What Hard SF Universe Could Beat the Federation?

[Nova Andromeda]

-Why are people still trying to come up with weapons bound by physics to strike Trek planets? It has been repeatedly mentioned that light lag will doom any of these weapons / strategies because it will take years for them to reach the closest targest and Trek can deploy much more devastating weapons in a much smaller timeframe.
-The only hope I can see for the hard sci-fi civ is to subvert Trek tech. and use it to beat Trek by combining it with superior computational power, strategies, tactics, and industrial power.
-I'd like to also mention that we still have a lot to learn about the universe and it may turn out that currently undiscovered physics is very unfavorable to Trek in this scenerio. Nevertheless, it's hard to use physical priciples for a war if you haven't discovered them yet.

[Beowulf]

Doing some math with the following assumption: sun is a point source. Depending on distance, this assumption may not hold true.

We stick a 100m mirror in size in solar orbit. Size is chosen because it makes for some nicer numbers. The peak in the solar radiation spectrum is about 500 nm. Thus from R = 1.22*gamma/D, we end up with a divergence of about 6.1e-9 radians. For a spot diameter of about 1 AU, it's an easy bit of trig to determine that we've got about 1300 lightyears. (It's hard to tell, google runs out of precision). Not much energy there, but then we use a bunch of mirrors all directing light at the same direction. Larger allowable spots will allow longer ranges. 1AU was chosen for the spot diameter to make it a bit easier to calculate. Bigger mirrors make the spot diameter go down. It's an approximately linear relation. Size of the mirrors will probably be a tradeoff between speed of pointing, ease of manufacture, desired ability of destroy stuff, and ability to get the mirror flat enough. Oh, the spot also holds about 70% of the energy of the beam. A 1 AU spot diameter unfortunately only has a maximum average of 19.5 kW/m^2. So smaller spot sizes would be necessary at the target.

The UFP probably won't disrupt in the beginning because the HSF civ will be doing this first, straight off. Also, the UFP will probably remain a bunch of essentially push overs until something drastic happens, at which point it's too late, since the array has served it's purpose. The HSF civ doesn't even have to be aggressive until the array is complete and they need targeting data.

In fact the HSF civ may already have a massive array of this type for power generation. In which case there's no need to wait to build it.

The UFP has the problem in blocking it in that it doesn't have the same manufacturing capability. Even though it is thin metal film, it's still a bunch of refining for the UFP to do. I'm really not kidding about it requiring seriously large amounts of metal. Also, you can't just use a thin film to stop it. The array mirrors just have to deal with the power coming from a small portion of the star. The blocking film has to deal with the much higher flux that's from every mirror in the array. The HSF civ could put any arbitrary percentage of the available sunlight into the beam they wish, limited only by how much material they need for the mirrors.

UFP can't just use technobabble to stop it. Otherwise you could equally well assume it'd use technobabble to stop a Death Star.

[Redleader34]

And then, the planet in question is left, as any idiot with half a sensor notices "Oh hay guys a beam is gonna hit this planet in a few years" As many others have said, enjoy a ship coming in from high warp and blowing up your array with photon torpedoes, and phaser blasts.

Wank is fun right buddy?

[Darth Wong]

Doing some math with the following assumption: sun is a point source. Depending on distance, this assumption may not hold true.

We stick a 100m mirror in size in solar orbit. Size is chosen because it makes for some nicer numbers. The peak in the solar radiation spectrum is about 500 nm. Thus from R = 1.22*gamma/D, we end up with a divergence of about 6.1e-9 radians. For a spot diameter of about 1 AU, it's an easy bit of trig to determine that we've got about 1300 lightyears. (It's hard to tell, google runs out of precision). Not much energy there, but then we use a bunch of mirrors all directing light at the same direction. Larger allowable spots will allow longer ranges. 1AU was chosen for the spot diameter to make it a bit easier to calculate. Bigger mirrors make the spot diameter go down. It's an approximately linear relation. Size of the mirrors will probably be a tradeoff between speed of pointing, ease of manufacture, desired ability of destroy stuff, and ability to get the mirror flat enough. Oh, the spot also holds about 70% of the energy of the beam. A 1 AU spot diameter unfortunately only has a maximum average of 19.5 kW/m^2. So smaller spot sizes would be necessary at the target.

