A very crippled DSII reaches earth's orbit

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-03-27 01:21am

wautd, the ever-changing constraints on the behaviour of DS2 are starting to fucking piss me off. First you say they have no weapons or shields, and only the TIEs can leave the station. Then you say that the tractor-beam emitters are out too. Then you add that the TIEs cannot carry ordnance to bombard Earth. What's next? The TIE pilots have to be fucking blindfolded?

What the fuck is the point of asking people to explore a hypothetical scenario WHEN YOU KEEP ADDING MORE GODDAMNED RULES THE MINUTE ANYONE THINKS OF SOMETHING?

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 01:23am

Firefox wrote:
My idea is for the federation fleet to deal with the TIEs (this could be extremely hard),
Of course, since there would be too many of the fighters, in addition to dealing with their maneuverability and firepower. The fleet is toast.

Possibly. I can think of ways to deal with many TIEs, but the numbers are heaviy against the Federation.

destroy the tractor mounts on one side of the DS, and start pulling/pushing the station with every available ship.
How do you destroy the tractor beam projectors without penetrating the fighter screen and avoid being destroyed by the projectors themselves?

Tractor range is less than torpedo range. As for the fighter screen, what are they going to do? Shoot down a torpedo that traverses tens of thousands of KM in less than a second? (Skin of Evil demonstrates extrem accel and very high velocity for planet bound torpedoes). Fighter pilots won't even have time to react. What's fighter range? At most 1000km based on X Wing targetting computers in ANH; those torpedoes will traverse that distance in a tiny fraction of a second. There is no way the TIEs can shoot them down.

They could shoot down the fleet, but that isn't the point I'm addressing.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-03-27 01:25am

Silence, if you're implying that torpedo range for the Starfleet vessels is longer than the tractor beam range of the Death Star, please re-watch ANH and do some simple scaling for the incredible distances involved. It still looked like a moon when they got caught.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 01:27am

Darth Wong wrote:
The Silence and I wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: You are aware that a singularity is not magic, right? It does not pump out unlimited amounts of energy, and a Romulan reactor is not much more powerful than a Federation reactor, otherwise Romulan ships would kick Federation ships' asses all over the quadrant.
I think he is proposing sending the singularity at the DS, not using it as a power source.
Brilliant tactic. The instant it is launched away from the ship, it explodes like a bomb because it is no longer being artificially maintained, and that's what low-mass singularities do when they are not being artificially maintained via magic technobabble.

Aye, but his complete question was wether or not they could construct a large enough one in a month to do the job. Presumably large enough means large enough to traverse the distance without exploding.

Alternatively a singularity can be maintained with very compact equipment, sending the whole deal over may be possible--if the singularity is large enough to survive a few micro seconds without sustainment as the casing is destroyed.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 01:30am

SirNitram wrote:Silence, if you're implying that torpedo range for the Starfleet vessels is longer than the tractor beam range of the Death Star, please re-watch ANH and do some simple scaling for the incredible distances involved. It still looked like a moon when they got caught.

Torpedo range against predicable targets is millions of km (off hand I've forgotten how many, maybe ~3-5 or so). As the DS is certainly a predictable target this applies.

For the distance involved in ANH, a mere 160 km wide sphere does not have to be millions of km away to look like a small moon; I'd have to check but it might not even be visible at such a range.

I will scale this to be sure, but I doubt the station was even a light second away at the time.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-03-27 01:35am

The Silence and I wrote:As for the fighter screen, what are they going to do? Shoot down a torpedo that traverses tens of thousands of KM in less than a second? (Skin of Evil demonstrates extrem accel and very high velocity for planet bound torpedoes).

Why are they normally so slow then?

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-03-27 01:37am

The Silence and I wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Silence, if you're implying that torpedo range for the Starfleet vessels is longer than the tractor beam range of the Death Star, please re-watch ANH and do some simple scaling for the incredible distances involved. It still looked like a moon when they got caught.
Torpedo range against predicable targets is millions of km (off hand I've forgotten how many, maybe ~3-5 or so). As the DS is certainly a predictable target this applies.

