A Borg Cube in Babylon 5

[Anguirus]

I mainly remember it in "In The Beginning" and possibly some of the big warry episodes.

They only use it in "In the Beginning."

[ObsidianTailor]

I mainly remember it in "In The Beginning" and possibly some of the big warry episodes.

They only use it in "In the Beginning."

I recently re-watched the entire saga and I don't remember this scene. Where did it happen?

[Anguirus]

The TV movie "In the Beginning," about the Earth-Minbari war. The Black Star uses this tactic on an Earth fleet.

[ObsidianTailor]

The TV movie "In the Beginning," about the Earth-Minbari war. The Black Star uses this tactic on an Earth fleet.

Right, I got the movie...which scene did it occur in? I've watch the movie five or more times and I just don't recall it happening.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The TV movie "In the Beginning," about the Earth-Minbari war. The Black Star uses this tactic on an Earth fleet.

Right, I got the movie...which scene did it occur in? I've watch the movie five or more times and I just don't recall it happening.

Just before John "Nukem" Sheridan does the first of his many "solutions by application of thermonuclear devices". The task force where Sheridan is serving as a first officer of an old patrol ship is decimated by the "Black Star" opening a jump point in the middle of the fleet, which is quite stupidly cruising in a very tight formation. The captain of Sheridan's ship is killed by a malevolent ceiling beam, the B5 version of the exploding console, and Sheridan has to take command. The Minbari use a scout ship (an armed "Flyer" type vessel) which pretends to be damaged to lure the fleet into certain area. it's actually not a very good plan in my opinion, but the EF fleet swallows it anyway...

[Skylon]

I mainly remember it in "In The Beginning" and possibly some of the big warry episodes.

They only use it in "In the Beginning."

Technically it was also used in "Endgame" when a White Star was able to jump into the atmosphere of Mars after receiving location data accurate to "within a few feet" (Garibaldi's words if memory serves). However, pulling that off required support on the ground to provide coordinates accurate enough.

[Batman]

They only used a precision jump to get the WhiteStar in a position where it could toast Mars' defenses before they could react, they didn't use the vortex itself as an offensive weapon like the Black Star did.

[Jeremy]

If it hasn't already been said, a Minbari transport craft in the TV Movie "In the Beginning" lured Captain Stearn's fleet into a position.

The EF task force picked up Minbari transmissions and then noted the scout. We know that small Minbari craft can activate "stealth" features too but this one was running open. The transport stopped at a certain location followed by Stearn's fleet. The Black Star opened a jumppoint shortly after this. Sheridan said that they had lost two dozen ships to this "ace cruiser". As in the attack on Mars, we can see that only man portable equipment is needed for the Minbari to open a precision jumppoint.

As to the Vorlon Planet Killer, the Vorlon defensive screen was probably effective and prevented anyone from getting close enough to relay the needed data for a precision jumppoint. But they never gave any indication of trying for that... so I am pulling stuff out of thin air.


Here, is a problem though, the Shadows might give the Borg technology.

[Anguirus]

^ Why the hell would they do that? The Shadows are hyper-Social Darwinists. Their perspective would be that the Borg would only prove themselves worthy of their tech if they could wrest it away by force.

The only people they ever GAVE technology to were proxies. The Borg would not likely accept such a relationship.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

^ Why the hell would they do that? The Shadows are hyper-Social Darwinists. Their perspective would be that the Borg would only prove themselves worthy of their tech if they could wrest it away by force.

The only people they ever GAVE technology to were proxies. The Borg would not likely accept such a relationship.

What if they want to use the Borg as a test against the other species? Maybe they don't consider the Borg actual contenders for the 'fittest' spot, but rather just another obstacle for other species to overcome, and thus 'tweak' them with their own technology to provide a proper challenge.

[Jeremy]

Oni Koneko Damien, this was my thought also.


The Borg want to be as evolved and strong as possible, so the Shadows pit the two sides against one another and see who can utilize the technology most effectively. The Shadows hide and go to sleep, and start the process again in a thousand years.

[Themightytom]

^ Why the hell would they do that? The Shadows are hyper-Social Darwinists. Their perspective would be that the Borg would only prove themselves worthy of their tech if they could wrest it away by force.

The only people they ever GAVE technology to were proxies. The Borg would not likely accept such a relationship.

At the time the borg arrive the Shadows are just waking up thanks to the Icarus Earth force is just discovering the Shadow vessel buried on mars, if the borg get their hands on either of these they may be able to do significantly more than Earthforce managed to cobble together.

Not necessarily though. Shadwo tech seems like the ultimate end result of technologies Earth has already seen in this verse and the Shadow agents may have helped the humans along with the data they got off the ship before it flew off. The borg might be looking at completely foreign technology.

[Anguirus]

What if they want to use the Borg as a test against the other species? Maybe they don't consider the Borg actual contenders for the 'fittest' spot, but rather just another obstacle for other species to overcome, and thus 'tweak' them with their own technology to provide a proper challenge.

They've never done anything like this before. They are opportunists as well...they only gave Londo aid because his mental state let them manipulate him to cause conflict. A random, powerful, dumb-ass race coming out of nowhere and picking a fight? They'd at least wait until the conflict between the Borg and the coalition that opposed them was over, and then start trying to seduce whoever won.

Creating tests is totally a Vorlon move. The Shadows 1) foment random conflict and 2) when their hand is shown they BECOME the test and see if anyone's strong enough to not get killed by them.

Moreover, the Borg are only pragmatic and willing to negotiate when they knowingly face imminent extinction. Faced with Mr. Morden and his bodyguards and given a sample of technology, they are most likely to kill the Shadows (Ref: two Centauri idiots with guns can do this, and Earth security cameras can detect them), assimilate Mr. Morden and the technology, and attack Z'Ha'Dum. At which point the Shadows throw up their hands and respond with force, as they don't take kindly (ref: nuke-spamming Sheridan's White Star) to open defiance.

[seanrobertson]

It seems like you are making an assumption that they will be just as effective because you can see these beams in space even though lasers are visible in space in B5. Do you know of a B5 episode which states these weapons are particle weapons?

Actually all we really see is that ships get blown up by less than 1000TJ events and with intensity less than 100MW/m2. That those flares are particularly effective in disabling shields as opposed to simply overwhelming them through sheer energy and power is an assumption based on certain incidents like TWoK but which is by no means certain.

Kane,

I agree. It's not certain. Just the same, I think it's a necessary rationalization because I can't agree with you about the "Pegasus" estimates.

Apologies ... I get ahead of myself. You write later in this post:

Also 100kt is an upper estimate assuming granite asteroid was completely shattered which is not actually necessary to destroy the cloaking device.

While it's always best to go with what we see before what we're told (show, don't tell! ), we needn't solely hang our hat on "Pegasus" for proof of high kiloton to [maybe] low megaton-ranged photorps.

Recall the opening scene of "Cost of Living", in which we see the Enterprise fire two torpedoes at a large asteroid. After a spectacular explosion, Data announces the asteroid was shattered, but we see that its "core" -- roughly a fifth to perhaps as much as a third the original body's size -- remained on a collision course with the planet.

Scaling this thing is very difficult, but Data reports this core "is of sufficient size and density to cause planet-wide damage."

Correct me if I'm wrong -- it's been a long time since I've thought about this stuff, and I've forgotten a shitload -- but if memory serves, didn't NASA determine it'd take upwards of a kilometer-wide asteroid to cause planet-wide damage on Earth?

By all indications, the planet in that episode was Earth-like (sigh; if only TNG, TOS et al. had the budgets to show us something truly alien).

Since, as noted, the core was a good bit smaller than the intact asteroid, that would indicate the latter was easily in excess of two kilometers or so in diameter.

That meshes well enough with "most" of the E-D's 250 torpedoes (stated complement as of "Conundrum"; the script says 275, like the old Tech Manual) shattering a partially hollow 5 km-wide asteroid.

If anything, COL estimates might run a bit high. But aside from technobabble elements in the COL asteroid's core, we don't know what the rest of the thing was composed of. Maybe most of it was ice? For that matter, we don't know if the E-D only fired two torpedoes at it; we join the episode en medias res, right in the thick of things.

So, depending on how generous or pessimistic you're feeling -- we'll start with 100 kT, since it's on the lower end of the expected range -- what does this say of the Borg?

I know that a K'Vort-class cruiser, which is (very roughly speaking) some 300m long, 400m wide and perhaps 50m tall, sustained "moderate shield damage" when the Enterprise nailed it with a five torpedo spread in "Yesterday's Enterprise."

For argument's sake, let's assume of those 500 kilotons, only 20% of that energy -- that is, "only" 100 kT -- actually hit the cruiser's shields, which were the typical oval shape. (If you watch the battle in question, you'll note the torpedo impacts didn't quite "light up" the whole fore shield, but we'll assume the energy was evenly distributed across its entire profile.)

I'm about to digress, so let's move on. I figure we're looking at a realistic profile area of some 16,000 m^2, corresponding to an intensity of some 26 GJ/m^2.

If the torpedoes yielded as much as 250 kT apiece, the intensity would climb to 65 GJ/m^2; and if the torpedoes were good for as much as 500 kT each, the spread had an intensity of 130 GJ/m^2. Given that these torpedoes detonated in, what, a tenth of a second (?), that means the shields had to cope with a peak intensity of anywhere from 260 GW/m^2 to -- again, if you feel up to running with a .5 MT photorp -- 1.3 TW/m^2.

Moreover, while this did measurable shield damage, it didn't completely drain the cruiser's shields and it certainly didn't take her out of the fight.

In any case, unless you have serious misgivings with my interpretation of the aforementioned findings, I think it's safe to say solar "flares" blowing up similar Klingon cruisers in "Redemption, pt. 2" and the Borg bruiser in that terrible Borg/Lore episode would point to, as Mike speculated years ago, Trek shields' universally poor ability to cope with charged particles. Among other incidents, we saw it in "The Inner Light." We saw it when shields proved useless in all those odd Trek takes on tiny little nebulae. We saw it in "Generations," what with a "low-level ionic pulse" penetrating the BoP's shields.