How the fuck does a 100m mirror produce a 1 AU wide spot beam with 19.5 kW/m^2 intensity? The only way to go from a 100m diameter circle to a 150E9 metre diameter circle and still have 19.5 kW/m^2 intensity is for the intensity at the originating mirror to be more than 4E22 W/m^2, ie- trillions of times greater than the power intensity at the surface of the Sun.

The UFP probably won't disrupt in the beginning because the HSF civ will be doing this first, straight off. Also, the UFP will probably remain a bunch of essentially push overs until something drastic happens, at which point it's too late, since the array has served it's purpose. The HSF civ doesn't even have to be aggressive until the array is complete and they need targeting data.

And how the fuck would they get targeting data? How would they even know they should be building this thing? And why is the Federation doing absolutely nothing all this time? They're supposed to be at war, remember? The Feddies may be lame, but even the Feds don't literally sit on their asses doing absolutely nothing during a war.

In fact the HSF civ may already have a massive array of this type for power generation. In which case there's no need to wait to build it.

And of course, as we all know, any normal technology-based civilization always maintains vastly more power generation capability than it actually uses, right? Just in case they suddenly find that they need to combat space aliens? That's why real civilizations such as the US maintain several times the actual energy capacity that they ... oh wait.

The UFP has the problem in blocking it in that it doesn't have the same manufacturing capability. Even though it is thin metal film, it's still a bunch of refining for the UFP to do.

Bullshit. All they have to do is throw a cloud of junk in its way. The beam will heat it up, vapourize it, produce a cloud, and then get scattered. At these kinds of ranges, you don't need to block the beam; you only need to reduce its focus. Not to mention the luxury of being able to take years to work on the problem.

I'm really not kidding about it requiring seriously large amounts of metal. Also, you can't just use a thin film to stop it. The array mirrors just have to deal with the power coming from a small portion of the star. The blocking film has to deal with the much higher flux that's from every mirror in the array. The HSF civ could put any arbitrary percentage of the available sunlight into the beam they wish, limited only by how much material they need for the mirrors.

And the Feddies would, of course, just take it and not retaliate in any way, right? And for that matter, they will undertake no offensive operations whatsoever while all of this is going on, even though it would be like shooting fish in a barrel? It's pretty sad to hear all those dumbshit debating tactics from Trektards, being used now against Trek. The "my side tries neat tricks, the other side just sits there" tactic was irritating when it came from Trektards, and it's just as irritating when it comes from you.

UFP can't just use technobabble to stop it. Otherwise you could equally well assume it'd use technobabble to stop a Death Star.

See above.

[Starglider]

1AU was chosen for the spot diameter to make it a bit easier to calculate.

A 1AU spot size is utterly useless. You've reduced the pointing accuracy issue from 'impossible' to 'very very hard', but you now have to build half a dyson sphere's worth of mirrors just to double the apparent brightness on the target planet.

Bigger mirrors make the spot diameter go down.

But make keeping everything aligned progressively more difficult.

The UFP probably won't disrupt in the beginning because the HSF civ will be doing this first, straight off.

Which you somehow think the UFP, with their warp ships that can get over to this system in days and sensors that can show buildings on planetary surfaces from many light years away, won't notice.

Also, the UFP will probably remain a bunch of essentially push overs until something drastic happens, at which point it's too late, since the array has served it's purpose.

They may lose one planet. If they're extremely stupid and sit there for years without realising what's going on. Which I grant, Starfleet often is. But one planet is jack shit to the Federation.

The UFP has the problem in blocking it in that it doesn't have the same manufacturing capability. Even though it is thin metal film, it's still a bunch of refining for the UFP to do.

All the UFP has to do to block this beam is dump a sufficient amount of mass in the way. A metal film is mass efficient, but sufficient amounts of pulverised asteroid will work fine. They have years to do this for the closest worlds, millenia for the furthest ones.

