Imps vs the whole Milky Way Galaxy

[Batman]

Let's try one more time.

We're talking about 400GW worth of thermal/kinetic effects alone. That's not exactly a 'super' ship. Remove the protection of the shields and it's a whole new ball game.

I was taking the word super to mean it can kick a Galaxy's ass.

Noted.

Besides, who says the Husnock (assuming they existed) weren't concentrated on a single planet with a few lunar/orbiting habitats? Given the amount of empty and uncartographed space within Federation boundaries a single system nation could easily go unnoticed.

I say if you read my post. One homeworld.

I must have missed that. Conceeded.

Urm-excuse me? Since we know that charged-particle beams are effective against AQ shields this means they get to ignore them how, exactly?
They have to go through shields just like any other weapon. They may have an easier time doing so but that's it.

I see nowhere where Raven says the particle beams ignore shields.

If they have to through the shields first how, pray tell, are they going to react with the hull?
And if they DO get though the shields how pray tell does them being antimatter matter? They have plenty of firepower to kill the ship anyway.

Um-cleanup, please? Pretty please?

[Raven]

Urm-excuse me? Since we know that charged-particle beams are effective against AQ shields this means they get to ignore them how, exactly?
They have to go through shields just like any other weapon. They may have an easier time doing so but that's it.

They won't ignore the shields, they'll just be very effective against them. A 400 GW laser, for example, wouldn't have a chance at penetrating a Federation shield. (Which can absorb 130000 TJ of EM radiation, as shown in Relics.)

Once the shields are down, (depending on how the particle beam works) the fact that it fires antiprotons rather than protons can significantly increase its damage.
A 400 GW particle beam weapon that accelerates antiprotons to .9c (1.2 GeV) would actually be equivalent up to 1 TW when annihilation at the target is considered.

Now this depends on the details of the PBW's workings. If it fires a smaller number of faster, higher energy particles for equivalent firepower, the amount derived from M/AM annihilation at the target decreases (as the total mass of impacting antiprotons is less).

[Batman]

Does the term 'intensity' mean anything to you?

[OmegaGuy]

Wait, let me just make sure I understand this:

Is the argument that the Dowd (sp?) created 1 ship and sent it all around to kill all the Husnock one ship/planet at a time, or is it that he created a bunch of ships and attacked all the Husnock colonies and ships simultaneously?

[SirNitram]

Wait, let me just make sure I understand this:

Is the argument that the Dowd (sp?) created 1 ship and sent it all around to kill all the Husnock one ship/planet at a time, or is it that he created a bunch of ships and attacked all the Husnock colonies and ships simultaneously?

We see him make one, we stick with that. But why assume the Husnock are so numerous as for this to be a problem?

[OmegaGuy]

Well unless it was a big planet or a planet with nothing but city like Coruscant (which would not be self - sufficient), then 50 billion is a bit too high of a population for one planet, I would think.

[SirNitram]

Well unless it was a big planet or a planet with nothing but city like Coruscant (which would not be self - sufficient), then 50 billion is a bit too high of a population for one planet, I would think.

You are aware that the planet we live on, with our current population densities so low, we're around one-tenth that?

And it's really idiotic to claim Coruscant. Coruscant was in the hundreds of trillions; maybe higher. 50 billion wouldn't ever see each other on Coruscant.

[OmegaGuy]

Well what I meant was the planet could easily hold 50 billion people if it was like Coruscant.

I suppose I figured that since the Husnock have warp drive technology, they would probably have colonized somewhere.

[SirNitram]

Well what I meant was the planet could easily hold 50 billion people if it was like Coruscant.

I suppose I figured that since the Husnock have warp drive technology, they would probably have colonized somewhere.

No, you said that unless it was big(What the hell that means, I have no clue) or like Coruscant, you thought 50 billion was way too many. Don't be dishonest when I can see your previous posts.

[Batman]

Why should they? Assuming their homeworld can comfortably hold 50 billion (entirely feasible) why bother colonizing?

[OmegaGuy]

When I meant big, I meant the planet was significantly larger than Earth.

As for reasons to colonize, they were obviously an aggressive species, so it would make sense to not keep all their eggs in one basket in case one of their enemies found their homeworld and attacked it.

[SirNitram]

When I meant big, I meant the planet was significantly larger than Earth.

As for reasons to colonize, they were obviously an aggressive species, so it would make sense to not keep all their eggs in one basket in case one of their enemies found their homeworld and attacked it.

Have you thought about what being signifigantly larger than Earth entails for the evolution of life on that planet at all?

And why assume that, because they are intensely territorial, thery're naturally expansionist?

You're making one stupid assumption after another here, with nothing to support them.

[OmegaGuy]

Okay, I conceed that it's equally likely they could have stayed on one planet.

[Raven]

Does the term 'intensity' mean anything to you?

Perhaps I shouldn't have said "penetrate"; ST shields have commonly allowed energy to pass through before failure. What I meant was a 400 GW laser would be far less effective at bringing down a shield than a 400 GW particle beam.

Anyway, are you claiming that a 400 GW laser will be comparable in effectiveness to a 400 GW particle beam on the basis of intensity? Intensity or not, that's several orders of magnitude below what the shield can handle.

We know ST shields conduct energy and absorb it over a wide area of the shield surface.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... hield1.jpg

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... hield2.jpg



This process doesn't take much more than 1 second, if that.