And, IMO, we saw it clear as crystal in "Survivors": upon closer inspection, that "four-hundred gigawatts of particle energy!" Worf pissed himself over might've had an intensity of a few gigajoules per square meter on impact -- perhaps as much as 10 GJ/m^2.

That approaches, but is at best half, the intensity E-D's phasers could manage circa "A Matter of Time," since they were worried about as little as a 60 gigawatt deviation. (Again, correct me if my memory's off, but I seem to recall a GCS phaser strip is 5-6 meters wide. Consequently, the beam itself is, at best, 2 meters wide -- corresponding to an intensity around to 20 GW/m^2.)

But even if we assume the Enterprise's phasers were ONLY good for 60 GW under most circumstances, we still can't even begin to explain why the Husnock's attack blew the E-D's shields away with one hit. That'd mean that, should the E-D run up against a comparably-armed opponent -- like, say, Defiant and Lakota in "Paradise Lost" -- the battle should've been over in a few seconds.

Why, then, do most Trek battles last far longer -- apart from writers' fiat, naturally?

Secondly we know that even when the shields are down or rendered irrelevant like in Generations battle against BoP or "Jem'Hadar" episode in which a Galaxy fights against three Jem'Hadar ships the Galaxy class actually didn't sustain large visible damage to its hull even after minutes of combat.

I just watched the Odyssey/bugger fight on Youtube. It's kinda ugly, but you can watch it if interested. Assuming the battle unfolded in real-time, the Jem'Hadar engaged at 2:06 and fired their last shot at 3:27 -- about a minute and 21 seconds.

You're right, however: apart from a fucked-up looking nacelle, I couldn't make out a lot of visible damage on the Odyssey -- just a scorch mark on the ventral saucer. A higher-resolution clip might help a little, especially since the Jem'Hadar focused their fire on the engineering section; nonetheless, your point stands. About all I can say in response is that Jem'Hadar attack ships were little more than gun fodder once their shield-penetrating trick was neutralized; thus, I wouldn't necessarily consider them (or a scout-sized BoP, for that matter) indicative of state-of-the-art ships with five hundred times their tonnage -- to say nothing of far more massive and combat-effective Borg ships.

Thus the shields don't provide more than a few times more protection than the hull armor itself otherwise a shielded Galaxy should be able to receive sustained pounding for tens of minutes. In First Contact Federation fleet concentrates power on a Borg ship and actually starts digging a hole in it, its shields obviously long gone, and yet the weapons themselves don't cause massive damage. Yet a 1000TJ flare blows up a large Borg vessel outright. So even assuming that flare somehow switches the shields off and proceeds to the hull directly it still puts the limits on the shields and weapons of Federation ships as nowhere near a Shadow ship.

Curious ... I thought Mike estimated the flare was, if a gross upper-limit, some 4,000 terajoules?

I would agree, however, that shields don't provide orders of magnitude more protection than even so large a ship as a Galaxy's so-called "armor" affords.

Finally whatever B5 characters call their weapons the fact they are visible means they are not lasers. If they are not photons (massless particles) then they do have mass.

Probably, yeah. All this hinges on just how rigid we interpret suspension-of-disbelief but, speaking for myself, I never considered Shadow weapons lasers as such, for the little that's worth.

Like I said: the fact that Galaxy can take bare hull impacts without much visible damage and yet be threatened by 10TW radiation puts upper limits on firepower of major Star Trek civilizations.

Clarification: threatened by 10 TW of radiation when, and in what context? Are you thinking of something like "Relics"?

Again, sorry to have to ask you this. Perhaps if I'd paid better attention, I'd know what you were talking about; as is, I formulated my response during the few minutes I could spare throughout the day.

First I don't remember a Federation ship being able to sustain a phaser beam for 30 seconds under combat conditions. A two-three second burst seems the most they can hold it. Photon torpedoes, on the other hand, can't create the kind of power intensity that enable Narn cruisers to shear off one of its legs. Also 100kt is an upper estimate assuming granite asteroid was completely shattered which is not actually necessary to destroy the cloaking device.

In light of the "Cost of Living" example I provided, do you honestly think Riker was ready to risk his mission on maybe destroying the Pegasus by partially destroying the asteroid before the Romulans in the area noticed?

Further, Kane, you are completely overlooking the fact that Riker said it would take not all, but "most" of their photon torpedoes to destroy the asteroid. That gives us fudge room to accomodate other incidents, like the "Cost of Living" example I mentioned.

Again there is no evidence NDF will be at all effective against Shadow defenses or hull materials which exhibit endurance impossible for a simple biological matter. Nor is there any evidence that phasers will be exceptionally effective against possible Shadow shields. After all they didn't do so well against Species 8472 which was also using bioships. Borg ships aren't even capable of destroying or disabling an Intrepid class vessel one on one in a short amount of time. It seems doubtful they will be able do it to a Shadow ship.

Read: a Borg ship which, shortly beforehand, had been engaged in combat with an alien of unknown abilities.

I know, I know. That's appealing to ignorance; I'm guilty as charged I remember being sorely disappointed with the so-called "tactical cube's" inability to dispatch the Voyager. I detested Janeway and was actively rooting for the Borg that time

As I see it, however, if a medium Alpha/Beta Quadrant warship like a K'Vort can endure even a tenth or twentieth a Shadow cruiser's beam intensity, I can't completely sign off on the conclusion that a single Spider/Battlecrab would be an overmatch for a Borg cube. It's easily possible the two would be very well-matched.

Regardless, unless the Borg decided to slowly rebuild a new Collective, carefully picking systems off for resources and manpower such as to escape the greater galaxy's attention, I seriously doubt a lone cube would survive in the B5verse for very long. Minor powers might be overwhelmed, but I'm confident that, once the Minbari Federation realized the Borg's intentions and scope of their threat, they could muster a fleet that could destroy the cube in a single engagement.

[Kane Starkiller]

While it's always best to go with what we see before what we're told (show, don't tell! ), we needn't solely hang our hat on "Pegasus" for proof of high kiloton to [maybe] low megaton-ranged photorps.

Recall the opening scene of "Cost of Living", in which we see the Enterprise fire two torpedoes at a large asteroid. After a spectacular explosion, Data announces the asteroid was shattered, but we see that its "core" -- roughly a fifth to perhaps as much as a third the original body's size -- remained on a collision course with the planet.

Scaling this thing is very difficult, but Data reports this core "is of sufficient size and density to cause planet-wide damage."

Correct me if I'm wrong -- it's been a long time since I've thought about this stuff, and I've forgotten a shitload -- but if memory serves, didn't NASA determine it'd take upwards of a kilometer-wide asteroid to cause planet-wide damage on Earth?

By all indications, the planet in that episode was Earth-like (sigh; if only TNG, TOS et al. had the budgets to show us something truly alien).

Since, as noted, the core was a good bit smaller than the intact asteroid, that would indicate the latter was easily in excess of two kilometers or so in diameter.

That meshes well enough with "most" of the E-D's 250 torpedoes (stated complement as of "Conundrum"; the script says 275, like the old Tech Manual) shattering a partially hollow 5 km-wide asteroid.

If anything, COL estimates might run a bit high. But aside from technobabble elements in the COL asteroid's core, we don't know what the rest of the thing was composed of. Maybe most of it was ice? For that matter, we don't know if the E-D only fired two torpedoes at it; we join the episode en medias res, right in the thick of things.

So, depending on how generous or pessimistic you're feeling -- we'll start with 100 kT, since it's on the lower end of the expected range -- what does this say of the Borg?

I know that a K'Vort-class cruiser, which is (very roughly speaking) some 300m long, 400m wide and perhaps 50m tall, sustained "moderate shield damage" when the Enterprise nailed it with a five torpedo spread in "Yesterday's Enterprise."

For argument's sake, let's assume of those 500 kilotons, only 20% of that energy -- that is, "only" 100 kT -- actually hit the cruiser's shields, which were the typical oval shape. (If you watch the battle in question, you'll note the torpedo impacts didn't quite "light up" the whole fore shield, but we'll assume the energy was evenly distributed across its entire profile.)

I'm about to digress, so let's move on. I figure we're looking at a realistic profile area of some 16,000 m^2, corresponding to an intensity of some 26 GJ/m^2.

If the torpedoes yielded as much as 250 kT apiece, the intensity would climb to 65 GJ/m^2; and if the torpedoes were good for as much as 500 kT each, the spread had an intensity of 130 GJ/m^2. Given that these torpedoes detonated in, what, a tenth of a second (?), that means the shields had to cope with a peak intensity of anywhere from 260 GW/m^2 to -- again, if you feel up to running with a .5 MT photorp -- 1.3 TW/m^2.

Moreover, while this did measurable shield damage, it didn't completely drain the cruiser's shields and it certainly didn't take her out of the fight.

In any case, unless you have serious misgivings with my interpretation of the aforementioned findings, I think it's safe to say solar "flares" blowing up similar Klingon cruisers in "Redemption, pt. 2" and the Borg bruiser in that terrible Borg/Lore episode would point to, as Mike speculated years ago, Trek shields' universally poor ability to cope with charged particles. Among other incidents, we saw it in "The Inner Light." We saw it when shields proved useless in all those odd Trek takes on tiny little nebulae. We saw it in "Generations," what with a "low-level ionic pulse" penetrating the BoP's shields.

And, IMO, we saw it clear as crystal in "Survivors": upon closer inspection, that "four-hundred gigawatts of particle energy!" Worf pissed himself over might've had an intensity of a few gigajoules per square meter on impact -- perhaps as much as 10 GJ/m^2.

That approaches, but is at best half, the intensity E-D's phasers could manage circa "A Matter of Time," since they were worried about as little as a 60 gigawatt deviation. (Again, correct me if my memory's off, but I seem to recall a GCS phaser strip is 5-6 meters wide. Consequently, the beam itself is, at best, 2 meters wide -- corresponding to an intensity around to 20 GW/m^2.)