Also, you can't just use a thin film to stop it. The array mirrors just have to deal with the power coming from a small portion of the star.

If you spot size is a pathetic 1AU a thin shade over the target planet will work just fine. If it's a tight spot, towing a decent sized asteroid into the beam to take the hit will work fine. Only a spot size roughly equivalent to the size of the planet and perfectly tracking it from many lightyears away poses a problem. Do you have any idea how difficult a mirror geometry problem this is? Sufficient nanotech and distributed computing power may do it, but just how many hard sci fi civs can actually build this wank?

Even if you get a tight spot on the target though, with a single mirror your beam will taper down smoothly from the primary mirror width to the spot size. Half way to the target, the energy density will only be four times the density on the primary mirror - and after they realise what's going on, they will be deflecting/absorbing these beams as close to the source system as possible (which they have of course already glassed). Frankly, you may catch them once by surprise, but after that blocking the photon pulses will be straightforward.

UFP can't just use technobabble to stop it. Otherwise you could equally well assume it'd use technobabble to stop a Death Star.

Aside from being about ten orders of magnitude more powerful than any conceivable (i.e. dyson sphere sized) mirror network, a death star blast is over in fractions of a second. For this 'weapon' the UFP has years to millenia to do something about the beam.

[Starglider]

Even if you get a tight spot on the target though, with a single mirror your beam will taper down smoothly from the primary mirror width to the spot size.

Which of course you're using, because if you use a secondary mirror to collimate the beam before it leaves the system, that secondary mirror will have to take an energy flux equivalent to the target, thus proving that even hard-sci-fi materials with no force field tricks are perfectly adequate to planetary shield that can resist the beam.

For this 'weapon' the UFP has years to millenia to do something about the beam.

One obvious way to exploit this; just mirrors in the beam path travelling at >0.9c. They will experience a beam intensity a tenth of what the source mirrors had to. If Starfleet ships can go faster than that with sustained impulse thrust (likely), the intensity drops further and you may even be able to get away with a very lightweight metal mesh, because the pulse will have been redshifted down to microwaves.

[Beowulf]

Mirror array, Mike. Individual mirrors are 100m in diameter. Spread the output of the sun over the 1AU diameter resultant spot, and you end up with about 19kW/m^2.

Targetting data could probably be arranged by capturing the landing party of the first UFP ship that shows up. Given that would be about half of the command crew, or more, you'd have a decent chance of getting control of the ship, and hence astronomical data. Given that Starfleet appears to regularly lose ships from accidents, you could probably have the UFP be none the wiser after this. I don't really care how they know they need to build this weapon, I'm just postulating it's existence. Feddies aren't known for doing offensive wars, so unless the HSF does something to the Feds, it's probably now going to come to shooting. Wars don't happen in a vacuum. The biggest war the UFP faced was a result on someone trying to conquer it.

If the array is pre-built, you stick everyone on energy rationing for a couple weeks/months. You can't eliminate consumption, but you can reduce it down to the point where you can use this as a feasible weapon. There's precisely one point in time when this is really feasible as a weapon, and that's during the beginning of hostilities. After that, it's done. It's close to the epitome of a one-shot weapon in the context of this.

And Mike, space is big. You still need massive amounts of mass to disrupt the beam. You are talking about a target area 1 AU in diameter. And you have to do it for every target. Loss of a few dozen ships was shown to be crippling. You're going to have to drop a lot more mass than that in the way of the beam to significantly affect it. The only feasible way I can think to defend against this attack is to dump vast quantities of mass into the way of the beam, and I don't think ST has the capability to do that. This is also about the point where my physics knowledge tapers off, so don't expect me to post numbers on how much crap you need to throw into space to diffuse the beam.

[Nova Andromeda]

And how the fuck would they get targeting data? How would they even know they should be building this thing? And why is the Federation doing absolutely nothing all this time? They're supposed to be at war, remember?

