OMNI SCIFI VERSUS: These Size-Chart ships fight! Who wins?

[Tribble]

Given that the firepower of Super Exelion era Gunbuster is less "destroy a planet on purpose" and more "destroy a gas giant that happened to be somewhere near what you were shooting at" the Daleks can be stopped in this scenario.

Well yes, it's possible seeing as the Daleks are basically going into the fight with both their appendages tied behind their backs. Could the Gunbuster take planet-buster weapons? How fast are the shots that it fires?

Gunbuster Earth is one of the real high power 'verses, the kind that you don't fuck with unless you have strategic weaponised time travel (which is disallowed in this scenario).

This is highly dependant on what time travel is allowed. The OP mentioned that "minor" time/relativity weapons/effects are permitted, but we need some context. Especially as pretty much anything short of "total universal destruction" is minor to a Dalek. What does "minor" temporal/reality powers mean in this scenario? What is a "minor" temporal disruption that would be permitted?

For example, could the Daleks use the time-vortex to travel from one place to another (provided they remain in the same relative time period as everyone else)? If so, this would allow them virtually instantaneous travel anywhere in the area. Could they do things like slow ships down/ speed them up? Freeze ships/weapons in time? Generate paradoxes? Could they emergency temporal shift? Could they shift themselves 1 second ahead of the rest of the group and pretty much disappear? Again, all minor stuff from a Dalek's point of view.

Perhaps to make things more fair (and not have a shitload of ships get blown up right off the bat) we could add a couple more restrictions. For example, the Dalek Saucer could be the crippled one from "Victory of the Daleks" with only the few Daleks on board plus the Progenator Device. And the Dalek Emperor ship could be from immediately after the Time War ends, with the ship heavily damaged and the Emperor as sole survivor. In that scenario even the Daleks would know that they couldn't hope to win via brute force, and they would have to play things out very carefully instead.

[Vendetta]

Well yes, it's possible seeing as the Daleks are basically going into the fight with both their appendages tied behind their backs. Could the Gunbuster take planet-buster weapons? How fast are the shots that it fires?

Gunbuster itself isn't in this fight. It's not entirely certain how much firepower the Exelion can withstand, but we do see the firepower of a Space Monster in Diebuster, it fires from the surface of Titan at targets on the other side by pointing down and boring through the moon, with enough energy left to wipe out swarms of targets a few thousand km across.

Gunbuster earth's weapons are beam weapons, probably lasers given that we see massive lenses and lasing chambers. They have some limited capacity to curve them into "homing lasers" as well and deflect enemy laser weapons, probably via gravitational lensing (due to their power source being functionally a caged black hole, their gravity manipulation is pretty powerful).

The enemies they are built to fight are bioships ranging from dozens up to a thousand kilometres long that nest inside stars, after all. (They're similar to the Photino Birds, they live inside stars and cause unnatural stellar aging)

Bear in mind that the Sizzler machines (mass production variants of Gunbuster) the ships carry as "fighters" by that period are powered by reactors equivalent to that of a Star Destroyer (the aforementioned captive black holes).

So they can almost certainly intercept or deflect planet busting missiles even if they can't straight up tank them.

[SAMAS]

IIRC, wasn't the Gunbuster stationed on the Super Excelion?

[Vendetta]

It was on the Eltreum in ep.6 I think. That might just have been for the pilot briefing though.

Before that it operated independently, and obvs. it could travel back from the galactic core to earth by itself.

[Gavinfoxx]

Sigh. No updates or suggestions or anything? Not after I wrote that big long thing?

[Batman]

I'm surprised you got that much out of it without somebody simply telling you to get lost. It's an incredibly stupid scenario that has factions of ridiculously mismatched power stuck in a thoroughly unrealistic situation.

[Gavinfoxx]

O...k? I think the scenario has promise, and there are ways of mitigating all of that stuff. And sometimes, mismatched scenarios can be fun. Or have you not read "The Culture Explores 40k"?

http://archiveofourown.org/works/649448/navigate

I'm more interested in maybe getting some help in actually WRITING this as a fun, zany fanfic? Did you read my story snippets idea bit?

[Gavinfoxx]

Also is there some sci fi subreddit somewhere, or some other forum where versus threads are allowed, or another place where I can get help writing this / inspire authors who are into this stuff to jump in?

[gigabytelord]

Also is there some sci fi subreddit somewhere, or some other forum where versus threads are allowed, or another place where I can get help writing this / inspire authors who are into this stuff to jump in?

Subreddit? *Giggles* You're new around here aren't you? Yeah... no, this place is a bit old fashioned for that kind of stuff. As far as Sci-Fi vs threads go this is the right place to put'em unless it's a Star Trek vs Star Wars vs, then it somehow has and entire sub-forum devoted to it.

[Ahriman238]

Also is there some sci fi subreddit somewhere, or some other forum where versus threads are allowed, or another place where I can get help writing this / inspire authors who are into this stuff to jump in?