But even if we assume the Enterprise's phasers were ONLY good for 60 GW under most circumstances, we still can't even begin to explain why the Husnock's attack blew the E-D's shields away with one hit. That'd mean that, should the E-D run up against a comparably-armed opponent -- like, say, Defiant and Lakota in "Paradise Lost" -- the battle should've been over in a few seconds.

Why, then, do most Trek battles last far longer -- apart from writers' fiat, naturally?

First I'd like to point that possible existence of high yield warheads doesn't mean that clearly established upper limits on shields are contradicted. It is perfectly possible for Federation, or Narn or Vorlons to create multimegaton missiles. That doesn't change the independently established upper limits on their shields.
If we observe weapons failing to destroy ships which we know can be destroyed by 1000TJ energies then the conclusion is that those particular weapons/warheads are much less then 1000TJ not that the upper limits are somehow contradicted.

That being said I don't see any real evidence about the size of the asteroid in "Cost of Living". Planetwide damage statement is unclear and comparing the core to the width of the particle beam it doesn't look like it's much wider than Enterprise's stardrive section. In any case the denser core couldn't be destroyed by their phasers and photon torpedoes in 55 seconds that separated it from the impact on the planetary surface and they had to use their deflector particle beam and hope that nuclear reaction within the asteroid will cause it to blow itself up.
The event is not really something we can pit against several independent flare incidents and then there is the point in the first paragraph.

I guess we can be more or less generous when coming up with various scenarios as a thought experiment but at the end of the day they'll all be capped by the independently established upper limits. Again even assuming that flares somehow switch off the shields the fact that they consistently blow up ships instantaneously while primary weapons of major Star Trek civilizations can't do that put upper limits of their weapons as much less than the energy content of the flares. Since those weapons, in turn, can drop shields in a reasonable amount of time we are back at the fact that Star Trek shields aren't going to be able to stop much more than an energy of a flare. That's on the order of 4000TJ assuming 5km wide circular crossectional area and less than 100TJ for something the size of a Galaxy class.
So even granting that Star Trek shields are exceptionally ineffective against flares and assuming Shadow beams are lasers a 1000TW laser is still going to rip through them like a hot knife through butter.
But, as I demonstrated, Shadow beams are not lasers but particle beams and if Federation shields are so ineffective about everything from flares to nebulae why should we assume they'll be at full effectiveness against Shadow beams?

A 400GW "particle energy" can drop the shields of a Galaxy class in two shots. Shadow beam is rated at, at least, 1500TW and is also some kind of particle beam. So, again, the only way Federation or the Borg have a chance is to assume that "Husnock" particle beam is several thousand times more effective than Shadow beam. A hugely generous assumption for no reason.

Regarding the 60GW variance or 0.06TW as Data put it the assumption is that phasers must be "much" more that 60GW but it's unclear how much more. A 300GW phaser beam could be large enough for 60GW variation to be small depending on how precisely they can maintain the power at constant level. Maybe the way they generate phaser beam makes its power/time chart look like a sinusoid kind of like AC current. Furthermore just because a 400GW beam could drop the shields instantaneously doesn't mean fight would be over in 1.5 seconds with a 300GW phasers. If the shield dissipation rate is 290GW and capacity 110GJ then a single hit from the "Husnock" ship will drop them while 300GW phasers will require 110GJ/(300GW-290GW) or 11 seconds of continuous fire to drop the shields.
Since phasers were never observed to fire for 11 seconds under combat conditions but two second shot at most that would extend the necessary time even more.

Curious ... I thought Mike estimated the flare was, if a gross upper-limit, some 4,000 terajoules?

I would agree, however, that shields don't provide orders of magnitude more protection than even so large a ship as a Galaxy's so-called "armor" affords.

Yes he estimated 4000TJ but I just used orders of magnitude. However an upper limit for Shadow ship based on 600MT nuke is 50,000TJ absorbed by the main body of the ship. Then there is the fact that it's not absolutely positively clear that the Shadow capital ship was actually destroyed by the explosion.
Then there is the fact that 1500TW is the lowest limit needed to cut the Narn cruiser in half. Since the beam wasn't impeded in any way technically the firepower could be 15,000TW or 150,000TW. Again the only way Borg has a chance is if we are generous when estimating their firepower and conservative when estimating Shadow firepower and defenses.

Clarification: threatened by 10 TW of radiation when, and in what context? Are you thinking of something like "Relics"?

Again, sorry to have to ask you this. Perhaps if I'd paid better attention, I'd know what you were talking about; as is, I formulated my response during the few minutes I could spare throughout the day.

Yeah it's from "Relics". Stellar radiation (just EM) is said to be increasing and will overwhelm the shields of the Enterprise in 3 hours. Obviously the radiation of a star won't increase by an order of magnitude in 3 hours and SDN calculated it at 3TW. Simply multiplying the intensity of a yellow star with the crossectional area of a Galaxy. Accounting for the fact shields were stated to be at 23% the conclusion was that the ship could withstand something like 10TW of EM radiation at intensity of 30MW/m2 for 3 hours. That doesn't bode well for its ability to withstand a 1000TW laser at the intensity of 10TW/m2 let alone whatever Shadow beam is composed of.

In light of the "Cost of Living" example I provided, do you honestly think Riker was ready to risk his mission on maybe destroying the Pegasus by partially destroying the asteroid before the Romulans in the area noticed?

Further, Kane, you are completely overlooking the fact that Riker said it would take not all, but "most" of their photon torpedoes to destroy the asteroid. That gives us fudge room to accomodate other incidents, like the "Cost of Living" example I mentioned.

Like I said: these are all assumptions based on what Riker thought and to what exactly destroying the asteroid meant and how big the asteroid from Cost of Living was. I don't see how that can be used to counterweight clearly established upper limits on shield strength. As I pointed out above we could easily apply the same generous reasoning to Shadows an reach much higher numbers.

As I see it, however, if a medium Alpha/Beta Quadrant warship like a K'Vort can endure even a tenth or twentieth a Shadow cruiser's beam intensity, I can't completely sign off on the conclusion that a single Spider/Battlecrab would be an overmatch for a Borg cube. It's easily possible the two would be very well-matched.

If we are talking about the durability of Shadow ships I would agree that they haven't demonstrated a clear and massive advantage over Borg ships. However their firepower without any doubt will cause devastating damage from the first half second of the engagement. Borg ships simply haven't demonstrated the firepower necessary to eliminate a Shadow ship before they get carved up like a turkey.

[seanrobertson]

First I'd like to point that possible existence of high yield warheads doesn't mean that clearly established upper limits on shields are contradicted. It is perfectly possible for Federation, or Narn or Vorlons to create multimegaton missiles. That doesn't change the independently established upper limits on their shields.

Come again?

Are you suggesting that a Federation tactical officer isn't smart enough to dial his weapons up to "max" in a life-or-death combat situation? Your statement's a little ambiguous.

If we observe weapons failing to destroy ships which we know can be destroyed by 1000TJ energies then the conclusion is that those particular weapons/warheads are much less then 1000TJ not that the upper limits are somehow contradicted.

I can't agree.

Still, if you please, let me put a finer point on that before you object.

I'd prepared an incredibly long reply I saved in a Wordpad. It contained over 3,100 words including when I quoted you, but I wasn't even finished.

About half-way through, I realized most of that text wasn't necessary. We could cut through most of the malarkey if you'll just take a closer look at some of the "multiple independent flare incidents" you reference.

For instance, watch "Redemption Pt. II." You can skip to 3 minutes in and take it from there.

As Mike writes in his canon database (emphasis mine):

Gas like this simply won't be dangerous when compared to the ambient radiation. The BOPs' projected surface area from below was less than 20,000 m², the prominence was moving at less than 5 km/s, and if I recall correctly, their shields collapsed in a single frame of video (1/15 second). Given these figures, each BOP could have absorbed no more than 50 GJ from the incident, even if we make the incredibly generous assumption that the gas transferred 100% of its energy to the ships (note that this would be impossible, and would leave a supercooled chunk of metallic hydrogen sitting under the ship).

Far less than 50 gigajoules. Less than 2.5 MJ per square meter.

Think about that for just a second. As you've said, these flares destroyed the cruisers in a manner few conventional Trek powers' weapons usually accomplish.

I need to know what you make of that before I tackle the other flares in-depth, but I'd like to say "Redemption" isn't an outlier.

That being said I don't see any real evidence about the size of the asteroid in "Cost of Living". Planetwide damage statement is unclear

What's so unclear about it? The impact would result in not simply local, nor merely regional, but world-wide damage.

Here's the relevant NASA page.

Why 1 km diameter? Because objects 1 km or larger represent the greatest hazard. Studies carried out at the time of the original NASA Spaceguard Survey Working Group in 1992 identified a threshold at energies near 1 million megatons where an impact had global, not just local or regional, effects. As first discussed in Chapman & Morrison ("Impacts on the Earth by asteroids and comets: Assessing the hazard" Nature 367:33-40, 1994), the individual risk from impacts (the numerical hazard) jumps by roughly an order of magnitude for energies at and just above this threshold. More recent work suggests that this threshold for civilization-threatening impacts is probably nearer 2 km rather than 1 km diameter, but the Spaceguard objective of detecting 1-km NEAs seems like a reasonable and rather conservative figure.

If you have a better interpretation of what "world-wide damage" might mean, I would like to hear it. Waving your hands and saying it's unclear isn't much of an argument.

and comparing the core to the width of the particle beam it doesn't look like it's much wider than Enterprise's stardrive section.

That's true, but scaling any kind of beam is extremely shaky business. If it widens even part of a degree over a span of kilometers and the target's hundreds of klicks or more away, well -- you can imagine what would happen.

In any case the denser core couldn't be destroyed by their phasers and photon torpedoes in 55 seconds that separated it from the impact on the planetary surface and they had to use their deflector particle beam and hope that nuclear reaction within the asteroid will cause it to blow itself up.

Minor correction: Data said he didn't think one more photon torpedo would do the job.

Why they wouldn't try firing two, three or more photorps is uncertain; it's entirely possible that, with the asteroid nearing the planet each second, the Enterprise crew wanted to avoid HEMP from setting big explosions in the upper atmosphere.