-Some information on the starting state of this war would be nice. Do they have any information about each other or did they just meet? Why are they at war and is it immediately a war of extermination or does it start off with border skermishes and get hotter as they go? Can one side surrender?
-Maybe we should go with this: they just met, their borders don't touch, it doesn't start off as a war of extermination and Trek won't escalate it to one simply to win (they may however cripple major HSF civ infrastructure and demand the usual surrender terms for Trek)

And of course, as we all know, any normal technology-based civilization always maintains vastly more power generation capability than it actually uses, right? Just in case they suddenly find that they need to combat space aliens? That's why real civilizations such as the US maintain several times the actual energy capacity that they ... oh wait.

-Any HSF civ that has any chance should be a great deal older than human civilization. They should have mastered the biological sciences, have obscene computational power, and have integrated biological systems with machine/computer systems (where it's a good idea of course). In short, they have the potential to be far far far more intelligent than any human. Considering this, they might just have massive power generation capabilities (as well as massive amounts of other resource stashes and contigency plans) lying around for a rainy day. I will conceed that it is hard to determine what something orders of magnitude more intelligent that oneself might do in a given situation.

And the Feddies would, of course, just take it and not retaliate in any way, right? And for that matter, they will undertake no offensive operations whatsoever while all of this is going on, even though it would be like shooting fish in a barrel?

-Duh! They're Trek and like the U.S. will only do the right thing after having tried every other possible option .

It's pretty sad to hear all those dumbshit debating tactics from Trektards, being used now against Trek. The "my side tries neat tricks, the other side just sits there" tactic was irritating when it came from Trektards, and it's just as irritating when it comes from you.

-You may be one of the few people holding this board to a reasonable standard of rationality. Severe bias for one's favored team seems to be ingrained in human nature.
-Do you think the information warfare I suggested has any fatal flaws that would make it a largely useless strategy? I realize that I'm assumming massive technological advancement from modern Earth, but it should all be possible given an old enough HSF civ.

[Sikon]

Naturally, STL attack has the problem that an assault taking thousands of years to transverse the Federation gives them too much time to counter it; the Federation might even be colonizing other galaxies millions of light-years away by then.

However, the opening post allows the hard sci-fi civilization to use whatever they capture, and that might allow them to prosecute a war across thousands of light-years in timeframes of years rather than millenia:

Should the hard 'verse capture Federation equipment, they can use it for as long as it works, or can be recharged/refueled/maintained using technological knowledge that follows the laws of physics.

With superintelligence and more, a sufficiently capable hard sci-fi civilization could be rather capable compared to some foes which have captured Federation starships in the past, both in terms of exploiting computer vulnerabilities and in other regards.

Their best hope is to capture one or more warp drive ships, then use them as transports.

As one random possibility, capture one ship, warp to the weakest suitable planet, not necessarily a Federation member at all, and beam down swarms of combat drones thinking and firing faster than humanoids, taking advantage of enemy weaknesses in ground combat ... or negotiate economic deals or alliances with some non-Federation civilizations

Which of you will trade some of your planet's starships for life extension providing immortality, plus a billion square miles of resorts and personal robot attendants?

What can be offered to the Ferengi?

If they can drop off self-replicating factories everywhere and convert quadrillions of tons of available material in asteroids and elsewhere to vast hordes of weapons, they may be able to make the Federation have difficulty in attacking. A weakness of the Federation is industrial capability. The Federation has no more than thousands of warships despite a population of trillions, whereas an advanced hard sci-fi civilization can have a population of many quadrillions and have trillions of warships for defense inside their star systems. Such doesn't win the war in itself, but it may slow the Federation's ability to counterattack, perhaps buying enough time for the hard sci-fi civilization to conquer more warp-capable planets.

Aside from deals with non-Federation warp-capable species, their best hope may be to conquer some planets in the Trek universe, steal warp drive ships from them, try to use those to expand further to capture more, and so on. For example, if one day they managed to get a few warp vessels to offload their best ground combat units onto earth itself, they might cause the Federation some trouble.

