Brian Young wrote:This particular crossover battle has always left me undecided.
Hey, I know you!
Whitestars carry Minbari fighters, which may or may not help with the battle? We know two critical points from "Meditations on the Abyss."
*Whitestars can carry at least four Minbari fighters.
*These fighters have a lot of firepower.
Those fighters are much less powerful than a Whitestar, and since I only have an upper limit on Whitestar firepower, we'll use these as a lower limit.
The fighters were vaporizing asteroids that were composed of "ice and solid rock." By my scaling of the fighters and asteroids, this requires anywhere from over 250 gigajoules (ice) to around 7 terajoules (iron) per asteroid, depending on composition. Energy delivered in fractions of a second.
Agreed. Ted mentioned once that there was debris left behind,
but I don't think that should change the general order of magnitude.
Given the Enterprise shield limits demonstrated in "The Survivors," and this power level supported in "The Dauphin (entire ship can't generate a terawatt)," "Who Watches the Watchers (~4 gigawatts can power a phaser bank)," etc., even Minbari fighter weapons would have no difficulty with Federation shields. As Whitestars are larger and more powerful, Federation shields should not be an issue.
I respectfully disagree here. "The Dauphin" isn't a good example
for power generation for several reasons:
1--The warp core was taken offline. Picard says, "That will
preclude the use of our warp engines" apropos LaForge's
request to fix some deuterium thing.
2--Riker might not have thought of the warp core itself at
all in assessing the ship's power generation because of
1 *and* the fact that warp power is very, very rarely used
for non-propulsive systems until during and after "Best of Both Worlds."
3--Later on, in "The Masterpiece Society," LaForge states
the E-D's warp core "normally kicks plasma up into the
terawatt range." Normally, not at maximum output.
And I find it unlikely the E-D's output could be increased from
below one terawatt to dozens or more in three years.
Besides, with phaser-like weapons and torpedoes (which
don't rely on the ship's power generation), the raw output
is all but irrelevant so long as we have nifty effects. A 4.2
GW reactor is indeed enough to "power a small phaser
bank" (whatever that is; the E-D's dorsal saucer array was
the largest ever built on a Federation starship), but until
you approach the heaviest metals, you're going to do
a lot more damage than that level of power would imply.
I'm also hesitant to really take anything away from "Survivors"
for several reasons, too. We know the Husnock ship was firing
weapons with an "equivalent firepower of" 40 MW and later,
400 GW. Equivalent to *what*, though? Phasers, which do damage
in excess of their raw output? We might guess that the *effect*
on the shields is similar to what a phaser with 400 gigawatts
behind it would do...
That's the only thing that really makes sense...400 GW would
mean a dozen torpedoes or so are only equivalent to about
200 gigajoules. That wouldn't adequately explain the asteroid
destructions in "Genesis," "Booby Trap" and "Rise" (exaggerated as they often are by Trekkies) from single torpedoes, the latter of which points
to probably a few hundred kT yield. It would make Riker look
like a real fool for thinking the E-D could use "most of its photorps"
to do...well,
anything to that "Pegasus" asteroid. And starships
would almost certainly lack the ability to do much damage to
even a small percentage of a planet's population.
And if "Enterprise" is accepted as canon (which, regrettably, I think
it has to be; the Star Trek website includes it as such), the NX-01
could easily blow through the E-D's shields, as each of her
"phase cannons" are rated at several hundred gigawatts or more.
That's not going to happen.
In fact, since ~4 gigawatts can power "a small phaser bank," Minbari fighter weapons deliver orders of magnitude greater firepower than that "small phaser bank." And they can really hit small targets consistently at high speed while making hard maneuvers.
So far, there is decent evidence that Whitestars have the advantage in firepower and accuracy.
Well, I've figured that, for proximity-detonated photorps to pose
a threat to an unshielded starship ~5 kilometers away (as in "Q Who?"),
even if we assume 200 GJ was enough to destroy the starship's
hull (in "Survivors," it caused thermal damage only), we're looking
at almost exactly 250 kilotons.