Besides, I won't suggest technobabble elements needn't obey physics, but we've no idea how resilient "densely-packed nitrium and chrondite" are. Most important's that we do know the much greater, surrounding material appeared rocky, and it was very convincingly blown away.

The event is not really something we can pit against several independent flare incidents and then there is the point in the first paragraph.

Honestly, Kane?

All I can infer from your first paragraph's that you don't deny the possibility of low megaton-ranged photon torpedoes, but you think they never use such weapons in combat -- or some such

I guess we can be more or less generous when coming up with various scenarios as a thought experiment but at the end of the day they'll all be capped by the independently established upper limits. Again even assuming that flares somehow switch off the shields the fact that they consistently blow up ships instantaneously while primary weapons of major Star Trek civilizations can't do that put upper limits of their weapons as much less than the energy content of the flares.

Here again, review "Redemption, Pt. II."

We might ultimately be forced to call this an inconsistency, but if you want to try and reconcile the greater body of evidence, that shields are especially vulnerable to charged and otherwise "exotic" particles is a very good start. That explanation is not all inclusive IMO (it doesn't really explain why some of these flares would be such a threat to the ships' hulls), but it's probably as close as comprehensive as we'll ever get.

Since those weapons, in turn, can drop shields in a reasonable amount of time we are back at the fact that Star Trek shields aren't going to be able to stop much more than an energy of a flare. That's on the order of 4000TJ assuming 5km wide circular crossectional area and less than 100TJ for something the size of a Galaxy class.

... and per "Redemption," far less than 50 gigajoules for a 300 meter long Bird-of-Prey, a pair or trio of which we know can outclass a GCS.

Does that make any sense to you? Do you really think 100 terajoules spread across a Galaxy's frontal area would blow it away? It'd follow that a photon torpedo might, at best, yield a kiloton.

Do those things seem in any way, shape or form consistent with everything else we know?

So even granting that Star Trek shields are exceptionally ineffective against flares and assuming Shadow beams are lasers a 1000TW laser is still going to rip through them like a hot knife through butter.

Maybe. As I said, it ultimately depends on how big a bang photorps produce.

But, as I demonstrated, Shadow beams are not lasers but particle beams and if Federation shields are so ineffective about everything from flares to nebulae why should we assume they'll be at full effectiveness against Shadow beams?

They might not be. But I'm not going to argue from ignorance, and I don't think you're so inclined, either. We have to consider both possibilities.

A 400GW "particle energy" can drop the shields of a Galaxy class in two shots. Shadow beam is rated at, at least, 1500TW and is also some kind of particle beam. So, again, the only way Federation or the Borg have a chance is to assume that "Husnock" particle beam is several thousand times more effective than Shadow beam. A hugely generous assumption for no reason.

At least 1,500 TW now, is it?

I don't know where you get the idea that those Narn cruisers were sliced through in a twenty-fourth of a second
You really need to watch the scene in question again.

Regarding the 60GW variance or 0.06TW as Data put it the assumption is that phasers must be "much" more that 60GW but it's unclear how much more. A 300GW phaser beam could be large enough for 60GW variation to be small depending on how precisely they can maintain the power at constant level. Maybe the way they generate phaser beam makes its power/time chart look like a sinusoid kind of like AC current. Furthermore just because a 400GW beam could drop the shields instantaneously doesn't mean fight would be over in 1.5 seconds with a 300GW phasers. If the shield dissipation rate is 290GW and capacity 110GJ then a single hit from the "Husnock" ship will drop them while 300GW phasers will require 110GJ/(300GW-290GW) or 11 seconds of continuous fire to drop the shields.
Since phasers were never observed to fire for 11 seconds under combat conditions but two second shot at most that would extend the necessary time even more.

Where did you come up with these dissipation and capacity rates?

The fact is, the Husnock/Douwd attack took about a half-second, so we're dealing with about 200 GJ total. Since the particle stream itself was at LEAST 10 meters wide, the intensity was, at most, 2.5 GJ/m^2.

But you're talking about a 300 GW phaser now, which presumably directs 300 GJ/sec. or 150 GJ per half-second bursts. Perhaps more importantly, since a GCS phaser strip is perhaps 6 meters wide and fires a 2m wide beam, we're looking at an energy intensity of 95 GJ m^2 or a bare, bargain basement minimum of 42 GJ/m^2.

Now, you're suggesting something FORTY times more intense will take eleven seconds' dwell time to penetrate that shield (or minutes' worth of sporadic hits).

Odd. When I pointed out that a Shadow beam's intensity is perhaps ten to twenty times that of a NON-FATAL photon torpedo spread's, you suggested that disparity was enough to "cause devastating damage [presumably to a Borg cube] from the first half-second of the engagement."

Yes he estimated 4000TJ but I just used orders of magnitude. However an upper limit for Shadow ship based on 600MT nuke is 50,000TJ absorbed by the main body of the ship. Then there is the fact that it's not absolutely positively clear that the Shadow capital ship was actually destroyed by the explosion.

Alright, dude: Stop right there. I'm saying this because I like you.

First, please look at my signature. I've known the ins and outs of Babtech's estimates for many years. Brian and I even talked about them in his living room while watching "Into the Fire" on his giant TV screen.

Thus, yes, I'm quite aware the effect 12 megatons -- and just as likely, 10, if the bomb was 500, not 600, MT -- had on a Shadow warship.

That said, I'll come to my second point: there is NO doubt that warship was "actually destroyed." It was instantly pulverized. Look at the debris.

I have seen this point come up many times over the years. I argued it dozens of times with rabid B5 fans. Yield figures based in "Pegasus" are arguable to a degree since we didn't actually see them blow the rock up, but to deny that 10-12 megatons didn't instantly and utterly blow away that Spider/"Battlecrab" is lunacy. We DID see that.

While on the subject, you might want to look over this page, too.

Then there is the fact that 1500TW is the lowest limit needed to cut the Narn cruiser in half. Since the beam wasn't impeded in any way technically the firepower could be 15,000TW or 150,000TW. Again the only way Borg has a chance is if we are generous when estimating their firepower and conservative when estimating Shadow firepower and defenses.

That's severely overstating the facts.

Shadow beams can also cut Narn heavy cruisers in half in a couple of seconds. A Narn heavy cruiser is about 750 meters long. It is several decks thick as well. If we assume that the beam melts a 10 meter-wide strip through 5 decks, the entire length of the vessel; and that the vessel is made of iron and is filled with air ~95% of the volume; the beams must have melted around 5700 cubic meters of iron. This would require around 41 terajoules of energy (~10 kilotons - on the same order of magnitude as the Hiroshima bomb). The Shadows do this with relative ease and at very long range several times during the battle in The Long Twilight Struggle.

Hmm ... 40ish terawatts.

I will grant you, Brian was extremely conservative in those estimations; he's always done that, even going back to the Turbolaser Commentary days.

So, let's delve further still : Our Firepower Calculator page examines Shadow firepower in greater depth, but the figures range from 65 kT/sec. (which assumes the length of a Narn cruiser was melted) to almost 550 kT/sec. (which assumes the entire length through which the Shadow beam passed was vaporized).

I've watched clips of those Narn battleships being sliced up. The Shadow beam did pass through relatively unimpeded, but that's no reason to assume the beam outright melted or, indeed, vaporized the whole swath through which it cut. It probably did, and I tend to think the 500 kT/sec. range is pretty reasonable.

Just the same, it's bone-headed to start entertaining ideas of far-greater power, like 150,000 TW. You must know that's equivalent to 35 megatons/sec. If Shadow weapons are that powerful, why are their warships utterly destroyed by 10 megatons? Why don't they and roughly equal Vorlon ships not blow each other away with split-second shots?

Yeah it's from "Relics". Stellar radiation (just EM) is said to be increasing and will overwhelm the shields of the Enterprise in 3 hours.

Obviously the radiation of a star won't increase by an order of magnitude in 3 hours and SDN calculated it at 3TW. Simply multiplying the intensity of a yellow star with the crossectional area of a Galaxy. Accounting for the fact shields were stated to be at 23% the conclusion was that the ship could withstand something like 10TW of EM radiation at intensity of 30MW/m2 for 3 hours.

Thereabouts, sure.

That doesn't bode well for its ability to withstand a 1000TW laser at the intensity of 10TW/m2 let alone whatever Shadow beam is composed of.

Elaborate. Intuitively speaking, it would seem a big SLAP! against the shields would be much harder to cope with than hours of tickling. But do we have much proof to back this up? Based on Michael's findings, shields' long-term endurance and something close to their burst-capacity needn't be orders of magnitude apart.

Like I said: these are all assumptions based on what Riker thought and to what exactly destroying the asteroid meant and how big the asteroid from Cost of Living was.

I'm sorry, dude: I see no reason to believe the whole thing wouldn't have been shattered, even if Riker's estimate was slightly off and it would take all, not merely "most," of their torpedoes.

Look at it this way. The cloaking device inside the Pegasus herself was a quarter Pressman's size? Something so small in that asteroid's like a small child lost in about 10 square klicks of forest.

Goofy as it is, assume that kid is, oh, I don't know, something akin to the "devil." You're tasked with eliminating the hellspawn by any means necessary, so you decide to burn the forest to the ground.

Would you stop after you'd burned down half, three-quarters or even 90% of the forest? It might get the job done, but that's a risky gambit, nay?

Similarly, I know if I were in Riker's shoes and desperate to keep such technology from the Romulans, I wouldn't half-ass it and suggest blowing up only part of the rock; how would that guarantee the device's destruction? If even parts of the cloak/phase generator remained, the Romulans could come along later and salvage them.

I don't see how that can be used to counterweight clearly established upper limits on shield strength.

Is your only counterpoint to the "Pegasus" estimates the solar flare in "Descent"?

and how big the asteroid from Cost of Living was. I don't see how that can be used to counterweight clearly established upper limits on shield strength. As I pointed out above we could easily apply the same generous reasoning to Shadows an reach much higher numbers.

10-12 megatons is a FIRM upper-limit for a Shadow cruiser's endurance. Exposure to such energies resulted in a cruiser's complete and utter destruction.

