How long could Mass Effect last against the Federation?

[Omeganian]

Of course, this still doesn't necessarily tell us anything about "durability" relative to Trek ships unless we know more about that gas giant incident you mentioned earlier. "They were worried about flying into a gas giant" is a very uninformative statement.

It's the episode "Interface". The analysis is a bit difficult though. The gas giant is stated to be "unusual". A science vessel managed to survive there for awhile, and the survival of the crew was believed possible even in case of a shield failure. Yet, for some reason, Picard didn't even suggest the possibility of the Enterprise going there - only a probe sent, so, apparently, non-specialized vessels had problems in such environment.

Also, it only really lets us quantify the endurance of ME ships for being dumped in a hot environment. Surviving a steady hot and windy environment, while being impressive enough, isn't the same thing as surviving being right next to a nuclear-level M/AM annihilation reaction.

Difficult to say exactly. Such weapons are heavily regulated. But the photorps will first have to get through the point defenses.

[Junghalli]

It's the episode "Interface". The analysis is a bit difficult though. The gas giant is stated to be "unusual". A science vessel managed to survive there for awhile, and the survival of the crew was believed possible even in case of a shield failure. Yet, for some reason, Picard didn't even suggest the possibility of the Enterprise going there - only a probe sent, so, apparently, non-specialized vessels had problems in such environment.

Maybe the Big E just isn't built to enter planetary atmospheres.

[keen320]

Difficult to say exactly. Such weapons are heavily regulated. But the photorps will first have to get through the point defenses.

I'm pretty sure no one has ever shot down photon torpedoes.

Torpedoes used by the Federation in 2365 could burrow through the surface of a planet intact. By 2367 the shields of a torpedo could protect it for several seconds, during which the torpedo entered a sun and burrowed into its stellar core. The torpedo flight engine was a sustainer engine that used reactants carried on board for power. Klingon and Federation photon torpedoes had a frequency, related to that of its target's deflector shield frequency modulation, measured in megahertz. When both were matched torpedoes could penetrate the shields of the target starship. (TNG: "Pen Pals", "Half a Life"; Star Trek Generations; VOY: "Equinox, Part II")

If this is true, then I doubt anyone could shoot down a photon torpedo with lasers of any kind, even if you could hit it. Of course, there is no way to know whether the torpedo could penetrate kinetic-barriers of ME ships as it's said to do with trek-verse ships.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Photon_torpedoes

Maybe the Big E just isn't built to enter planetary atmospheres.

I'm pretty sure most of the Enterprises can't enter farther than the upper atmosphere, if that.

[Star Wars 888]

Are there any figures for the durability levels of Star Trek ships?

A Federation fleet would be hard pressed to take Mass Effect planet, and lack the resources to simply raze the planets; they would have to take planets to sustain a war effort.

[Phantasee]

Can't you give units for "durability"? As for entering atmosphere, none of the Enterprises could IIRC but Voyager was designed with that capability in mind.

[Vympel]

I'm pretty sure no one has ever shot down photon torpedoes.

Photon torpedoes are shielded too, IIRC, so that's going to be problematic. In fact I think their burrowing ability is a function of the shields.

[Batman]

Can't you give units for "durability"? As for entering atmosphere, none of the Enterprises could IIRC but Voyager was designed with that capability in mind.

The TOS Big E did in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' and deep enough for an F-104 to get in firing range. It's pretty obviously not designed for it but the classic Constitution can apparently handle atmosphere reasonably well, at least as long as nobody's shooting at it.
Also, the E-D entered atmosphere in 'Arsenal of Freedom' (okay, the stardrive section did) with no apparent problems other than those caused by the (if I remember correctly, deliberately) excessively high reentry speed.
The Intrepid class was different because it was designed to be able to actually land, which none of the Big Es could.

[Oskuro]

Ok, a bit out of canon, maybe, but Roddenberry's original idea was for the TOS Enterprise to land just as Voyager was capable of doing (in fact I think the Voy landing was a kind of homage to that). They switched to teleporters for budgetary reasons, not sure if the in-universe canon supports, contradicts, or ignores this.

And, of course, there's the nuTrek Enterprise being built at ground level.

[Omeganian]

Difficult to say exactly. Such weapons are heavily regulated. But the photorps will first have to get through the point defenses.

I'm pretty sure no one has ever shot down photon torpedoes.

Didn't the 2009 movie start that way?

[Serafina]

Difficult to say exactly. Such weapons are heavily regulated. But the photorps will first have to get through the point defenses.

I'm pretty sure no one has ever shot down photon torpedoes.

Didn't the 2009 movie start that way?

Since this is explicitly an alternate timeline, that movie has no bearing when discussing older Star Trek.

[Omeganian]

I'm pretty sure no one has ever shot down photon torpedoes.

Didn't the 2009 movie start that way?

Since this is explicitly an alternate timeline, that movie has no bearing when discussing older Star Trek.

I mean the divergence point, well before there could be any effect on the technological development.

[FrankManic]

I think the Federation would win easily on one basic count.

Travel - The Federation is not bound by Mass Relays. They could stage from a part of space where no Mass Relay existed and the Council Races wouldn't be able to find them until the radiation from their engines showed up years later. I don't recall whether council races can even travel to a location without a corresponding Relay.