Attempting the preceding is a challenge, but it could be superhuman, posthuman intelligence in the hard sci-fi civilization versus the relative tactical incompetence of the Federation, an analogy being Grand Admiral Thrawn versus enemies or better.

Part of their chance is due to the Federation's weaknesses in all-out war. For example, the Federation is unlikely to build and fire subspace weapons of mass destruction on warp missiles into the hard sci-fi civilization's star systems in the first month of the war, not when canon indicates a tendency towards a different Federation response to hostile interstellar powers.

At least the hard sci-fi civilization has a chance.

[Patrick Degan]

If the Hard-SF civilization is willing to commit genocide right off the bat, it could resort to the use of a solar mirror array. Simply put, it's a honking huge array of mirrors that direct sunlight in the desired direction. Having a significant portion of a star's energy hit your planet would make anyone's day pretty shitty. With data from a captured Fed ship, you could feasibly manage to target every planet with a beam before the civilization is blow up.

In a word, bullshit. Even if this scheme were feasible, and even if the attacking civilisation were willing to essentially sacrifice a good portion of its energy collection for years at a stretch to focus into this beam, it would take years for this beam to cross the intervening distances between worlds before it would affect a target planet. And what prevents the Federation from waltzing in with an attack group and blasting the mirrors. Or scattering clouds of debris to fuck up the beam focus? Or launching warp missiles in retaliation, which will hit the attackers in days/weeks instead of years/decades?

None of the individual mirrors need to be able to handle a very high amount of photon flux. It can't really be stopped by the Feds short of evacuating every single planet.

Or, the Federationists use gravitational tugs to move their planets' orbits slightly —enough to put them out of position for the beams and the attackers won't be able to retarget quickly since it will take years/decades before they find out that they're going to miss —assuming they were even able to accurately identify target worlds in the first place. In the meantime, Starfleet are launching the first barrage of warp missiles at the enemy homesystem.

The problem is that the HSF civ will not be able to negotiate before doing this, because it's a relatively simple system to disrupt (though it's a very very large system, which will therefore require quite a bit of time to destroy (on the other hand, it's mostly metal film)). Of course, it also means the UFP destroying the originating system will not stop the attack. The attack has already been launched, and nothing the UFP has can stop trillions of teratons of energy from blasting the target system into a wasteland.

See above as to why this is not a given in this scenario.

A side effect would be that any starships near the target will probably also instantly be vaporized, thereby keeping the UFP from understand who's attacking.

Riiight... because a starship will naturally just sit there and wait to be fried by a beam coming at them at lightspeed. Their captain wouldn't think to, say, change course a degree or two and take a more hyperbolic route toward the beam's point of origin. Which, with warp drive, is a trivial problem in navigation.

Given Warp, UFP ships are unlikely to be far enough away to avoid getting fried while still be close enough to be able to determine that the attack is under way and which direction it came from.

Riiight... because a starship will naturally just sit there and wait to be fried by a beam coming at them at lightspeed. Their captain wouldn't think to, say, change course a degree or two and take a more hyperbolic route toward the beam's point of origin. Which, with warp drive, is a trivial problem in navigation.

BTW, what particularly negates the problem of dwell-time for the beams?

I did mention this is a very large system, right?

Which means exactly jack and shit in terms of the strategic and astromechanical options available to the Federation which aren't available to the attackers.

[Darth Wong]

Mirror array, Mike. Individual mirrors are 100m in diameter. Spread the output of the sun over the 1AU diameter resultant spot, and you end up with about 19kW/m^2.

In other words, your calculations require the use of 100% of the Sun's output. This means you're not talking about orbiting 100m diameter mirrors at all; you're talking about a Dyson Sphere.

Targetting data could probably be arranged by capturing the landing party of the first UFP ship that shows up. Given that would be about half of the command crew, or more, you'd have a decent chance of getting control of the ship, and hence astronomical data.

Which would only give them more than enough information to realize that their best chance is to surrender. Even this insane half-assed scheme of yours would only guarantee the retaliatory annihilation of their civilization.