If we are talking about the durability of Shadow ships I would agree that they haven't demonstrated a clear and massive advantage over Borg ships. However their firepower without any doubt will cause devastating damage from the first half second of the engagement. Borg ships simply haven't demonstrated the firepower necessary to eliminate a Shadow ship before they get carved up like a turkey.

Maybe. You know why I differ with that conclusion.

[Uraniun235]

10-12 megatons is a FIRM upper-limit for a Shadow cruiser's endurance. Exposure to such energies resulted in a cruiser's complete and utter destruction.

Does that in turn give an idea on the firepower for the Vorlon ship that destroyed the Shadow cruiser in Interludes and Examinations? It looked like the beam was active for about six seconds, although whether the Shadow vessel was effectively destroyed before it was shattered by the Vorlon ship ramming through it is another question entirely.

[Kane Starkiller]

Come again?

Are you suggesting that a Federation tactical officer isn't smart enough to dial his weapons up to "max" in a life-or-death combat situation? Your statement's a little ambiguous.

Their tactical decisions have nothing to do with this. It is simply a matter of how evidence is interpreted. We observe, for example, that USS Cole was heavily damaged by a suicide ship with conventional explosive on board. We also know that Russian P-700 Granit missile can carry a 500kt warhead. If an Arleigh Burke class gets hit by a Granit missile and survives then the obvious conclusion is that that particular missile didn't carry a nuclear warhead not that USS Cole incident is "contradicted".
The same logic applies to Star Trek: even if we observe a photon torpedo to cause much more damage than their established shield limit that only means that the photon torpedo that hits and doesn't blow up the ship is less energetic than the ones from "Cost of Living" assuming that those truly do point to larger yields.
Whether Federation (or Russian) officer was smart not to launch a larger yield photon torpedo (or nuclear tipped Granit) is completely irrelevant. The evidence speaks for itself.
There is no reason why Earth Alliance couldn't build a multimegaton missile with kinematics at least as good as what we've seen from photon torpedoes under combat conditions. Does that change the upper limits based on independent events?

I can't agree.

Still, if you please, let me put a finer point on that before you object.

I'd prepared an incredibly long reply I saved in a Wordpad. It contained over 3,100 words including when I quoted you, but I wasn't even finished.

About half-way through, I realized most of that text wasn't necessary. We could cut through most of the malarkey if you'll just take a closer look at some of the "multiple independent flare incidents" you reference.

For instance, watch "Redemption Pt. II." You can skip to 3 minutes in and take it from there.

As Mike writes in his canon database (emphasis mine):

Gas like this simply won't be dangerous when compared to the ambient radiation. The BOPs' projected surface area from below was less than 20,000 m², the prominence was moving at less than 5 km/s, and if I recall correctly, their shields collapsed in a single frame of video (1/15 second). Given these figures, each BOP could have absorbed no more than 50 GJ from the incident, even if we make the incredibly generous assumption that the gas transferred 100% of its energy to the ships (note that this would be impossible, and would leave a supercooled chunk of metallic hydrogen sitting under the ship).

Far less than 50 gigajoules. Less than 2.5 MJ per square meter.

Think about that for just a second. As you've said, these flares destroyed the cruisers in a manner few conventional Trek powers' weapons usually accomplish.

I need to know what you make of that before I tackle the other flares in-depth, but I'd like to say "Redemption" isn't an outlier.

Black Star that Sheridan blew up with 2Mt nuke wouldn't receive more than 50MJ/m2 yet people have no problem using that incident as an upper limit cap for younger races. Why should we always look the other way when Star Trek is involved? We are talking about superheated diffuse gas here. It's nothing special and Klingons ships got blown up. That's all there is to it.

What's so unclear about it? The impact would result in not simply local, nor merely regional, but world-wide damage.

Here's the relevant NASA page.

Why 1 km diameter? Because objects 1 km or larger represent the greatest hazard. Studies carried out at the time of the original NASA Spaceguard Survey Working Group in 1992 identified a threshold at energies near 1 million megatons where an impact had global, not just local or regional, effects. As first discussed in Chapman & Morrison ("Impacts on the Earth by asteroids and comets: Assessing the hazard" Nature 367:33-40, 1994), the individual risk from impacts (the numerical hazard) jumps by roughly an order of magnitude for energies at and just above this threshold. More recent work suggests that this threshold for civilization-threatening impacts is probably nearer 2 km rather than 1 km diameter, but the Spaceguard objective of detecting 1-km NEAs seems like a reasonable and rather conservative figure.

If you have a better interpretation of what "world-wide damage" might mean, I would like to hear it. Waving your hands and saying it's unclear isn't much of an argument.

It's unclear how extensive "planetwide damage" is and what is the speed of the asteroid. The distance in the clip seems something like half of planetary diameter and the impact is in less than a minute. Why should we pit our assumption on what Data considers "planetwide damage" against clearly observed events where no assumption is required?

Minor correction: Data said he didn't think one more photon torpedo would do the job.

Why they wouldn't try firing two, three or more photorps is uncertain; it's entirely possible that, with the asteroid nearing the planet each second, the Enterprise crew wanted to avoid HEMP from setting big explosions in the upper atmosphere.

Besides, I won't suggest technobabble elements needn't obey physics, but we've no idea how resilient "densely-packed nitrium and chrondite" are. Most important's that we do know the much greater, surrounding material appeared rocky, and it was very convincingly blown away.

Well certainly they could've fired more than one photon torpedo in 55 or 44 seconds. We don't know what is the exact resilience of the asteroid but at the end of the day it's some kind of natural asteroid. Since we are not sure about the size anyway what is the use?

Honestly, Kane?

All I can infer from your first paragraph's that you don't deny the possibility of low megaton-ranged photon torpedoes, but you think they never use such weapons in combat -- or some such

What does it matter what I think? As I already explained above the evidence speaks for itself. We can speculate about reasons, maybe they are stupid, maybe higher yield weapons are too big and slow and get shot down but at the end of the day we've seen what their shields can take and it's not hundreds of kilotons or megatons.

Here again, review "Redemption, Pt. II."

We might ultimately be forced to call this an inconsistency, but if you want to try and reconcile the greater body of evidence, that shields are especially vulnerable to charged and otherwise "exotic" particles is a very good start. That explanation is not all inclusive IMO (it doesn't really explain why some of these flares would be such a threat to the ships' hulls), but it's probably as close as comprehensive as we'll ever get.

Diffuse gasses is about as mundane as it gets in outer space. Thus it would only appear that Star Trek shields are specially designed to deal with phasers and disruptors which are "exotic" and thus highly unlikely to be able to deal with Shadow weapons.
I don't see how a clearly observed events can be discarded in favor of manufactured contradictions built upon assumptions of asteroid size and illogical position that the very existence of higher yield weapons somehow disproves upper limits on ship durability.

... and per "Redemption," far less than 50 gigajoules for a 300 meter long Bird-of-Prey, a pair or trio of which we know can outclass a GCS.

Does that make any sense to you? Do you really think 100 terajoules spread across a Galaxy's frontal area would blow it away? It'd follow that a photon torpedo might, at best, yield a kiloton.

Do those things seem in any way, shape or form consistent with everything else we know?

Again what does it matter what I think? We've seen it on several different occasions: the ships get blown up. 50 GJ is the broadside of 15 Iowa class battleships at point blank range, not exactly small in any real terms.

At least 1,500 TW now, is it?

I don't know where you get the idea that those Narn cruisers were sliced through in a twenty-fourth of a second
You really need to watch the scene in question again.

No I meant that the beam punched from stern to bow of the ship in 1/24 of a second otherwise the beam would flicker. It took it a second to actually cut the ship in two but as it was slicing every new "layer" was burned from stern to bow in 1/24 of a second. Hence the lower limit. If the beam was incapable of burning through the cruisers entire length in 1/24 of a second as the beam was moving down then the beam would be blocked by the cruiser and the beam would flicker or wouldn't come out at the other end at all.

Where did you come up with these dissipation and capacity rates?

The fact is, the Husnock/Douwd attack took about a half-second, so we're dealing with about 200 GJ total. Since the particle stream itself was at LEAST 10 meters wide, the intensity was, at most, 2.5 GJ/m^2.

But you're talking about a 300 GW phaser now, which presumably directs 300 GJ/sec. or 150 GJ per half-second bursts. Perhaps more importantly, since a GCS phaser strip is perhaps 6 meters wide and fires a 2m wide beam, we're looking at an energy intensity of 95 GJ m^2 or a bare, bargain basement minimum of 42 GJ/m^2.

Now, you're suggesting something FORTY times more intense will take eleven seconds' dwell time to penetrate that shield (or minutes' worth of sporadic hits).

Odd. When I pointed out that a Shadow beam's intensity is perhaps ten to twenty times that of a NON-FATAL photon torpedo spread's, you suggested that disparity was enough to "cause devastating damage [presumably to a Borg cube] from the first half-second of the engagement."

The capacity, dissipation figures and phaser power were just made up for illustration on how even slight reduction of power can have huge impact on combat performance so I didn't delve more deeply into the effect of power intensity. The point was that, all things being equal, a 25% reduction of power (from 400GW to 300GW) could easily have an order of magnitude impact on combat effectiveness. This was to counter your point that with 60GW phasers the fight would be over in seconds. In fact, using my made up 290GW dissipation rate 60GW phasers would never be able to drop the shields on a Galaxy class even while 400GW weapon can drop them instantaneously.
Regarding the impact of power intensity 300GW phasers would be 75% of power while having 40 times the intensity. Shadow beam would have 3750 times the power and 4000 times the intensity of a Husnock beam.
The power intensity of a photon torpedo is unknown since its yield is also not established.

Alright, dude: Stop right there. I'm saying this because I like you.

First, please look at my signature. I've known the ins and outs of Babtech's estimates for many years. Brian and I even talked about them in his living room while watching "Into the Fire" on his giant TV screen.

Thus, yes, I'm quite aware the effect 12 megatons -- and just as likely, 10, if the bomb was 500, not 600, MT -- had on a Shadow warship.

That said, I'll come to my second point: there is NO doubt that warship was "actually destroyed." It was instantly pulverized. Look at the debris.