For the distance involved in ANH, a mere 160 km wide sphere does not have to be millions of km away to look like a small moon; I'd have to check but it might not even be visible at such a range.

I will scale this to be sure, but I doubt the station was even a light second away at the time.

Oh, they'll hit the Death Star.. But that means very, very little when you consider those firecrackers vs. a 900Km armoured battlestation. When it cranks on it's ECM, you can forget long range shots against anything vital.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-03-27 01:46am

The Silence and I wrote:Alternatively a singularity can be maintained with very compact equipment

And your evidence for this is ...?

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2005-03-27 02:00am

Darth Wong wrote:
The Silence and I wrote:As for the fighter screen, what are they going to do? Shoot down a torpedo that traverses tens of thousands of KM in less than a second? (Skin of Evil demonstrates extrem accel and very high velocity for planet bound torpedoes).
Why are they normally so slow then?

And how does it demonstarte this? Are there calcs presented (the basis for the distance, the speed, etc.)

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 02:05am

Ok, at time index 1_04_24 (Hr, Min, Sec), which is about the first time we see the "small moon" the DS looks like this and scaling gives me a distance of 30,300 km (I used 4.5 pixels, it is very small). It is highly unlikely the tractor beams were operating on the Falcon at this time.

At time index 1_04_33 the DS is seen again, this time much closer at 'only' 5,240 km distant. It is still unlikely the Falcon is caught as no one noticed, but it is certainly possible.

At time index 1_04_44 the DS is still closer at 2,000 km and it is at this time Solo notices the tractor beam. If you watch his flight path he makes several small changes in direction throughout his approach; if he were under the influence of a tractor beam while making those adjustments one might expect him to notice the unusual handling. This suggests but does not prove that the tractor beam was only recently engaged.

The above suggests the tractor beam was engaged somewhere between 5000 and 2000 km distance. We are supposed to believe the beam engaged around 2000 km, but I do not suggest to prove this.

The maximum range we see the DS at is about 30,000 km which is far, far less than maximum torpedo range against mobile targets and several orders of magnitude less than torpedo range against predictable targets.

Unless I grossly miscalculated the ranges then my conclusion is still valid even if the numbers are off.

Slightly tangental, it may be possible to find the Falcon's acceleration from this scene with a few more screen grabs.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 02:07am

Darth Wong wrote:
The Silence and I wrote:Alternatively a singularity can be maintained with very compact equipment
And your evidence for this is ...?

The likelyhood that small craft carry singularities and if nothing else the fact that a Warbird's singularity containment equipment appears to take up one corner of a single deck. It seems fairly compact to me, but if you want hard proof I cannot provide it.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 02:32am

Connor MacLeod wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:
The Silence and I wrote:As for the fighter screen, what are they going to do? Shoot down a torpedo that traverses tens of thousands of KM in less than a second? (Skin of Evil demonstrates extrem accel and very high velocity for planet bound torpedoes).
Why are they normally so slow then?
And how does it demonstarte this? Are there calcs presented (the basis for the distance, the speed, etc.)

I do not have season one TNG so I cannot provide screen grabs but the scene is simple enough to describe:

The Enterprise is sitting in high orbit and fires a single photon torpedo at the planet with intent to destroy the shuttlecraft. We are looking at the planet from the viewscreen. The torpedo is visible to us for several fractions of a second before accelerating to such a high speed that it impacts the surface within a few frames of the acceleration. This is the best photo I can find on the web. It does not illustrate how quickly the torpedo traveled, but it does give an idea how high up they were, several thousand km at least (geosync is ~35,000 km).

Modified to show planet diameter: Here

What I don't know is how to scale with that aspect ratio as it is not wide screen. If the image height is the same as it would be with 35 mm film then I can compensate if I understand correctly how this works. {The height is 210 pixels which would give a widescreen width of 494.25 pixels. Then the 170 pixel diameter planet, if Earth sized (12760km) would scale to 37,000 km distant. But don't take my word for it, try it yourself to be sure}

Regardless, the slow speed in battles is hardly all a torpedo engine is capable off; planetary bombardment is very similar to DS bombardment, I would expect the speeds and accelerations to be similar.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 02:41am

SirNitram wrote:
The Silence and I wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Silence, if you're implying that torpedo range for the Starfleet vessels is longer than the tractor beam range of the Death Star, please re-watch ANH and do some simple scaling for the incredible distances involved. It still looked like a moon when they got caught.
Torpedo range against predicable targets is millions of km (off hand I've forgotten how many, maybe ~3-5 or so). As the DS is certainly a predictable target this applies.