Subreddit? *Giggles* You're new around here aren't you? Yeah... no, this place is a bit old fashioned for that kind of stuff. As far as Sci-Fi vs threads go this is the right place to put'em unless it's a Star Trek vs Star Wars vs, then it somehow has and entire sub-forum devoted to it.

Well ST vs. SW was a large part of the board's history and original purpose. You have read Mike's articles on the main site, or the wiki? Heck go an archive trawl at some point to see debates with Andersen and the like.

[gigabytelord]

It's a monument to a pointlessly devisive and utterly irrelivant conflict that saw no victors. The forum it spawned has seen more use and generated more useful and completely unrelated content than the conflict it was devoted to ever did. [/endmonolog]

[Anacronian]

I'm on a small screen and can't really read the text - is that a Vorlon planet killer or just a normal Vorlon ship?

[Q99]

And did Harrington ever captain one of those ships that were shown? If not, it is unlikely to expect her to be in one of those ships. If she DID, than maybe have her in HER ship, recently refitted, from the appropriate point in the timeline.

At least two, the Star Knight heavy cruiser (her first book ride), and the Reliant Battlecruiser (second book ride). None from when she wasin command of a big fleet, though.

I'm on a small screen and can't really read the text - is that a Vorlon planet killer or just a normal Vorlon ship?

There's one planet killer, one heavy cruiser, and one transport for team Vorlon.

[Batman]

Book Two and Three, actually.

[Elheru Aran]

Any reason why the Fourth Imperium ships aren't on that list?

[Batman]

Presumably because whoever built that collage didn't know what the hell the Fourth Imperium is and/or not having pictures of its ships?

[Elheru Aran]

Presumably because whoever built that collage didn't know what the hell the Fourth Imperium is and/or not having pictures of its ships?

Granted a 500-km-diameter spherical warship might have taken up much of the picture...

EDIT: Or was that radius?

(For those who don't know, Dahak is from a series by David Weber. To illustrate size: the spaceship Dahak *is* the Moon, apparently. And there's even bigger ships out there... in one combat scene, a ship loses 400 kilometers' worth of armour. That's 400 KM *deep*.)

[Q99]

Lots of ships aren't on due to size reason, and other than the planetoid, what ships in the Fourth Imperium are worth mentioning?

Oh, here's a thought: There's Trek TOS stuff.

Like, most of us reflexively write-off Trek vs major powers, but they're the only ships present that fight while constantly going at FTL, aren't they? So who in the opponents can really hurt them? And they've got orders of magnitude more firepower than newer Trek stuff.

One of them is the Planet Killer, which can practically only be killed from within, too.

[Enigma]

Lots of ships aren't on due to size reason, and other than the planetoid, what ships in the Fourth Imperium are worth mentioning?

Oh, here's a thought: There's Trek TOS stuff.

Like, most of us reflexively write-off Trek vs major powers, but they're the only ships present that fight while constantly going at FTL, aren't they? So who in the opponents can really hurt them? And they've got orders of magnitude more firepower than newer Trek stuff.

One of them is the Planet Killer, which can practically only be killed from within, too.

The planet killer? You mean the Doomsday Machine? It is in there. Other TOS stuff shown is the First Federation ship.

[Tribble]

Like, most of us reflexively write-off Trek vs major powers, but they're the only ships present that fight while constantly going at FTL, aren't they? So who in the opponents can really hurt them?

Are you referring to warp strafing? If so, there is no evidence to suggest that tactic works. We've never seen a ship at warp hit a target that was not at warp, even a stationary target like DS9.

Many other powers have FTL scanners, so seeing ST ships isn't the problem. The question is how many of them have FTL weapons and/or how many can engage the ST ships at the appropriate speed to hit them? The Daleks could possibly do the ladder via the Time Vortex, but I'm not sure about others.

And they've got orders of magnitude more firepower than newer Trek stuff.

TNG-era exists in the same universe as TOS, and retcons many TOS feats. Whenever a TOS ship is encountered in the TNG-era it is treated as a museum piece rather than some kind of lost super-tech ship from a by-gone era. IMO whenever TNG feats contradict TOS feats, TNG continuity takes precedence. It's not like the Voyager crew were saying "if only we had the E-A and its mystery lost super-tech, we could have crossed the galaxy in days rather than 70 years!"

One of them is the Planet Killer, which can practically only be killed from within, too.

You are referring to the Doomsday Machine which is on the chart, but it's not that impressive. Sure, it was immune to the Enterprise's weapons, but that's not saying much given other powers here. I doubt it could take things like a Dalek planet-killer missile or Eclipse laser hit. But even if we were to extend Spock's analysis to a ridiculous extreme and assume that the outer hull is literally immune to "anything" including other planet killer weapons, its mouth is still a hell of a weakness! All it takes is a 64 megaton explosion to completely disable it, which is the equivalent to a couple of photon torpedoes in the TNG era.

[Q99]

Are you referring to warp strafing? If so, there is no evidence to suggest that tactic works. We've never seen a ship at warp hit a target that was not at warp, even a stationary target like DS9.