I have seen this point come up many times over the years. I argued it dozens of times with rabid B5 fans. Yield figures based in "Pegasus" are arguable to a degree since we didn't actually see them blow the rock up, but to deny that 10-12 megatons didn't instantly and utterly blow away that Spider/"Battlecrab" is lunacy. We DID see that.

While on the subject, you might want to look over this page, too.

As I said it is not "absolutely positively" proven, I actually accept the destruction as a reasonable explanation. This was an example of how excuses can work both ways. The only thing that page actually proves is that the debris had to come from roughly the same place (on 2d plane) as the Shadow capital ship. Small fighters could be positioned somewhere between its "legs" for example and at that distance and resolution they would be to small for us to see. When the nuke went off they would get blown up, thrown towards the camera and mangled in such a way that they resemble the large ship. I've seen no evidence that the debris comes from the large ship other than "well it kind of looks like it". Certainly no one was able to recognize any specific features that would make it impossible for the debris to come from anything else than a Shadow capital ship.

Hmm ... 40ish terawatts.

I will grant you, Brian was extremely conservative in those estimations; he's always done that, even going back to the Turbolaser Commentary days.

So, let's delve further still : Our Firepower Calculator page examines Shadow firepower in greater depth, but the figures range from 65 kT/sec. (which assumes the length of a Narn cruiser was melted) to almost 550 kT/sec. (which assumes the entire length through which the Shadow beam passed was vaporized).

I've watched clips of those Narn battleships being sliced up. The Shadow beam did pass through relatively unimpeded, but that's no reason to assume the beam outright melted or, indeed, vaporized the whole swath through which it cut. It probably did, and I tend to think the 500 kT/sec. range is pretty reasonable.

Just the same, it's bone-headed to start entertaining ideas of far-greater power, like 150,000 TW. You must know that's equivalent to 35 megatons/sec. If Shadow weapons are that powerful, why are their warships utterly destroyed by 10 megatons? Why don't they and roughly equal Vorlon ships not blow each other away with split-second shots?

Melting is not merely conservative it is wrong. The beam is not a lightsaber and can't cut the entire length of the Narn cruiser simultaneously, it needs to burn its way through the entire length of the cruiser as the beam is moving downwards. If you look at the upper cruiser in the cutting scene the beam hits the stern of the ship and is already punching through the bow in the very same frame. I already covered this above. Even the vaporization figure is actually to low. This is only the theoretical number that assumes that energy will be distributed uniformly and simultaneously to the entire crossection of the ship that is to be vaporized. In realty the energy of the beam will be "piled up" at the impact point, part of it will be reflected, the vaporized material will continue to absorb the beam before it manages to drift away from the impact point etc. Thus the actual energy and power requirement for the beam to immediately appear on the bow of the ship is significantly above the mere theoretical lower limit. Hence even 550kT/s is a lower limit.
Why would a 35MT/s weapon (NOT that I'm saying it really is that high, again this was a point on where more generous assumptions like the ones applied to Trek can lead) contradict the upper limit of 10MT? I have no problem believing that one Shadow ship could instantly slice another in half. A Vorlon battleship is roughly 1.4km long while the length of a Shadow ship was never really nailed down. Assuming its roughly 1km wide, due to its shape, Vorlon battleship could be up to 10 times larger in volume so could potentially have 100MT resistance allowing it not to be immediately gutted by the Shadow beam.

Elaborate. Intuitively speaking, it would seem a big SLAP! against the shields would be much harder to cope with than hours of tickling. But do we have much proof to back this up? Based on Michael's findings, shields' long-term endurance and something close to their burst-capacity needn't be orders of magnitude apart.

First we know that the dissipation rate against EM is less than 10TW since shields would ultimately be worn off. Secondly we know that the energy capacity can't be many thousands of TJ (megatons) since then when the shields failed there would be a massive release of energy.Thirdly a beam with more intensity would concentrate power on less surface area by definition which would decrease the dissipation rate so the shields would be overwhelmed even faster. We are talking about seconds at best.

I'm sorry, dude: I see no reason to believe the whole thing wouldn't have been shattered, even if Riker's estimate was slightly off and it would take all, not merely "most," of their torpedoes.

Look at it this way. The cloaking device inside the Pegasus herself was a quarter Pressman's size? Something so small in that asteroid's like a small child lost in about 10 square klicks of forest.

Goofy as it is, assume that kid is, oh, I don't know, something akin to the "devil." You're tasked with eliminating the hellspawn by any means necessary, so you decide to burn the forest to the ground.

Would you stop after you'd burned down half, three-quarters or even 90% of the forest? It might get the job done, but that's a risky gambit, nay?

Similarly, I know if I were in Riker's shoes and desperate to keep such technology from the Romulans, I wouldn't half-ass it and suggest blowing up only part of the rock; how would that guarantee the device's destruction? If even parts of the cloak/phase generator remained, the Romulans could come along later and salvage them.

Of course I personally would want to vaporize the asteroid down to the last molecule if I could but none of that changes that we simply don't know what Riker meant when he said destroyed. You are pitting your own assumption on what he meant against several observed events. If your assumptions lead to the contradiction with observed events then the validity or lack of validity of those assumption is clear.

Is your only counterpoint to the "Pegasus" estimates the solar flare in "Descent"?

Pegasus doesn't qualify as a counterpoint since, based on what assumptions are used, the incident doesn't need to contradict "Descent". That you insist on assumptions that do lead to contradiction doesn't make it a counterpoint.

10-12 megatons is a FIRM upper-limit for a Shadow cruiser's endurance. Exposure to such energies resulted in a cruiser's complete and utter destruction.

As I said I accept that number as reasonably well founded. And 4000TJ is a firm upper limit on the endurance of large Borg ships and everything smaller. I don't see why we should accept a single event from B5 but then turn around and come up with a litany of excuses for Star Trek incidents of which there are 4("Relics","Redemption","Shadows and Symbols","Descent").

[Bilbo]

The problem younger races have is not firepower (their beams are rated at kt/s enough to threaten Borg Cube in numbers) but their low durability. They have no shields so Borg would be dropping Omegas and Sharlins like flies.

Of course Borg attempts to convert a chaotic galaxy into a group of mindless drones would immediately draw out Shadows and I doubt Vorlons had drones in mind when they talked about order.

You do realize that since Younger Race ships do not have shields they have that wonderful thing known as armor? Armor is generally the achilles heel of at ST based weapons.

[Kamakazie Sith]

The problem younger races have is not firepower (their beams are rated at kt/s enough to threaten Borg Cube in numbers) but their low durability. They have no shields so Borg would be dropping Omegas and Sharlins like flies.

Of course Borg attempts to convert a chaotic galaxy into a group of mindless drones would immediately draw out Shadows and I doubt Vorlons had drones in mind when they talked about order.

You do realize that since Younger Race ships do not have shields they have that wonderful thing known as armor? Armor is generally the achilles heel of at ST based weapons.

So, are you going to actually add something to this rather than telling everyone here something we already know? Are you claiming that all armor is created equal and therefore will be able show comparable performance to the nullifying metals found in ST?

[Bilbo]

I don't really have a problem with anything you said except the use of telepaths against the Borg. Is there a B5 episode that involves the use of telepaths against non-shadow ships, and if so why don't you see telepaths used more often in starship combat?

The Shadows are the only race in B5 that uses direct meld of minds and technology to power their ships. Everyone else uses good old crews hitting buttons and flipping switches.

The question is whether a telepath can affect the neural/tech network of the Borg. My guess is no. Telepaths came about after the Vorlons discovered how vulnerable the Shadows were to telepathy after G'Quan and the other Narn telepaths drove them off. B5 telepaths are basically tailor-made shadow killers.

[Bilbo]

The problem younger races have is not firepower (their beams are rated at kt/s enough to threaten Borg Cube in numbers) but their low durability. They have no shields so Borg would be dropping Omegas and Sharlins like flies.

Of course Borg attempts to convert a chaotic galaxy into a group of mindless drones would immediately draw out Shadows and I doubt Vorlons had drones in mind when they talked about order.

You do realize that since Younger Race ships do not have shields they have that wonderful thing known as armor? Armor is generally the achilles heel of at ST based weapons.

So, are you going to actually add something to this rather than telling everyone here something we already know? Are you claiming that all armor is created equal and therefore will be able show comparable performance to the nullifying metals found in ST?

The suggestion made here by Starkiller that B5 ships will be as weak and as vulnerable as ST ships whose shields are down. The cutting laser used by the Borg to carve out samples of the Enterprise carved through little to no armor. Its rather silly to assume said weapons will do the same to the heavily armored warships fielded by the Younger Races.

[Kamakazie Sith]

The suggestion made here by Starkiller that B5 ships will be as weak and as vulnerable as ST ships whose shields are down. The cutting laser used by the Borg to carve out samples of the Enterprise carved through little to no armor. Its rather silly to assume said weapons will do the same to the heavily armored warships fielded by the Younger Races.

It's also equally silly to assume that cutting laser was anything more than a precise exploratory beam. If you watch the opening sequence of DS9 and the battle of Wolf 359 you'll see a much higher performance from that beam.

Furthermore, do we have any information regarding the materials strength of ST and B5 vessels?

[Marcus Aurelius]

I don't really have a problem with anything you said except the use of telepaths against the Borg. Is there a B5 episode that involves the use of telepaths against non-shadow ships, and if so why don't you see telepaths used more often in starship combat?

The Shadows are the only race in B5 that uses direct meld of minds and technology to power their ships. Everyone else uses good old crews hitting buttons and flipping switches.

Actually we don't know how the Vorlons pilot their ships. The Vorlons are known to be highly telepathic and at least somewhat telekinetic as well, so its entirely possible and in fact likely that they pilot their ships with a telepathic connection. It would be different from the Shadow technology, however, which requires a physical connection between the Shadow vessel and the pilot. Or at least it requires that from pilots (or "CPUs") of younger races. We don't know how the Shadows themselves pilot their ships, either.

[seanrobertson]

Kane,

Apologies for taking so long to respond.