For the distance involved in ANH, a mere 160 km wide sphere does not have to be millions of km away to look like a small moon; I'd have to check but it might not even be visible at such a range.

I will scale this to be sure, but I doubt the station was even a light second away at the time.
Oh, they'll hit the Death Star.. But that means very, very little when you consider those firecrackers vs. a 900Km armoured battlestation. When it cranks on it's ECM, you can forget long range shots against anything vital.

I am led to believe no one has actually read anything I've said so far in this thread...

I realized immediately the futility of using torpedo warheads against that armor, so I gave the Feds a little credit in their special and deserved area of innovation. I proposed it might not be all that difficult to modify a torpedo to carry just antimatter (hence a larger load) and just prior to impact to dump the stuff infront of it. No material armor can resist being anihilated so this allows *some* damage instead of nothing. Spray antimatter over a tractor emitter (are these still in the OT?) or an ion exhaust and see how happy the equipment is afterwards. Considering how many of these weapons the Feds need it is a long shot, but that is all the Feds can hope for: long shots.

The ECM is going to be a problem if the Feds don't have accurate sensor data on the locations of the specific spots before hand, other wise it isn't much more difficult than giving the torpedoes coordinates to hit. Accuracy may go down, but they need to mass produce the weapons anyway so send larger volleys to make up the difference and they might be ok.

If they don't have accurate readings from before hand then the whole plan goes out the window...

Firefox · Post by **Firefox** » 2005-03-27 02:48am

Tractor range is less than torpedo range. As for the fighter screen, what are they going to do?

Deal with the capital ships while the tractor beams pick up the torpedoes and either destroy them or send them hurtling at another target?

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-03-27 02:49am

I realized immediately the futility of using torpedo warheads against that armor, so I gave the Feds a little credit in their special and deserved area of innovation. I proposed it might not be all that difficult to modify a torpedo to carry just antimatter (hence a larger load) and just prior to impact to dump the stuff infront of it. No material armor can resist being anihilated so this allows *some* damage instead of nothing. Spray antimatter over a tractor emitter (are these still in the OT?) or an ion exhaust and see how happy the equipment is afterwards. Considering how many of these weapons the Feds need it is a long shot, but that is all the Feds can hope for: long shots.

Even pure antimatter loads would at best double the torpedo's damage. Which is still well short of what's needed. That's why I proposed the asteroid solution, none of the Federation's actual weapons can hope to penetrate the sheer size of the Death Star's armor and expendable areas. Unless they manage to cut through to the reactor and/or superlaser, they might as well not try.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-03-27 02:52am

*kills lack of edit button*

To explain that a bit better, the only two parts of the Death Star that matter are the hardest to kill. The superlaser is huge, and if the designers had any sanity, is well armored against damage causing a misfire. And the reactors are buried deep under hundreds of kilometers of expendable space. It's going to take a lot of torpedoes to get to that, even if every single one hits perfectly.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2005-03-27 03:12am

I am further convinced no one has read my posts

lPeregrine, this is my general plan of attack for the Federation:

1) Deal with the TIEs somehow (I proposed a tactic that might be effective, look it up if you're curious)

2) Using the modifed torpedoes, attack tractor emitters on one side of the station.

3) After this relatively fragile equipment has been destroyed, move the fleet into their tractor range and start pulling the DS toward the sun.

4) Because the pulling operation could take months, use the torpedoes to destroy the ion engines to ensure the DS does not regain sublight anytime soon.

Firefox, in the very post you quoted me from I myself said the TIEs could attack the Federation fleet. You do not have to tell me what I have already said.