Likewise, Transporters would give the Federation massive tactical and logistical advantages. I don't recall any kind of shielding in ME that would effectively prohibit Transporters, and without protection from Transporters every battle boils down to Step 1. Transport Photon Torpedo to engine room. Step 2. Champagne on Ten Forward.

[Imperial Overlord]

I mean the divergence point, well before there could be any effect on the technological development.

The problem with that is its not the only incident of time travel in Star Trek. After the divergence point all the temporal interventions of the next century or so of Trek never happen but other, possibly very different, interventions do. That leads to a different present and little details like the Kelvin and the Enterprise being much larger than ships of the original timeline.

[Omeganian]

The shootable missiles seem to be from the original timeline.

[CSJM]

They also don't seem to have much in common with photon torpedoes - they at least seem much larger, and are obviously not quite shielded. I wouldn't be surprised if those were, like most of the Narada's non-stolen equipment, basically glorified mining gear from their era - in their case, mining charges.

[Junghalli]

The shootable missiles seem to be from the original timeline.

If you're talking about the Narada's missiles, wasn't the Narada supposedly originally a mining ship, not any kind of warship? So its weapons would probably hardly be the pinnacle of technology. They might not even originally have been designed as weapons; they could be repurposed mining or anticollision systems for all we know.

[GrandAdmiralSeerdon]

Indeed. And furthermore the missiles or torpedoes, or whatever you want to call them, might just impact the kinetic barriers on the ME ships anyway.

[adam_grif]

Even if that's true, I don't really see any reason to believe that Photorps wouldn't be able to be interceptable unless they were going FTL. They're shielded, but that hardly makes them invincible. Do we see any Nutrek photorps being used? What kind of speeds to they go at?

[Junghalli]

Even if that's true, I don't really see any reason to believe that Photorps wouldn't be able to be interceptable unless they were going FTL. They're shielded, but that hardly makes them invincible. Do we see any Nutrek photorps being used? What kind of speeds to they go at?

As far as (original version) Trek is concerned I'd guess it's a matter of it being more trouble than it's worth to install point defense systems. What this translates into as far as missile durability is anyone's guess. I seem to remember the Enterprise pretty effectively one-shotting a Ferengi missile with a phaser in TNG once (it was in the episode with the unstable wormhole, forget the name), so they can apparently be one-shotted with the E-D's phasers, for what that's worth.

[Stofsk]

Indeed. And furthermore the missiles or torpedoes, or whatever you want to call them, might just impact the kinetic barriers on the ME ships anyway.

EDIT sorry i misread what you wrote.

Anyway it depends on what those missiles/torpedoes are exactly, and I don't think we have the answer to that.

Even if that's true, I don't really see any reason to believe that Photorps wouldn't be able to be interceptable unless they were going FTL. They're shielded, but that hardly makes them invincible.

Why wouldn't shields make them invincible? Photorps in TOS appear to have an acceleration of 18,000km/s from 'The Changeling' where a stationary Enterprise fired at a target 90,000km away and hits it in 5 seconds. That's much faster than the kinetic slugs GARDIAN lasers are designed to counter (3000km/s or something per that gunnery sergeants description in ME2). It may well be that in combination of shielding and that accleration, the point defence of a ME ship can't penetrate it in time to destroy it.

[adam_grif]

That's much faster than the kinetic slugs GARDIAN lasers are designed to counter

I wasn't actually talking about ME in that post, just the general principle that Photorps can be intercepted in theory even with shielding.

Also, Lasers don't counter slugs in MEverse, they counter torpedos, which are much much slower. It's not clear whether they COULD counter slugs or not, but it's never mentioned that they do, and being "cold" without an exhaust plume or anything they would presumably be tougher to spot and intercept.

[Stofsk]

They're primarily anti-fighter and anti-missile defences, this is true. I was wondering where I heard them being kinda-sorta used against slugs, and I think it was from the first ME book. The SSV Iwo Jima was fired upon by a krogan known as Skarr IIRC and because its kinetic barriers were down it was torn to shreds. IIRC the narrative said something like the GARDIAN lasers were overwhelmed with too many targets to track and coming in too quickly making the GARDIAN useless. So I guess it's 'possible' for them to defend against kinetic slugs but it's far, far from optimal.

[adam_grif]

Poor, poor codex writers. Everybody just does whatever the fuck they want in-universe. GARDIAN being a defense against mass drivers is pretty lightweight though. My favorite recently is the "GARDIAN laser defense" for the colony in ME2 that is clearly not a laser, and is being used in an anti-starship role. Oh man.

[someone_else]

I'll make a couple simplistic assumptions:
-ME pwns Federation on the ground (seems like all agree on this)
-Federation doesn't want to exterminate ME people (would be hard to justify given their background)

With this I can bypass the whole tricky ship vs ship comparisons that don't give anything really sure and say that two things can happen:

-ME fleet pwns federation's (my favourite, I highly doubt feds will be able to employ decent tactics) and case closed.
-Feds win space war but then find themselves pwned by ME's childrens with slings when try to land ground troops to actually seize control the planets. So they cannot really conquer a damn thing and either retreat immediately or keep suffering casualities until they decide to retreat.

Both situations seem to give Feds not winning.

[Stark]

With control of space the Fed can force ME to the table. How old are you?