As before, I'd typed up a painfully long reply in a Notepad, but it's entirely too unwieldy to post here. Rather than try to make that document more coherent (assming that's even possible ), I figured I'd start anew.

Let's focus on solar flares first. We'll tackle your favorite example, "Descent," before the rest.

Michael, ever generous, based his 4,000 TJ estimate on the largest CMEs recorded. You know, ones that were 1E25J, moved through space at up to thousands of km/sec. and were ~250,000 km wide.

The flare in "Descent" was barely a couple of miles wide and had a velocity of only a few km/sec., just like the one in "Redemption Pt. II."

I see no reason to assume the former was far more energetic than the flare that destroyed the Klingons.

I scaled the Type 3 Borg ship some years ago. Compared to the Enterprise, it was no less than 2.5 kilometers wide, 1.8 km long and a just over a kilometer tall. I do not recall if I was able to come up with an upper-limit for its size but, somewhat loosely speaking, I doubt it was much more than 3 km wide, 1.4 km tall and 2.2 kilometers in length.

I also do not recall if the ship had "bubble" shields like the Enterprise or hull-conforming ones, like cubes and spheres. However, from one vidcap I saw at Trekcore, a photorp seemed to impact directly above the Borg ship's hull. Thus, it would appear that, like other Borg ships, this one has hull-hugging shields. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I welcome it.

Since the ship's port quarter was facing the flare on impact, a 2.2 by 1.4 km rectangle -- just over 3 million square meters -- is more than enough to account for the ship's profile area.

Consequently, this means the Borg ship was almost instantly destroyed by 7.5 terajoules.

Not 75, 750 or 7,500 -- a mere 7.5E12J.

And like the 50 GJ figure from "Redemption Pt. II," it's important to note that the "real" amount of energy that destroyed the Borg ship is a fraction of that. How large a fraction, I'm uncertain; all we can do is work with the upper-limit we have.

The 7 TJ figure is a real puzzle for a couple of reasons.

1 -- I can't be certain of the Borg ship's altitude, but given the curvature of the star in the background, it would certainly appear to be no more than a million km from the star's surface.




At that range, the Borg ship's profile area would absorb 16 TW ... yet, for some reason, exposure to less than half of that is fatal?

That is not logical

2 -- In the same episode, Cpt. Crusher's second-in-command implied that a similar flare would destroy the Enterprise.

We know the E-D's frontal shield area is as much as 100,000 m^2, meaning the flare would impart 250 gigajoules.

Whoops.

At the risk of understating things, these things are a wee bit odd, nay? The Enterprise didn't have any trouble coping with a couple of terawatts for hours on end in "Relics." And if we're to believe the dialogue in "I, Borg," the Enterprise didn't have any real problems entering a star's chromosphere, where the power intensity wouldn't be all that dissimilar to the photosphere's. Thus, ~6 TW also posed no immediate danger.

It's entirely possible Crusher's first officer was simply wrong, but if he weren't, how would the Enterprise be destroyed by 24 times less energy -- with metaphasic shields online, no less -- than it could withstand without metaphasic shields?

Next, "Redemption."

As I already pointed out, the Klingon ships were destroyed by a fraction of 50 GJ. No big deal, right? As you said, Kane, that's the equivalent of many Iowa-class battleships' broadsides.

Unfortunately, it is a big deal: the ships pursuing Kurn would've absorbed FAR more energy approaching the star than the flare could ever have imparted to them. We know the Klingon ships came rather close to the star's photosphere without blowing up. Conservatively, let's assume they were at an altitude of 50,000 km before Kurn pulled his little trick. (Someone could nitpick this until, as we say in my area, "the cows come home"; nonetheless, be it 100,000 km or half a fuckin' million, my point still stands.)

That would mean the cruisers could handle terawatt-level exposure -- that is, twenty times more energy -- yet, inexplicably, are instantly destroyed by <50 GJ.

Moreover, as we discussed in our previous exchanges, we know a Galaxy-class starship's phasers can direct more than 60 GW to a target. We've seen a GCS fight BoPs which were outwardly identical to the "Redemption" cruisers. One or two strong phaser blasts didn't destroy such ships, yet ... somehow, some way, 50 GJ can?

"Shadows and Symbols" is no different. Jem'Hadar fighters are about 100m wide and 23m tall. The flare itself was much larger than those previously discussed; O'Brien said it would "incinerate everything within 100 million kilometers."

Even if the flare had a much greater energy per cubic meter than previous incidents, does it seem likely Jem'Hadar attack ships would be far more resilient than 300m long Birds-of-Prey, a Galaxy-class starship or that Borg juggernaut? Of course not. Thus, those little ships in their 2300 m^2 profile from the rear were also blown away by energies inconsequential in comparison to what they absorbed by simply approaching and hanging around that star.



On a somewhat different track, I'd invite you to consider what some of these numbers mean in relation to the greater Trek canon.

For one, if we're to take your interpretation of "Redemption Pt. II" at face-value, we learn ...

*The NX-01 had at least two phase cannons rated at 500 GJ apiece. I don't recall most phase cannon beams lasting more than a second or two, so we might guess their combined output would be .5 to 1 TW. The ship also had torpedoes that could "put a three kilometer crater in an asteroid."

Thus, Starfleet's very first ship greatly outclasses one nearly 30 times more massive and over 200 years more advanced.

Why?

*After all, as you've said many times now, if conventional Trek weapons fail to destroy ships which we know can be destroyed by solar flares, we must conclude those weapons are much less energetic than the flares.

I think that's a false dilemma; a relatively more intense weapon might simply blow through parts of an unshielded target. Still, I'll run with what you're saying.

Ergo, according to your reasoning, 50 gigajoules is far more energetic than a full spread of photon torpedoes, which only does moderate shield damage to similar cruisers.

Regardless, for generosity's sake, we'll assume <50GJ is equal to ten photon torpedoes. Each torpedo, then, has an effective yield equivalent to barely over a ton of TNT. The entire torpedo complement would be equal to roughly 299 tons of TNT.

*Data's 60 GW phaser variance must've been a severe overestimate for the reasons I just cited. Thus, when it comes to math, Data is, at least on occasion, a fucking idiot -- and, by extension, so is LaForge, who never verbally countered Data's gaffes in "A Matter of Time."

*Since it'd take some 30-125 megatons to shatter the asteroid in "Pegasus," this means Riker overestimated his weapons' effectiveness by some 100,000 to over 400,000 times.

I guess that dickhead Admiral Pressman's an even bigger idiot than I originally thought, too, since he raised hell about destroying an asteroid with weapons half a million times too weak to do the job.

*But let's take this further. You weren't sure about the asteroid's size in "Cost of Living"?

Well, if these torpedo figures place a firm upper-limit on the size of the asteroid seen therein, we can conclude that, if that asteroid was largely composed of granite, it could've been up to, but no more than, about 39m wide. Since the "core" left over was roughly a fourth or fifth the original body's size, it must've been no more than 10m wide.

I guess the deflector discharge became more focused mid-stream after all, eh? And yet again, we learn moron Data -- and the equally unreliable sensors, for that matter -- are prone to exaggerating a thing's diameter by 200 times and, perhaps worse, mistakes a 1200 ton body for a 1.2E9 ton one.

No big deal. I'm sure any space-faring civilization can afford to routinely miscalculate simple things like mass by a factor of a million.

How do we even begin to explain such incompetence? This stretches suspension-of-disbelief tighter than if I tried to pull my ex-girlfriend's panties up about my chest. I could easily accept Riker, Data, LaForge et al. occasionally miscalculating things by perhaps an order of magnitude, but not this shit.



There is a way to try and make some sense of all this -- that is, if you accept Michael's very sound idea that certain things have a disproportionately great effect, or altogether bypass, shields. (I noticed you didn't respond to some of the examples I quoted to that end, like the undoubtedly VERY low-powered nucleonic beam that penetrated the Enterprise's shields in "The Inner Light.") His hypothesis accounts for all of the discrepancies I noted above.

Further, thanks to "Symbiosis," we also know that very powerful magnetic fields can "disrupt electrical systems," so the most logical way to reconcile the data we have is this: Trek shields don't cope with plasma well and, in close proximity to something with a magnetic field as powerful as a star's, energies which usually pose no threat, even to an exposed hull, can be lethal for much the same reason that, IMO at least, Black Star was destroyed -- that is, due to the ship's own power systems running amuck.

That would handily explain why a 60-plus gigawatt phaser has a negligible effect on a K'Vort-like cruiser, yet a much lower-energy event like the flare that could destroy the same ship easily.

And so on and so on.

Contrarily, you could disagree with Michael's hypothesis, in which case we're left with a procession of self-contradicting episodes and a real mess in general.


Moving on to some of the other things ...

Black Star that Sheridan blew up with 2Mt nuke wouldn't receive more than 50MJ/m2 yet people have no problem using that incident as an upper limit cap for younger races.

I'll thank you to not group me with "people." I'm not other people, and I do have problems that that reasoning. By all other data we have, the Black Star should NOT have been destroyed by those proximity explosions. But I get ahead of myself ...

Why should we always look the other way when Star Trek is involved? We are talking about superheated diffuse gas here.
It's nothing special and Klingons ships got blown up. That's all there is to it.

Well, to start, for all practical purposes, I do look the other way where Black Star's destruction is concerned.

Second, it's not a good analogy in this case. There was an obvious delay between the nukes going off and the Black Star's destruction. Not so with those Klingon ships. The latter seems, per your interpretation, a clear case of energy overwhelming the Klingons' shields and hulls; the former ... *scratches chin* That's totally different.

If I remember "Legend of the Rangers" correctly (God knows I've tried to forget it), when Young Race B5 ships fully charge their weapons, that poses an inherent danger to the ship itself. Drala'Fi's guns were fully charged and, unfortunately for the Minbari and their exposed gun ports, it seems the two bombs' radiation did something to compromise the ship's weapons and power systems.

In a sense, then, she was hoisted by her own petard, as our resident master Sith Lord sometimes says.

It's unclear how extensive "planetwide damage" is and what is the speed of the asteroid.