Given that Starfleet appears to regularly lose ships from accidents, you could probably have the UFP be none the wiser after this. I don't really care how they know they need to build this weapon, I'm just postulating it's existence. Feddies aren't known for doing offensive wars, so unless the HSF does something to the Feds, it's probably now going to come to shooting. Wars don't happen in a vacuum. The biggest war the UFP faced was a result on someone trying to conquer it.

So? The OP stipulates that both sides are at war, not one side at war while the other side sleeps.

If the array is pre-built, you stick everyone on energy rationing for a couple weeks/months.

"Zero" is not what most people would call "rationing". It's called "starvation", which would in turn lead to chaos and the breakdown of civilization.

You can't eliminate consumption, but you can reduce it down to the point where you can use this as a feasible weapon. There's precisely one point in time when this is really feasible as a weapon, and that's during the beginning of hostilities. After that, it's done. It's close to the epitome of a one-shot weapon in the context of this.

You are completely full of shit. Try crunching the numbers, moron: Solar output is 3.827E26 watts. 1 AU is 150E9m. Therefore, a circle with 1 AU diameter has an area of 1.8E22 square metres. In order to produce a beam of 19.5 kW/m^2 intensity over a 1.8E22 m^2 area, you need roughly 3.4E26 watts, or almost 90% of the total fucking power output of the Sun! And that's assuming perfect process efficiency and zero radial losses in the beam, which is nonsense because it's not even a laser.

And Mike, space is big. You still need massive amounts of mass to disrupt the beam.

The fact that space is big means it will be easier to disrupt the beam, not harder. It means they have more time, and even the tiniest induced divergence in the beam would render it harmless by the time it reaches the target (if it reaches it at all).

You are talking about a target area 1 AU in diameter. And you have to do it for every target. Loss of a few dozen ships was shown to be crippling. You're going to have to drop a lot more mass than that in the way of the beam to significantly affect it. The only feasible way I can think to defend against this attack is to dump vast quantities of mass into the way of the beam, and I don't think ST has the capability to do that. This is also about the point where my physics knowledge tapers off, so don't expect me to post numbers on how much crap you need to throw into space to diffuse the beam.

Your physics knowledge pretty clearly tapered off well before this point, considering the fact that your bullshit calculations require well over 100% of the Sun's output once you account for radial losses in the beam. And you seem to be willfully ignoring the fact that they literally have centuries to deal with it, not to mention the other objections already raised which you have no answer for.

[Darth Wong]

However, the opening post allows the hard sci-fi civilization to use whatever they capture, and that might allow them to prosecute a war across thousands of light-years in timeframes of years rather than millenia:

Should the hard 'verse capture Federation equipment, they can use it for as long as it works, or can be recharged/refueled/maintained using technological knowledge that follows the laws of physics.

With superintelligence and more, a sufficiently capable hard sci-fi civilization could be rather capable compared to some foes which have captured Federation starships in the past, both in terms of exploiting computer vulnerabilities and in other regards.

See the bolded section. They're fucked.

[Junghalli]

Um, I'll respect the OP but I have to say that strikes me as a rather stupid clause. The only way it would make sense was if the hard SF universe and the Trekverse had different laws of physics, in which case the Trek ships should all stop working when they cross over. If the Treknology can work in the hard SF universe's space, it makes no sense that the hard SF dudes couldn't theoretically reverse-engineer it.

Of course, the practical odds of them actually being able to do so in a timeframe that would allow it to make any difference are a different matter, since it represents technology their indigenous science doesn't even have the theoretical basis for.

[Starglider]

Should the hard 'verse capture Federation equipment, they can use it for as long as it works, or can be recharged/refueled/maintained using technological knowledge that follows the laws of physics.

See the bolded section. They're fucked.

Quite a lot of hard sci-fi civs have significant antimatter production facilities, and deuterium slush for the impulse drives should be no problem. 'EPS plasma' doesn't seem to involve any made up science, so recharging and refueling are probably doable.

