and mine launchers with the Assault Proton Torpedoes the former can fire being twelve times more powerful than a normal Proton torpedo, and viable anti-ship weapons in their own right. We also know from canon that Star Destroyers can fire flak rounds, and that the guns seen in ROTS expelling expended cartridges were multirole mass drivers for giving an acceleration advantage to torpedoes/missiles and firing flak bombs and direct impactor projectiles. The energy required for these mass drivers, which Star Destroyers must have based on the official publications (since they are explicitly described as the only weapon that produces flak bursts, and we see Star Destroyers generating flak bursts), further drive up Star Destroyer weapons energy output, and the damage the warheads from the missile/torpedo launchers and the mass drivers of course provides additional energy output to balance the relative firepower-to-tonne capabilities of the Star Wars and Star Trek ships.

The final conclusion of this kind of analysis is that if we go entirely based on upper limits for both Star Trek and Star Wars, we actually have a pretty fair fight -- the Federation fleet in "Favour the Bold" of 600 ships might well have been worth 8 - 10 ISD-IIs.

[Mr Bean]

Ahh our old purpose here. Still re-reading your post but I want to pose a question because of the last statement of 600 ships being worth lets say 10 ISD's or a simple 60 to 1 advantage require for equivalency. What about the nature of Star Destroyer shields which are described as being threshold rather than reserve shielding. Unlike ST shielding where in every hit reduces total shield strength until reducing shields to zero, Star Wars shielding at least some of the examples describes things such that any hit below the Threshold the shields disperse and can disperse for some time. I remember the old calcs from the EU I ran back in the day saying a Star Destroyer to Star Destroyer fight was a protracted long term slugging affair while two star destroyers VS one was a quick and easy fight. This as ties with shields going from fully strength to patchy to gone and sometimes the shield emitters burned away as well.

Or to say it another way if you need 60 Trek ships to produce the power of 1 SD and 1 SD can go toe to toe for minutes with another SD then the pure gun power ratio falls fall short. One most not neglect the shield aspect of such an engagement.

[Jedipilot24]

You seem to be forgetting something.

Imperial Star Destroyers are bigger and have a lot more weapon mounts than even the biggest Star Trek ship.
So they can do things like this:

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That was an INTENSELY generalist comparison. There could be a large variety of variations within it, even entertaining the prospect that the Federation fleet might be equal to a relatively large number of Star Wars ships... Also that the calculations might be overestimates because the nuclear disruptive effect of Star Trek weapons on rock is better than on metal, etc. It's just something to start a renewed discussion of maximal vs. maximal off of so that we can perhaps see some basis for interesting fiction again. Maximal versus minimal just gives us "TIE fighter vs galaxy", and no matter what you think, that's boring.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You seem to be forgetting something.

Imperial Star Destroyers are bigger and have a lot more weapon mounts than even the biggest Star Trek ship.
So they can do things like this:

No, I am not forgetting anything. And you're not really understanding the spirit of this thread. I rather explicitly compared firepower on a tonne for tonne basis, which removes that aspect of scaling completely--and which you neglected.

[Mr Bean]

That was an INTENSELY generalist comparison. There could be a large variety of variations within it, even entertaining the prospect that the Federation fleet might be equal to a relatively large number of Star Wars ships... Also that the calculations might be overestimates because the nuclear disruptive effect of Star Trek weapons on rock is better than on metal, etc. It's just something to start a renewed discussion of maximal vs. maximal off of so that we can perhaps see some basis for interesting fiction again. Maximal versus minimal just gives us "TIE fighter vs galaxy", and no matter what you think, that's boring.

It's a long running point of mine considering the technological difference between the two. One in which Star Trek has has regenerative shielding which goes down as damage comes in pretty much point for point, while SW has threshold shields which like with a radiator can pretty much work indefinitely if the heat (energy) input is not greater than dispersal.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What I'm essentially saying is that even in the most extreme possible scaling, where Star Trek has about a 26% firepower density advantage over Star Wars, (which is implausible as it ignores all projectile weapons on SD's but includes them on Star Trek ships), the scale of galactic civilization means there is not a true strategic contest -- even fairly minimalistic analyses of the GFFA with only ~1000 ships larger than 2,500 meters built by the Republic and Empire over 50 years (a likely figure based on the EGW and other more recent EU sources) and only, say, 30,000 or so Star Destroyer-sized hulls in the Empire (ISDs, Interdictor Destroyers, Tectors), the Empire still has millions of lesser ships, an absurd ability to continue to mobilize and produce weapons and equipment to replace losses, and generally rapidly scale scouting of hyper-routes into decisive strategic advantages with huge reserves of materiale to take advantage of them and crush the Alpha/Beta quadrant powers like the Soviets wrecking the Kwantung Army in the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. However, at these levels, there is at least a real tactical contest, which allows for the writing of interesting fiction and for interesting events to take place in stories between the two universes, which I always thought was more the point of the versus debates than anything else.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That was an INTENSELY generalist comparison. There could be a large variety of variations within it, even entertaining the prospect that the Federation fleet might be equal to a relatively large number of Star Wars ships... Also that the calculations might be overestimates because the nuclear disruptive effect of Star Trek weapons on rock is better than on metal, etc. It's just something to start a renewed discussion of maximal vs. maximal off of so that we can perhaps see some basis for interesting fiction again. Maximal versus minimal just gives us "TIE fighter vs galaxy", and no matter what you think, that's boring.

