Space Pirates vs. 24th Century UFP

[StarSword]

As an aside, where are we getting the "kiloton" numbers for Samus' weapons from? They sure as hell don't look like kiloton blasts to me. I'd be expecting something close to Hiroshima for that.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

That all of Samus's weaponry unleashes kiloton-level energy is an exaggeration at best. The closest any evidence has come for that is that in a thread years ago, someone calculated from the shaking of the screen caused by super missiles in Super Metroid that they cause earthquakes of ~1kt of energy. Even assuming you accept the validity of a calculation based on a single point of data from a 16-bit video game, though, that's one of Samus's most powerful and rarer weapons.

[avatarxprime]

Here is the thread in case you're interested. Using information from that thread, a regular missile is ~0.25 kilotons. a super missile is ~1.24 and a power bomb is ~1.73 kilotons. The missile damage was simply TheBlackCat's Super Missile value divided by 5 since that's the standard conversion and the power bomb required deriving from the Crystal Flash technique. Issues are pointed out with the analysis by other posters in the thread, but the values are taken as reflective of Samus' combat abilities. Rough estimations of the possible power of the Volt Driver also fall in line with these calculations so if you want you can consider that another piece of evidence in favor of these calculations being in the right ballpark.

[Simon_Jester]

Analyzing the magnitude of vibrations set up by the missile explosion and back-calculating a Richter scale energy release from it is a deeply flawed method, I'd think.

You can get much stronger earth tremors than those of a low-magnitude earthquake from a bomb far below kiloton yield.

[The Yosemite Bear]

you know I see this and my brain knows this is the metroid baddies, but I still wish it had been other space pirates, the Dr. Who episode Pirate planet, or purhaps Harlock vs. the enterprise...

[ComradeClaus]

No way samus' has any kiloton yield stuff, otherwise she'd easily blast every mundane obstacle outta her way.

For the Space Pirates, would they have several perfected Elite/ Phazon Elite/ Omega Pirates in their units? Or Beam Troopers? (Wave, Power, Ice & Plasma) Those bastards were a total pain to deal w/ (only vulnerable to a single weapon type)

And would they be spearheaded by Meta Ridley or Omega? Would a Phazon Enhanced Kraid (Was planned for Phazon Mines but cut ) join in as well?

The Pirate Commandos from Echoes were a total bust though They were barely tougher than mook pirates.

And since Dark Samus has Phaaze, does that mean she has more Metroid Primes as well? (in Corruption, at the Leviathan Womb, there were several Prime exoskeletons, implying that there were more) Also, Phaaze has a lifeform called Phaz-ing, which the Ing & Emperor Ing appear to have evolved from, so, Dark Samus may have more Emperor Ings in play as well.

In short, Federation is totally FUBAR.

Note: The Leviathan is actually alive, you board one prior to the final battle, & the interior has eyes (you get a bonus for shooting them all), Phaaze itself is a LIVING Planet.

The Space Pirate capital ships can enter planetary atmosphere to deploy ground forces & bombard at close ranges. They also have decent air defences to guard shield generators. Plus they have MUCH better base security than the Federation, no giant Jefferies tubes for them! Unless you can curl into a metal ball that lays bombs, or shoot doors w/ matching energy signatures or a scanner that hacks most security, you aren't going anywhere. Plus the pirates tend to fill their bases w/ environmental hazards. pajamad redshirts have NO CHANCE! They have flying troops, aquatic, security drones. (Damn! REtro Studios made an awesome trilogy! Nintendo needs to contract them in the future... Team Ninja failed big time w/ Other M!)

[StarSword]

Agreed. On the ground, the Federation gets roflpwnstomped. (As usual. ) Claus mentioned several advantages (which basically come down to a far greater variety of tactics and weaponry), but there's one thing he didn't mention: a distinct lack of any morals whatsoever, if the Metroid manga is any judge. Spoiler

For instance, Samus' parents are murdered by the Pirates during a raid on a farming world. And the first time she fights the Pirates in the Power Suit, she's part of a Federation Marines unit that previously watched them loading slaves onto a transport.

I can imagine Mike's theoretical First Battle of Bajor, where the Empire forces DS9 to surrender by obliterating major cities on Bajor, wouldn't be much different with the Space Pirates in the Empire's place. Even if the Space Pirates can't use beam weapons to destroy cities from orbit, I'm sure they have at least tactical nuclear weapons. Or better yet, maybe they could use the black hole weapon somebody mentioned earlier.

Another thing: the Metroidverse's FTL speeds appear to be even faster than SW hyperdrive (six months to another galaxy!), based on the calcs we worked out on page one. Therefore we can grant the Pirates the tactical advantages the Imperials enjoy in Mike's scenarios because of hyperdrive.

[ChosenOne54]

FTL speed is certainly a massive advantage. Space Pirates also, as I mentioned earlier, have the capability to completely destroy a planet through a self-destruct sequence (presumably through some sort of bomb), which could also come in handy.

[avatarxprime]

Analyzing the magnitude of vibrations set up by the missile explosion and back-calculating a Richter scale energy release from it is a deeply flawed method, I'd think.

You can get much stronger earth tremors than those of a low-magnitude earthquake from a bomb far below kiloton yield.

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Not all of the energy of the bomb will go into creating the seismic waves, so you'd need a more powerful bomb to create a similar powered earthquake. From the USGS website they said a 5 megaton bomb detonated underground caused a body wave magnitude (mb) 6.9 earthquake. So I found a conversion formula to transform mb into Mw, which is the Moment magnitude.

1) log M0 = 2.4mb + 10.1
2) Mw = (log M0 - 16.1)/1.5
3) Mw = (2.4mb - 6)/1.5

So plugging in you get Mw = 7.04 for 5 megaton bomb. However, when you plug the energy of a 5 megaton bomb into Mw = (log(Energy) - 4.8 )/1.5, you end up with a 7.68 magnitude quake, which is much stronger than a 6.9 - 7.04 quake. Unless I totally messed up somewhere, it would seem you need more bomb, not less, to make the same quake.

[Darth Yoshi]

Perhaps it's not actual magnitude, but perceived magnitude? I'm talking out of my ass here, but considering that for her weapon arsenal Samus mostly fights at close to point-blank range, her proximity to the explosion might cause it to appear more energetic than it actually is. After all, if you fire inside a large room like Kraid's chamber there's no impact tremor, even though the room is an enclosed space with nowhere for ordnance to go but the walls.

[avatarxprime]

I would think that got covered in dealing with the issue of camera shake vs actual movement of Zebes from TheBlackCat's thread. Since Zebes is actually seen as moving that should be the actual movement. However you're right about the effect only being triggered when Samus is close enough to a wall. I booted up Super Metroid and did a bit of testing. Based on some quick and dirty scaling, a Super Missile only seems to cause the room to shake when it's fired within ~15 feet (barrel to wall distance) of a wall, although the wall need not be visible on screen. If you fire from beyond this range (the next square over) there is no Zebesquake. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this though.

I'm starting to think the Super Missile works on the same basis as the Bomb. The detonation of the bomb can produce enough force to lift Samus in the air without dealing any damage to her and has a rather sharp drop-off. Maybe the Super Missile has some more powerful version of the force generation as the warhead. When it impacts a target all that energy is focused into the target (unlike a bomb which deals its damage as a general explosive), possibly by encapsulating the target in a force field, and this focusing also works to prevent it from having splash. When the Super Missile hits a wall/target to large for it to confine its damage to, the force it uses ends up just pushing against whatever it hit and trying to destroy it anyway. Although that idea still doesn't explain the distance limitation.