We know from Relics that a GCS shield can handle at least 30 MW/m^2 sustained (they expected the shield to last 3 hours at this rate)

If the shield can spread 400 GJ over a ten thousand square meter area in one second, it will stop the 400 GW laser, as intensity would only be 40 MW/m^2 peak.

Contrast this with the 400 GW Husnock weapon, which took out their shields in less than a second with 1 hit. Not leaked energy through the shield, took it down altogether.

[brianeyci]

No Raven, I believe he's contesting your claim that an antimatter jacketed particle beam would be effective on Star Trek hulls, based on the fact that if a particle beam got through the shields at all there's no point splashing antimatter on the hull because the particle beam itself can annihilate the ship. Whew, that was a whopper.

Brian

[Batman]

Memo to self: I f youwant to quote, Quick Reply is NOT the button you want.

Does the term 'intensity' mean anything to you?

Perhaps I shouldn't have said "penetrate"; ST shields have commonly allowed energy to pass through before failure. What I meant was a 400 GW laser would be far less effective at bringing down a shield than a 400 GW particle beam.

No kidding.

Anyway, are you claiming that a 400 GW laser will be comparable in effectiveness to a 400 GW particle beam on the basis of intensity?

No, I'm claiming that bringing up a figure for EM absorption that involved the entire shield facing and lasted hours to contrast a focused, short-duration particle attack is bogus.

Intensity or not, that's several orders of magnitude below what the shield can handle.

As per your Relics example over a period of hours over the entire shield facing.

We know ST shields conduct energy and absorb it over a wide area of the shield surface.

No we don't. They appear to retransmit over a wide area. They absorb over the area of impact and nowhere else.

We know from Relics that a GCS shield can handle at least 30 MW/m^2 sustained (they expected the shield to last 3 hours at this rate)
If the shield can spread 400 GJ over a ten thousand square meter area in one second,

For which no evidence exists,

it will stop the 400 GW laser, as intensity would only be 40 MW/m^2 peak.

Intensity would be 400GW/whatever the area of the laser impact happens to be.

Contrast this with the 400 GW Husnock weapon, which took out their shields in less than a second with 1 hit. Not leaked energy through the shield, took it down altogether.

Which would for some arcane reason not be spread over a large area I take it.
Nobody disputes that particle weapons are more effective against Trek shields than EM ones are. Your useage of the Relics numbers to show how much, however, was bogus.

[Raven]

Memo to self: I f youwant to quote, Quick Reply is NOT the button you want.

No, I'm claiming that bringing up a figure for EM absorption that involved the entire shield facing and lasted hours to contrast a focused, short-duration particle attack is bogus.

I'll concede the point of directly comparing Relics to a directed energy weapon.
The Relics example can apply in comparison to events in "Descent" or "Redemption" or other examples of ST shields vs. plasma. I should have said that Relics proves a 400 GW particle weapon > a 400 GW laser, not that a 400 GW laser is guaranteed to be useless.


However, I will dispute that a 400 GW laser will be an effective weapon, versus shield mechanics.

As per your Relics example over a period of hours over the entire shield facing.

No we don't. They appear to retransmit over a wide area. They absorb over the area of impact and nowhere else.

For which no evidence exists,

Intensity would be 400GW/whatever the area of the laser impact happens to be.

How do you propose the shields work?

We can treat the shield system as having properties of matter. The surface absorbs energy. The shield surface, or the shield generator in the hull, stores energy. Some mechanism (most likely the shield surface) radiates the energy.

We know that 400 GW is not enough to overwhelm the capacity of the system to store energy (>multi TJ), nor is it beyond the ability of the system to dissipate (3311 GW max).

A 400 GW laser would depend on exceeding the ability of the shield surface to absorb. It won't damage the shield significantly, it can only hope enough energy makes it through the shield to damage the ship.

The question is, what are the limits of the shield's absorption rate?
We know Federation shields are "leaky". We know they are frequency based. How much of that "leakiness" is due to their frequency based nature, and how much is due to energy in excess of what the shield can absorb?

Consider a 250kt photon torpedo exploding over 100,000 m^2 of shields. If the torpedo explodes in the span of one microsecond (nukes blow up in nanoseconds), the shields have to absorb 10,000 TW/m^2.

That's why I doubt the effectiveness of a 400 GW laser.

Nobody disputes that particle weapons are more effective against Trek shields than EM ones are. Your useage of the Relics numbers to show how much, however, was bogus.

I'll admit Relics cannot be used to quantify how effective EM weapons are, only to say that they are "less" effective than particle beams.

[Norl]

Why should they? Assuming their homeworld can comfortably hold 50 billion (entirely feasible) why bother colonizing?

If Europe could comfortably hold a few hundred million people, why bother colonizing?

Let's face it, the idea that an advanced, warp-capable race would hang out in their own solar system and never colonize elsewhere is more due to headridge-of-the-week syndrome than to any sociological legitimacy.

And if these Huns were the kind of murderous regime that would slaughter a colony, then they're doing it to either colonize or loot the resources, or both. I.e. very like European expansion historically. That's why you, the looting society, leaves your home world. And a warlike race has no doubt had many wars and factions internal to its own history, and has thus learned the hard lesson that expansion gets you more people and resources which means you win more wars.

While it's possible that any race behaves in any manner, I would not presume a race was not expansive just because you don't see them expanding. Not expanding would be the oddity in this cased, based on all examples we have in reality, which is Earth's history.

[Ghost Rider]

Read the rules...we have a point in consideration of posting in topics that have been declared "dead".