TNG, yes. TOS, they've been known to fire at stationary things.

Heck, the Romulan Warbird has a long-range FTL seeking weapon that hit space stations.

TNG-era exists in the same universe as TOS, and retcons many TOS feats. Whenever a TOS ship is encountered in the TNG-era it is treated as a museum piece rather than some kind of lost super-tech ship from a by-gone era. IMO whenever TNG feats contradict TOS feats, TNG continuity takes precedence. It's not like the Voyager crew were saying "if only we had the E-A and its mystery lost super-tech, we could have crossed the galaxy in days rather than 70 years!"

Eh, the TOS stuff just works different, and it really did do what it does on screen. In the TNG+ shows, they treat it as retconned, but the known capabilities of a Doomsday Machine are still 'flies at warp, slices up and eats planets in short order, almost impossible to damage from most angles.' And the Ent-Nil can still take repeated hits from that weapon.

Plus there's stuff like Star Fleet Battles, which uses TOS continuity and keeps all their feats. It's a separate continuity which includes TOS and the animated series (thus including Gorn and Kzinti as major powers), but not TNG or related works.

You are referring to the Doomsday Machine which is on the chart, but it's not that impressive. Sure, it was immune to the Enterprise's weapons, but that's not saying much given other powers here. I doubt it could take things like a Dalek planet-killer missile or Eclipse laser hit. But even if we were to extend Spock's analysis to a ridiculous extreme and assume that the outer hull is literally immune to "anything" including other planet killer weapons, its mouth is still a hell of a weakness! All it takes is a 64 megaton explosion to completely disable it, which is the equivalent to a couple of photon torpedoes in the TNG era.

True, it's not like there's a lack of missiles. However, given it's ability to chase warp starships, there's the question of opportunity. And I think the explosion had to have been really deep within- it was only craft that proved a problem.

[Gavinfoxx]

Is there a place to recruit for play by post or role playing games or collaborative fiction on stardestroyer.net?

I ask because I now want to advise people that were interested in this that I have a thread for a freeform roleplaying game, seeking players for this concept, up. It's on a different forum, though. If I can find a place on stardestroyer.net for the appropriate type of roleplay though, and if this game falls through, I might try to redo the game here.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthre ... ng-players!

[Esquire]

Yes, the STGOD subforum over in Gaming and Computers.

[Starglider]

I don´t think it was an angle issue with the planet killer. If it was the Enterprise could´ve just fired photon torpedoes from directly in front of it. There must have been some kind of force field or shutters that it lowers when consuming matter for fuel. This is the interpretation used in most of the spin-off work e.g. the missions against the planet killers in the Starfleet Command games.

That said extrapolating Spock´s single comment to complete invulnerability is still a no-limits fallacy, at least without further clarification. There are some kinds of sci-fi physics that really do grant total immunity to conventional physics, e.g. if you are working at the quantum lattice level in Schild´s Ladder you can basically ignore conventional particles and forces, but it seems much more likely that this is just a run-of-the-mill super-material such as quantum crystalline armour in Star Wars (which has a limited ability to tank DS superlaser blasts due to... materials science technobabble). Unlike QC armour which can be roughly scaled from both positive (unaffected by supernovas, gas giant cores) and negative (partial damage from DS prototype, thin layer dented by hypervelocity gemstone, destroyed by a black hole) examples, we don´t have anything for the Star Trek form of ´Neutronium´ other than ´Constitution class phasers/PTs do nothing´. At least in the primary canon; I´d note that one of the early TNG novels explicitly scales it to ´a dozen TNG era borg cubes firing everything they have will create cracks in the armour after a few minutes of combat´.

Anyway given the general capabilities of Trek, even from the most advanced civilisations, I wouldn´t count on the planet killer to be effective against any of the higher tier threats here. Particularly given that it runs on very simplistic programming.

[Q99]

That said extrapolating Spock´s single comment to complete invulnerability is still a no-limits fallacy, at least without further clarification.

Right, it's not completely invulnerable, but it is *really* darn tough, even by the standards of most of the heavy weapons here.

There's only a few weapons present that I think would definitely work- the Son'a and one of the B5 First Ones (I think the Walkers)have weapons that work by making small holes in space. Of course, either of which would be one-shotted by it's beam.

Toss in the speed on top, and it may be very hard to deal with.

Anyway given the general capabilities of Trek, even from the most advanced civilisations,

Mind you, TOS. Much higher firepower than TNG stuff, a Connie is a planetary threat, and of course it itself obviously slices up worlds, it's own firepower from it's episode is... what would that be? Well above gigatons to be sure- and possibly the big advantage is it's speed.

I wouldn´t count on the planet killer to be effective against any of the higher tier threats here. Particularly given that it runs on very simplistic programming.

Granted, it *is* definitely dumb, but I think it's firepower is in range to hurt just about anything present, and it's one of the fastest opponents. Something like, say, the Lexx, wouldn't be able to hit it.


What ships do you think would be suitable against it?