It's a long running point of mine considering the technological difference between the two. One in which Star Trek has has regenerative shielding which goes down as damage comes in pretty much point for point, while SW has threshold shields which like with a radiator can pretty much work indefinitely if the heat (energy) input is not greater than dispersal.

I think that would come down primarily to issue of how effective Star Trek is at coordinating fire between ships. I think the number of ships coordinating fire in TDIC is the largest number seen at once, certainly fewer did in First Contact, so in that case it might be an issue.

[jwl]

Acclamator I-class assault ships are 200GT per shot, not stardestroyers. Stardestroyers>Acclamators.
VSDs can do stuff like this:

and the thing already posted.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Acclamator I-class assault ships are 200GT per shot not stardestroyers. Stardestroyers>Acclamators.
VSDs can do stuff like this:
[img]http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/cards/vehicles/0

Are you trolling? Did you even read the OP?

[jwl]

I skimmed it. One thing you seemed to be saying was that the stardestroyers had 200 GT per shot, sorry if I got the wrong idea.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I skimmed it. One thing you seemed to be saying was that the stardestroyers had 200 GT per shot, sorry if I got the wrong idea.

....The broadside trench notch quad turbolaser batteries. I clearly know about one hundred times more than you on this subject.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We can expect weapons technology is basically static over this period and that designs are highly standardized. It is very reasonable to conclude that the medium quad turbolasers in the broadside trench notches are comparable to an Acclamator's main guns, and that based on bolt scaling (assuming proportionality of all turbolaser features, which is all we can really do), the heavy turbolasers in barbette mountings to broadside on either beam the superstructure are 3 - 4 times more powerful.

There is no real rational reason or evidence for Star Destroyer firepower much exceeding 1E23 watts.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Apart from disagreeing with both estimates on mostly orthodox grounds, which I'll come back to once I've had time to work them over and make sure I'm not missing anything, two more important points;

both franchises are essentially undead. Not under the control of their original creator, divorced from their original artistic purpose (such as it ever was) and being used as generators of money, no more. Neither of them really mean or represent anything, there's no clash of principles left to have. Who's supposed to be writing this thing, anyway?

Also; Star Trek? Physics? Not really, no- it has particle alchemy, it has technoglossolalia, but you'd need to show me their equivalent of the standard model before I'd accept that it actually has physics, because there is just so much that does not make sense, and so much of what did has been superseded by official gibberish. Exhibit; all technobabble ever. (The amount of actual science Roddenberry, who presumably knew more than a little aerodynamics at least, had to wilfully forget to set it up the way he did is negatively impressive- at least Lucas probably never knew much to begin with.)

The gap between TOS and TNG produced some interesting rationalisations that were as close to a good footing as Trek ever got, books and games and manuals, but it was almost all undone later.

Star Wars was never intended to be physically sound either; the effort made to retrofit sounder foundations for the franchise- with Dr. Saxton principal architect- has not yet been officially undone, that's all. Wait for it, though, under Disney I expect it will be.

Neither side set out with vs. in mind- necessary to acknowledge that.


Levelling the playing field by underestimating one side by two orders of magnitude doesn't make an interesting crossover more likely, to my mind- it's not a matter of obstacles overcome, more of paths taken. Accept the concept of extelligence for the moment, for the sake of argument; any crossover is going to be about two different ways of being a culture, of being people and entities at large. For zap-pow-flash-kaboom, straightforward military-diplomatic action, you don't need a crossover.

Character driven reasons, yes, schadenfreude and bashfics yes (and all of those are guilty pleasures worth dipping into, and may help a dull day pass), but apart from those the only worthy/worthwhile point of a crossover is the meeting of minds, a contrast between different ways of doing things- between entities who are what their societies have made them, and those societies standing behind them, and the Other.

Evidence- filleting to reduce one side to near parity utterly misses the only good reason for doing it at all. If I was going to do it (and I did have something on the back burner), and in the Duchess' own words,

Star Wars depicts an immensely old, immensely sophisticated civilization on a galaxy-spanning scale. Star Trek is about a young civilization.