Maintenance on the other hand, no way. Yes, if the civilisation has genuine superintelligences, then they can probably reverse engineer everything they get their hands on, and if any computer cores get captured intact they'll know everything there is to know about the Federation and its technology within seconds. There will still be a lead time to build it, though nanofactories and judicious use of replicators may bring that down to months - and you'll need the superintelligences to run the ships and plan the tactics as well, otherwise there will be a huge crew training / tech familiarisation lead time. But yeah, if you have decently powerful AIs, nanofactories, you manage to capture a Federation ship intact, then you somehow convince the Federation to leave you alone for a year plus, the HSF civ can win. That isn't the scenario in the OP; it's a 'total war scenario', so both sides will be going all out to kill the enemy, and as has been copiously demonstrated the UFP's FTL drives, sensors and comms (and to a lesser extent, their shields and transporters) are enough to win that fight.

[Darth Wong]

Um, I'll respect the OP but I have to say that strikes me as a rather stupid clause. The only way it would make sense was if the hard SF universe and the Trekverse had different laws of physics, in which case the Trek ships should all stop working when they cross over. If the Treknology can work in the hard SF universe's space, it makes no sense that the hard SF dudes couldn't theoretically reverse-engineer it.

One word: materials.

Of course, the practical odds of them actually being able to do so in a timeframe that would allow it to make any difference are a different matter, since it represents technology their indigenous science doesn't even have the theoretical basis for.

Indeed. It pains me to no end seeing people taking Trektard arguments like "ZOMG overnight reverse engineering" and "the enemy sits there like a lump on a log while we concoct outlandish schemes against him" and using them for this HSF civ. It's actually worse; even Trektards never try coming up with schemes that would take hundreds of years to work.

[Nova Andromeda]

Should the hard 'verse capture Federation equipment, they can use it for as long as it works, or can be recharged/refueled/maintained using technological knowledge that follows the laws of physics.

See the bolded section. They're fucked.

-A. The HSF civ doesn't necessarily need to use Trek ships primarily for combat and transport. Instead, they could use them to study Trek software (for use in info. warfare, etc.), communitcate between stellar systems as fast as Trek, and cripple / capture other Trek ships using computer attacks. It's hard to say how long it would take for the HSF civ to crack Trek software and figure out how to opperate their equipment. However, the HSF can easily have orders of magnitude more computational ability and be vastly more intelligent that Trek which is, after all, run by a bunch of comparatively dumb apes (who designed, built, and run all the Trek toys). The Trek computer systems appear to be very vulnerable and their planets and ships appear to be completely dependant on those computer systems. Is there a reason an info. warfare attack by an HSF civ wouldn't look similar to the Skynet takeover in T3?
B. Is there some reason I'm missing that Trek ships would become useless hulks shortly after capture due to the OP? The OP doesn't really address the use of Trek equipment like replicators to help maintain/recharge/refuel Trek ships. Presumably, that is part of normal ship operations and should be allowed. There will be parts that can't be replaced of course, but I'd think these ships should be good for at least a year or two as long as they aren't over taxed (aren't they designed to travel for months without stopping?). The communications equipment may last for a much longer time as well.

[Teleros]

I seem to recall a Voyager episode where most of the crew had to enter stasis or somesuch for a while. Seven & the EMH were soon running around trying to repair things all over the ship. Now granted this is Voyager, alone in the Delta Quadrant, but it doesn't look promising...

[Beowulf]

Wars do not happen in a vacuum. Given the enforced insularity of the HSF civ, the war will be forced to begin on the HSF civ's terms. Similarly, without the HSF being able to go FTL, any scheme will require that it take hundreds of years. It's pretty much a given that the HSF civ will be dead at the end. The best case would be doing this and then when the first beam hits decades later, try to convince the UFP that the sins of the father shouldn't be visited upon them.

Oh, and I mentioned 19.5 kW/m^2 as the maximum the weapon could manage with a diameter of 5 AU. And you don't need to chop everyone's power off completely to free up sufficient capacity.