We see blue bodies of water on the surface, and we know the planet's inhabited. It's highly likely it is Earth-like, with similar size and gravity.

As those folks from NASA noted, NEO risks are assessed according to size. There are several categories of risk: asteroids only large enough to cause local damage -- that is, an impact with an area effect some 600 km in radius*; asteroids big enough to cause regional damage, or an area effect up to 5,000 km in radius*; and, finally, asteroids which are large enough to cause global damage, which requires on the order of one million megatons and a 1-2 km wide asteroid.

*I think that's correct. If anyone knows otherwise, please say so.

Doing global-scale damage in this manner is quite cut and dry, Kane. A 50m wide asteroid could never approach such effects. A 100m wide asteroid could never have such effects. Conservatively speaking, it takes a kilometer-wide asteroid to affect an entire Earth-like planet.

Simply put, then, it doesn't matter what anyone meant by "damage." To have a global effect, the "core" of that asteroid must be no less than a kilometer wide -- two kilometers, according to revised NASA estimates.

The only other explanation is that the thing was impossibly dense and massive to cause such devastation. Interestingly, that'd explain why photorps were unlikely to have any further effect.

Well certainly they could've fired more than one photon torpedo in 55 or 44 seconds. We don't know what is the exact resilience of the asteroid but at the end of the day it's some kind of natural asteroid.

Since we are not sure about the size anyway what is the use?

No, you're not sure about the size because you refuse to acknowledge what global damage must mean To affect an entire globe requires that the impact energy must be on the order of a million megatons. That, in turn, places a lower-limit on the core's size and, ergo, the intact asteroid's size.

My current rig doesn't have all of the best programs for it, but I'll try to scale that asteroid shortly, FWIW.

As I already explained above the evidence speaks for itself. We can speculate about reasons, maybe they are stupid, maybe higher yield weapons are too big and slow and get shot down but at the end of the day we've seen what their shields can take and it's not hundreds of kilotons or megatons.

Yes: it's south of 4000 TJ a'la "Descent Pt. II," right?

Diffuse gasses is about as mundane as it gets in outer space. Thus it would only appear that Star Trek shields are specially designed to deal with phasers and disruptors which are "exotic" and thus highly unlikely to be able to deal with Shadow weapons.

And X-ray lasers, nuclear weapons, rockets of various sorts and many other things. Assuming shields were up to handling a Shadow weapon's energies, we don't know if special shield modifications would be required to stop said weapon. Since Shadow beams don't involve any kind of bizarre NDF effect, as we might note with phasers and disruptors, one would imagine that the Borg's shields would address them for what they seem to be: a kind of particle beam which behaves like a very powerful laser.

*snip*

As I said it is not "absolutely positively" proven, I actually accept the destruction as a reasonable explanation.
This was an example of how excuses can work both ways. The only thing that page actually proves is that the debris had to come from roughly the same place (on 2d plane) as the Shadow capital ship. Small fighters could be positioned somewhere between its "legs" for example and at that distance and resolution they would be to small for us to see.

That'd be appealing to ignorance. While it's possible, we saw no such fighters in the vicinity. We saw a capship.

While I grasp what you're getting at about being more or less generous with Trek and/or B5, this isn't the best example to demonstrate your case:

When the nuke went off they would get blown up, thrown towards the camera and mangled in such a way that they resemble the large ship. I've seen no evidence that the debris comes from the large ship other than "well it kind of looks like it".

Nonsense. There are four pictures on that page. If you'd kindly direct your attention to the second image, you'll see the debris more than "kind of looks like" parts from a warship; it's an obvious match.

Next, look at third image. See the legs/spines? Shadow fighters do not have such features. When a scout's viewed from its top or bottom, the set of spines on either side of the ship look somewhat like what we see in the image.

But look at the scout from its sides. Its outermost spines are much too thin and curvy. We're clearly looking at legs blown off of a cruiser.

Certainly no one was able to recognize any specific features that would make it impossible for the debris to come from anything else than a Shadow capital ship.

Someone was. That debris can't from be a fighter. It can't be from a scout. It's unmistakably a cruiser's body and some of its legs.

Melting is not merely conservative it is wrong. The beam is not a lightsaber and can't cut the entire length of the Narn cruiser simultaneously, it needs to burn its way through the entire length of the cruiser as the beam is moving downwards. If you look at the upper cruiser in the cutting scene the beam hits the stern of the ship and is already punching through the bow in the very same frame. I already covered this above.

Right, right, and we didn't see the beam "flicker," either.

You do know that, even if there were flickers, our eyes could very well be too "slow" to catch them, right? We view 24 frames/sec. as seamless and continuous when we're watching a movie.

On the other hand, I'll be honest: I think vaporization is the best interpretation of what we see and, thus, sets a reasonable lower-limit.

The main reason I've iterated some doubts were, admittedly, out of habit and unfair to you: though I'm long out of practice, back when I used to argue such things with rabid Fivers -- the sort of guys who thought Shadow warships could effortlessly direct gigatons or more energy to a target per second -- I had to take great pains to preempt them from running wild with the numbers.

And incidentally, I've been talking about the closest Narn ship in that sequence. It's much easier to see what's going on there. The one in the background did appear to be pierced from stern to bow in a split-second but, beyond that, it's very hard to determine what happened to that ship: from the clip I'm watching, the whole ship seemed to explode shortly after the Shadow beam went through it. I can't tell if the beam cleaved the ship in two.

Thus the actual energy and power requirement for the beam to immediately appear on the bow of the ship is significantly above the mere theoretical lower limit. Hence even 550kT/s is a lower limit.
Why would a 35MT/s weapon (NOT that I'm saying it really is that high, again this was a point on where more generous assumptions like the ones applied to Trek can lead) contradict the upper limit of 10MT? I have no problem believing that one Shadow ship could instantly slice another in half. A Vorlon battleship is roughly 1.4km long while the length of a Shadow ship was never really nailed down.

Assuming its roughly 1km wide, due to its shape, Vorlon battleship could be up to 10 times larger in volume so could potentially have 100MT resistance allowing it not to be immediately gutted by the Shadow beam.

Huh?

A Vorlon battleship is nowhere near that long. I don't care what some tech book or whatever says; Cole said the planet-killers were each 3 or 4 miles across, and we see plenty of battleships grouped closely to a planet-killer at various times. They're always utterly dwarfed.

Perhaps there are somewhat larger battleships, just as there were apparently different-sized "Spiders." Organic ships might grow (and/or shrink, as we observe with our own elders) over time. But undeniable visual evidence is at the tip-top of Babtech's Vorlon Warships page.

Besides, while I realize your firepower/resilience figures are purely hypothetical, we have seen a Shadow cruiser blow a hole through part a Vorlon battleship before. (See how we can see the Shadow's purple beam at the bottom of the screen?)

It would take several such hits to do catastrophic damage. Likewise, we saw cruisers on both sides exchange fire at Coriana VI and, again, I don't recall either side's heavy guns blowing the other away like that *snaps fingers* The only ships with such firepower belonged to some of the "lost" First Ones, like the Walkers at Sigma-957.

So, yes, since I'm quite sure we're dealing with highly comparable vessels here, my point stands: their weaponry yields a lot less than 10 megatons/sec.

First we know that the dissipation rate against EM is less than 10TW since shields would ultimately be worn off.

Sure, after many hours.

Frankly, Kane, so what?

Say I've got a 10m thick iron plate and a laser set-up in my backyard. My laser's a bit shitty; it's only capable of a few settings, but I got a good deal on it, so ... .

My friend brings over a 10m thick iron plate (I guess he has a giant dumptruck. How he drove such a thing into my backyard presents altogether different problems, but we won't get into that).

My laser has a circular cross-section 1 meter in diameter. Thus, to vaporize a 1 meter wide hole through a 10 meter thick plate would require the following:

On my laser's lowest setting, 1 GW, it would take 466 seconds to do the job.

On its medium setting, 10 GW, ~47 seconds.

On its high setting, 50 GW, it'd take just over 9 seconds.

On the medium-high setting, 100 GW, 4.6 seconds.

And on the very highest setting, 400 GW, just over 1 second.

On second thought, I guess my laser's anything but shitty. *shrugs*

Now, I'm going to quote you slightly out of order. When I said, "Based on Michael's findings, shields' long-term endurance and something close to their burst-capacity needn't be orders of magnitude apart" your third point seems to most speak to that:

Thirdly a beam with more intensity would concentrate power on less surface area by definition which would decrease the dissipation rate so the shields would be overwhelmed even faster. We are talking about seconds at best.

Shields aren't iron plates, obviously, but the principle isn't wildly different: If we know that a few terawatts are indeed enough to very, very slowly drain shields (by one "percent" -- whatever that really means -- every 469.5 seconds), just why are you assuming they can't cope with something significantly more powerful if only for brief periods of time?

I mean, come on: a couple of terawatts drain shields by ~two thousandths per second. Thousandths, Kane.

It seems patently absurd to suggest something ten times more powerful would even pose a short-term threat. When you get into the hundreds and thousands range, I can clearly see how things would change.

But, yet again, I digress ... .

You've condemned me for assuming Riker doesn't know the likely effects of his ship's weapons, to say nothing of "Cost of Living."

What of your assumptions, then? While I honestly do think your interpretation of shield function is intelligent, it's not the only one. There's never been any conclusive evidence in any Trek iteration about what, exactly, it means when someone says, "Our shields are down to 50 percent." Does that mean full-strength shields, capable of fielding Y energy/power, can only handle Y/2 at 50%? Does that mean the shields are 50% less efficient than at maximum capacity?

Why should I take your own assumptions about real unknowns, like how shields work, prima facie?

Secondly we know that the energy capacity can't be many thousands of TJ (megatons) since then when the shields failed there would be a massive release of energy.

Again, you seem to be making a hefty assumption about just how these shields work. Assuming you're correct, how do you think these megatons of energy would be released? That is, in what manner? Omnidirectionally, from every point on the shield's surface?

We might also be speaking somewhat at cross-purposes with our terminology here. It's easy for me to do in these long posts, especially when it takes awhile to formulate a response.