If you think the tractor beams are going to target torpedos travelling at that velocity (what velocity you say? Read some of my posts) then you are probably guilty of fan wankery. Bare seconds to track and target something the size of a photon torpedo is not impossible with a dedicated point defense weapon. But with a bulky tractor beam?
Think man!
There is a reason they are not employed against starfighters in battle and that reason has something to do with aquiring rapid target lock (or rather, not aquiring rapid target lock) I'd guess. Jamming is not the issue because if tractor beams could lock on as well as point defense in jammed conditions then they may as well be used when the guns are used. They are not. One is a weapon system designed to aquire target, track, and fire quickly. The other is not a weapon system at all, don't attribute it features found on weapons.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-03-27 03:23am

4) Because the pulling operation could take months, use the torpedoes to destroy the ion engines to ensure the DS does not regain sublight anytime soon.

You do realize that after the first month, the protection is subject to end at any time, right? And that the Death Star's sublight engines are going to be massive targets that are going to take a lot of damage to disable permanently?

If you think the tractor beams are going to target torpedos travelling at that velocity (what velocity you say? Read some of my posts) then you are probably guilty of fan wankery. Bare seconds to track and target something the size of a photon torpedo is not impossible with a dedicated point defense weapon. But with a bulky tractor beam?
Think man!

Actually, targeting a torpedo would be very easy. If you're firing from extreme range, you've got a very predictable flight path. The same ease of targeting that makes hits on the Death Star possible from long range is going to work against the torpedoes as well. Targeting close-range shots in a chaotic battle would be difficult, but targeting long-range shots coming in on a ballistic course would be a matter of simple physics calculations.

Lone_Prodigy · Post by **Lone_Prodigy** » 2005-03-27 03:37am

What's fighter range? At most 1000km based on X Wing targetting computers in ANH;

You got that from the inside the X-wing shots during ANH, didn't you? Never mind that in NJO, Vong and NR X-wings had dogfights going on at the lightsecond range...

3) After this relatively fragile equipment has been destroyed, move the fleet into their tractor range and start pulling the DS toward the sun.

What makes you think that the tractor beams are fragile and not heavily armored, since most prey coming in would immediately open fire on the tractor beam emitter if given a chance? In Vision of the Future an ISD was inside an Imperial shipyard yet could only destroy the tractor beams at a rate of one per minimum of every dozen seconds, despite having teraton-level weaponry and literally being suicidally desperate.

When's the last time Fed ships towed something massing at least twice as much as a planet (DS1 had enough fuel onboard to annilate Alderaan and be ready to destroy Yavin IV afterward) with neutronium armor and fuel that outweights the ship by orders of magnitude? I must have missed that episode. Sorry, I guessed I missed the tactic to deal with the starfighters– spraying antimatter, it was? There are probably enough TIE bombers with gigaton missiles to annihilate the entire Federation navy onboard the DS2.

This thread was originally interesting and fun to watch, but when the author started randomly neutering the Empire for no reason it became insane (removing the tractor beams, not allowing the TIEs to go on the offensive, etc.). As Mike put it best at the top of this page, what good is a vs. when the author continually moves the goalposts?

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2005-03-27 07:02am

I've done a bit of calculating, and it seems that a black hole would have to mass around 10^11kg in order to last an hour on its own.

Given a month, I can't see why the federation couldn't accumulate that much mass in one place, so the only questions are whether they could feed it into a black hole fast enough, and whether they could accelerate such an object (because of its large mass that is, the fact that it's a black hole shouldn't matter).

Oh, and the question of shields.

Jawawithagun · Post by **Jawawithagun** » 2005-03-27 07:32am

And how do you propose turning this amount of matter into a black hole? Earth has got a mass of 6*10E24kg and it doesn't look very holey to me.

How do you propose to raise the density of the matter from 5.5g/cm^3 (using the value for Earth here) to above that of a neutron star (7*10E17g/cm^3)?

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2005-03-27 08:13am

Smash a few particles together at high energy. Form a small black hole. Feed it untill it gets bigger. We can do the first two steps of that now.

Either that or do it in some unspecified futuristic way which I can't possibly explain.

The romulans can build a black hole, so one of those options must be possible in the trek universe.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2005-03-27 10:10am

The Silence and I wrote:
RedImperator wrote:
The Silence and I wrote:Well, one idea that comes to mind is the risk that imposes on Earth...