Phaser effects against shields are somewhat similar, even if they
take a full second or so to deliver the same amount of E.
That's quite fair, IMO. That's consistent with Mike's figures for the
"Pegasus" asteroid, and it's consistent with "Rise" from what I
recall.
Whitestars can withstand firepower from Earth and Shadow fighters while sustaining only minimal damage. How those compare to Minbari fighters is open to speculation, but B5Wars says that Earthforce Thunderbolts have comparable firepower to Minbari fighters. That is difficult to believe given the asteroid incident mentioned above. But if even Shadow fighters come anywhere close to Minbari fighters, Whitestars are possibly more resilient than the Defiant too. At least from certain types of weapons.
Hmm...I rather doubt it.
Defiant should be a decent fraction
of an early TNG
Galaxy-class starship's defensive strength, at least. The ability for such a ship to withstand close proximity to a G-type
star suggests its total energy capacity is in the low megaton range
even with a relatively conservative estimate of the frontal
area involved.
Even episodes which indicate significantly poorer resistance to EM, like "Descent pt. II," are shaky insofar as figuring out how long a ship could remain in the corona--and, thus, how strong their shields might be. ("Descent" involved a scene change. Only after shifting back to the E-D's
bridge are we told anything about how long the shields should hold
out.)
And, of course, these ships can withstand about a dozen torpedo
hits or so, give or take a few, from comparably-armed ships.
Again, we're looking at shields with a total E limit of a few megatons
or so. The highest I'm willing to comfortably go is to about 25 megatons,
FWIW.
Whitestars are quick enough to evade slow-moving shots from Shadow fighters. The Defiant is quick too, but can it actually evade enemy fire? Note from the Lakota, we know that.
To sum up,
*Trek phasers don't compare favorably to even Minbari fighters, much less Whitestars.
*Whitestars can withstand fire from weapons which may, or may not be comparable to those mentioned above.
*Despite their size, Whitestars can actally evade some types of energy weapons. Probably torpedoes too.
So, Whitestars do appear to have certain advantages in this particular matchup.
Slave1 could beat them both easily.
With missiles and mines, very easily. I don't think the blasters
would threaten
Defiant's shields, but they might be harmful
to the WS.
WS v.
Defiant again: I don't think the WS could evade torpedoes.
We know a
Defiant's torpedoes are faster than she herself
is (duh)
And she's capable of at least several hundred meters/sec.
Her torpedoes are probably capable of several kilometers/sec.
Evasive maneuvers would slow the WS down, of course, and we
know her linear acceleration--what, 10 km/sec.--probably isn't
"faster" than a photorp.
The D's pulse phasers would probably be useless since they can't
really target something that's not directly ahead of them. Their
phaser beam emitters might not be particularly powerful.
All this depends on just how powerful the WS actually is. I'd have
to contend that it has the firepower, subjectively, of about 10
Minbari fighters, and probably a fair deal more. I would contend
that it's also probably an order of magnitude less powerful than a
Shadow spider.
To invoke a convenient golden mean, that'd put the WS's firepower
at a few hundred terawatts. That's as informal as a guess can
get but it seems about right...a few dozen TW seems too low
to me, as surely the WS could outgun her own four Minbari fighters!
That sounds decisively pro-
Defiant but I actually am a bit
on the fence. The aforementioned firepowers could threaten
each ship. I think
Defiant *is* better defended, but she's
also slower and far less maneuverable IMO. Her torpedoes would
definitely pack the punch to kill the WS, again in my judgment,
and they're certainly fast enough to track the WS, but note I
said *track*...torpedoes do a VERY poor job of that
I would have to favor
Defiant a little I guess. WS would
need time to kill her, and I don't see that all of
Defiant's
shots would be such terrible misses or far-away proximity detonations.
.