- this disparity would essentially be the point and meaning of the piece.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Does anyone have the figures to hand for SW firepower estimates when the DS was scaled down to the size of an ISD? I have some rough figures lying around for the Acclamator vs DS II, but in those I was comparing one shot from an Acclamator gun vs one shot from the superlaser, hardly a fair comparison

And the volume I calculated for the Acclamator consisted of several estimates due to its shape

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm not going to disagree with all of ECR's criticism, but perhaps I just wanted to be indulged in a trip down nostalgia lane by making a point that, back in the heyday of the debate, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, there was less of a tinge of "absurdity" to any such comparison, and there is some real validity in the idea of accepting that more extreme statements like that from TDIC have parity with the text from AOTC in terms of importance and relevance.

[Captain Seafort]

Does anyone have the figures to hand for SW firepower estimates when the DS was scaled down to the size of an ISD?

About 5E26W, assuming a 160km diameter DS firing one shot per day at 1E39J per shot and a 100 million m^3 ISD.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Also, ECR, I'd point out that in the heyday of the ASVS versus debate, it wasn't really about the respective mythologies of both universes as they stood under their original creative visions. We were very much a pack of Imperial officers here, intending to remove the oppressive communist-socialist dictatorship of the UFP and replace it with capitalist authoritarian efficiency under the rule of the Emperor. It was very much an era influenced most by the Zahn novels and WEG in style, even if we relied on the movies for technical sources.

[Simon_Jester]

I sometimes wonder what the ASVS group culture would have been like, had I been in on it at the time, as a teenager.

Apart from disagreeing with both estimates on mostly orthodox grounds, which I'll come back to once I've had time to work them over and make sure I'm not missing anything, two more important points;

both franchises are essentially undead. Not under the control of their original creator, divorced from their original artistic purpose (such as it ever was) and being used as generators of money, no more. Neither of them really mean or represent anything, there's no clash of principles left to have. Who's supposed to be writing this thing, anyway?

Nevertheless, we can take the principles and run with them, even if the current generation of creative controllers are doing it for the cold, hard cash.

[Andras]

IMO, the display screen in the bunker is a hyperspace scanner showing the Rebel fleet approaching, not the Imperial fleet maneuvering around the moon. Leia looks right at it and says something like 'Han hurry the fleet will be here any moment', not 'OMG look at all those Imperials, it's a trap'. Plus a bunch of red lettering start flashing like it's a warning.

[Jedipilot24]

IMO, the display screen in the bunker is a hyperspace scanner showing the Rebel fleet approaching, not the Imperial fleet maneuvering around the moon. Leia looks right at it and says something like 'Han hurry the fleet will be here any moment', not 'OMG look at all those Imperials, it's a trap'. Plus a bunch of red lettering start flashing like it's a warning.

Han says in the ANH novelization that it's impossible to track ships in hyperspace. I think Leia was just checking the time and realized, 'oh shit, we've got to do this fast!' In the ROTJ novelization this scene doesn't happen until after the fleet arrives and her line is 'Han, Hurry. The fleet is being attacked.'

[jwl]

I'm going to quit getting involved in this, but why did you post the exact same thread with a few minor changes on spacebattles?

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/ ... sm.257354/

[RogueIce]

...to reach a wider audience? It's not that complicated.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

For the same reason I crossposted the Eclipse thread to SB.com from ASVS... To reach a wider audience. The wording was slightly tailored to a more pro-trek audience, boo-hoo, the content was exactly the same and so was the intent. This is like translating a document into French when posting it to a French language forum.

Are you some kind of bizarre sniveling little dipshit, jwl? Do you, like, actually know anything about the topic at hand, or the history behind it? Or are you doing this to just look cool and win points on the board?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Does anyone have the figures to hand for SW firepower estimates when the DS was scaled down to the size of an ISD?

About 5E26W, assuming a 160km diameter DS firing one shot per day at 1E39J per shot and a 100 million m^3 ISD.

I ran those figures and got some interesting results, depending on whether you use the upper or lower limits for the DSI main weapon.

Assuming 3x10^32J/86,400 spits out 1.4x10^26W, going with the higher number gets 1.1x10^34W. Dividing by the volume of 2,144,660KM^3 gets either 1.62E+21W/KM^3 or 5.40E+27W/KM^3

Using the figure from Wookieepedia of 9.28 × 10^24W for the ISDII, dividing by 0.1 (10^8/10^9) converting to cubic Km gets 9.28x10^25W/KM^3

So depending which figure you go with, either the DS has a power generation capability 100 times greater than an ISD when accounting for size, or 10,000 times less.