Earth is much better off if A) the DS explodes elsewhere and B) there is no large moon making a close pass and screwing up things with its gravity.

Assuming of course they can do either. I personally think they can, just not with a single ship of course, it would take several dozen or more to move something that massive in any time frame worth contemplating.
...several dozen? E-D could barely move a 2.5 km rock. I have my doubts the entire fleet together could move an object that size.
It was larger than 2.5 km (nitpick, orders of magnitude say this isn't that important in the big picture, but this is getting annoying--see my above screen caps).

My idea is for the federation fleet to deal with the TIEs (this could be extremely hard), destroy the tractor mounts on one side of the DS, and start pulling/pushing the station with every available ship. While the heavy impulse ships are towing the DS (delta vee added/subtracted every day may be extremely low but over time there will be an effect) the rest of the fleet destroys the DS sublight engines to prevent it ever regaining mobility. Then keep towing for as long as you need, and keep away from the side of the station with the intact tractor beams.

If you want to know how I expect the Federation to damage the tractor beams and then the engines it is with antimatter--naked antimatter reacting with the bare hull of the DS, which nullifies the properties of the armor somewhat. This would be delivered with a modified torpedo which dumps antimatter in front of it moments before impact; the torpedo's speed (they can travel ~30,000 km in less than a second) will go a long way towards preventing the tractor emitter from deflecting the attack.

Asuming, of course, the torpedoes are accurate enough to hit the tractor emitters from long range, which considering the body of evidence in Trek that says they're not accurate enough to hit entire starships at much shorter ranges, seems unlikely. And what's your justification for assuming the sublight engines of a battlestation designed to be immune to attack by Star Wars level civilizations are going to be vulnerable to Federation weapons?

Antimatter isn't magic. The only thing you can be certain it will do is annihilate an equivilant mass of armor, which isn't that much. The rest of the damage will have to be done by the annihilation reaction's energy release, which will only be double that of an ordinary photon torpedo. It would be better to design antimatter cutting torches and send engineers in spacesuits to the DS surface to work on the armor. Too bad that would take decades to work, and you've got 30 days before Q's magical nerfing ends.

Would it be out there to speculate that the DSII may weigh close to what Earth does?
It would not be so very far fetched actually. This is why my strategy relies on preventing the DS from regaining sublight capability; the time needed to tow it away--even with a fleet of hundreds--is going to be huge.

I still don't believe it's possible, frankly. You seem to be forgetting that there's a force acting to hold the Death Star in place--Earth's gravity well. And there is ZERO evidence that the Federation can move planetary or near planetary mass objects in anything like a reasonable time frame. Your plan would require far more than 30 days to work, and depends on the DS being rendered helpless once the nerfing period is over. Not to mention, considering the DS's size, they might well have machine shops on board capable of repairing damaged tractor emitters and sublight engines.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2005-03-27 10:11am

Prozac the Robert wrote:Smash a few particles together at high energy. Form a small black hole. Feed it untill it gets bigger. We can do the first two steps of that now.

Either that or do it in some unspecified futuristic way which I can't possibly explain.

The romulans can build a black hole, so one of those options must be possible in the trek universe.

And once they get the thing up to planetary mass so it won't violently evaporate, how do they move it?

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2005-03-27 11:39am

Darth Wong wrote:wautd, the ever-changing constraints on the behaviour of DS2 are starting to fucking piss me off. First you say they have no weapons or shields, and only the TIEs can leave the station. Then you say that the tractor-beam emitters are out too. Then you add that the TIEs cannot carry ordnance to bombard Earth. What's next? The TIE pilots have to be fucking blindfolded?

What the fuck is the point of asking people to explore a hypothetical scenario WHEN YOU KEEP ADDING MORE GODDAMNED RULES THE MINUTE ANYONE THINKS OF SOMETHING?

What the fuck are you on.

"First you say they have no weapons or shields, and only the TIEs can leave the station"
Yes as stated in the OP

"Then you say that the tractor-beam emitters are out too."
I never said that.

"Then you add that the TIEs cannot carry ordnance to bombard Earth"
I wasnt aware TIE's carry missiles in the first place