[DarkSilver]

Wars do not happen in a vacuum. Given the enforced insularity of the HSF civ, the war will be forced to begin on the HSF civ's terms. Similarly, without the HSF being able to go FTL, any scheme will require that it take hundreds of years. It's pretty much a given that the HSF civ will be dead at the end. The best case would be doing this and then when the first beam hits decades later, try to convince the UFP that the sins of the father shouldn't be visited upon them.

Oh, and I mentioned 19.5 kW/m^2 as the maximum the weapon could manage with a diameter of 5 AU. And you don't need to chop everyone's power off completely to free up sufficient capacity.

At this point, it should be prudent to point out, that the HSF Civilization will

a) have to have knowledge of the Federation and the fact that they will have to destroy them before building this weapon/mirror array.

b) Without committing any hostilities to obtain the information through conquest of random Federation ships, have to have knowledge as to the location of the planets, along with their orbits around the stars, and the system's own spatial drift.

Both of these things, I don't see happening, so your mirror array wouldn't get built, and even if the construction was started, it wouldn't even be a fifth of the way completed before the Federation would have found out of it's construction, and hampered said construction to make it all but useless.....


c) War doesn't begin in the vacumm, and in order for the HSF to start the war on their terms, they have to make the first attack and capture a Federation ship intact. By the time they manage to do this, the Federation will have gone to a total war footing, and begin their attacks. The HSF Civ is fucked.

[Darth Wong]

Wars do not happen in a vacuum.

This one does.

Given the enforced insularity of the HSF civ, the war will be forced to begin on the HSF civ's terms.

Non sequitur.

Similarly, without the HSF being able to go FTL, any scheme will require that it take hundreds of years. It's pretty much a given that the HSF civ will be dead at the end. The best case would be doing this and then when the first beam hits decades later, try to convince the UFP that the sins of the father shouldn't be visited upon them.

I'm glad we agree, then.

Oh, and I mentioned 19.5 kW/m^2 as the maximum the weapon could manage with a diameter of 5 AU.

You clearly aren't thinking this through. If the beam diameter at the target site is 5 AU instead of 1 AU, then you need 25 times more power at the source in order to achieve 19.5 kW/m^2, which means you need dozens of Suns in order to power this thing. How the fuck is a one-system HSF civ going to pull that off?

And you don't need to chop everyone's power off completely to free up sufficient capacity.

How the fuck not, when you're demanding more power than the system's entire Sun can produce? Not to mention expecting them to construct a fucking Dyson Sphere just to get one shot off at the enemy?

[Beowulf]

Damn it... I meant 1 AU in that last post of mine. Don't ask me how I managed that typo.

[Darth Wong]

Damn it... I meant 1 AU in that last post of mine. Don't ask me how I managed that typo.

Still impossible unless you have a Dyson Sphere, zero power requirements in the rest of your civilization, 100% efficiency, and a star more powerful than our Sun.

[Gullible Jones]

Seeing as one civilization would be bounded by the known laws of physics, and the other wouldn't, I don't see how it couldn't be a stomping. The only way I could see it going otherwise would be if you defined "hard SF" as including stuff where causality violation was possible.

(I don't, seeing as a) there's no evidence for it that we can see and b) tests designed to refute causality tend to be incapable of producing useful results.)

[Nova Andromeda]

Seeing as one civilization would be bounded by the known laws of physics, and the other wouldn't, I don't see how it couldn't be a stomping. The only way I could see it going otherwise would be if you defined "hard SF" as including stuff where causality violation was possible.

(I don't, seeing as a) there's no evidence for it that we can see and b) tests designed to refute causality tend to be incapable of producing useful results.)

-While most HSF civ's are doomed noone has really said how Trek could overcome its vulnerability to information warfare (in the case of extremely advanced HSF civs that span a large number of systems) or possibility of the HSF civ making alliances and/or trade agreements with neutral or friendly Trek civs.


P.S. -- Welcome to SDnet. Flame resistant suits are strongly recommended.

[Patrick Degan]

While most HSF civ's are doomed noone has really said how Trek could overcome its vulnerability to information warfare

Barrages with warp missiles in a campaign of mass destruction. You don't need to send a single starship into the enemy homesystem employing that strategy.