Star Trek Vs Harrington

[JGregory32]

The Star Wars vs Star Trek argument has been pretty much done to death. 99.99% of the time on a level footing Star Wars will win. How about comparing Star Trek to other series? In particular David Weber's Honor Harrington space opera series. Unlike Star Trek Honor Harrington does seem to be a actual hard science series and the author does try to stick to actual laws of physics.
So for the first versus lets look at two ships. The USS Enterprise E flagship of the Federation, a body containing hundreds of planets vs the GSN Harrington. The GSN Harrington, named after the main character of the series, is the proud flagship of the Grayson Space navy. Grayson territory comprises one system and one major planet with astroid belt.
Seems like no contest right? The Enterprise should be able to turn the Harringtoninto scrap right? After all the Federation is a couple hundred times larger than Grayson, there's no way that tiny little Grayson could produce a ship able to take on the Federations best right.
You might be surprised.

The stats of the Enterprise E are well known so I won't bore you with them. Consider the weapons on the Harrington.
Noted as an SD(P) class ship meaning that it's a SuperDreadnaught of the Pod laying variety. It's constructed to lay a series of "pods" containing 8 40ton missles. These missles have an engagement envelope of 30 MILLION Kilometers and an average acceleration of 46,000 G. There are three types of of missle heads ECM, nuclear, and LASER. Before the Star Trek kiddies start moaning about how the navigational deflector makes the enterprise immune to lasers know that theses lasers are produced by a nuclear explosion along with a gain material to pump out high energy gamma ray lasers. These lasers have an effective range of 25,000 kilometers.
These missles are the main armament but not the only. Numerous GLASERs are also mounted. GLASER stands for "gamma ray amplification by stimulated emission of radiation".
"Hah! A few torpedo blasts as we use the Picard trick to warp in front will do" I hear the Trekies say. Not so when the ship your against masses "6,000,000–8,500,000 tons".
Cheers.
Next time:Shields or how to stop all those missles.
BTW: Love the site, wish the technical revalations for Revenge of the Sith was up but oh well. I'm sure Darth Wong has a life that needs tending to.

[Ghost Rider]

Off to OSF

[JGregory32]

Opps, sorry for posting in the wrong forum.

[SAMAS]

Doesn't HH make use of Macross Missile Massacres that would make anime series' blush?

And with missiles that, IIRC, are rated in the Megatons at the very least?

[JGregory32]

Actually the largest recorded number of missles used was in "At all costs". In this instance two modern fleets attack each other head on for the first time when both sides are of equal parity. The text is quoted below.

"In the seven and a half minutes it took the lead salvo to cross between Home Fleet and Second Fleet, Sebastian D'Orville's ships fired seven salvos at sixty-five-second intervals, each of 1,800 pods, containing a total of 21,600 missiles. Over a hundred and fifty thousand missiles, the maximum Home Fleet's fire control could manage, went screaming through space… and 524,000 Havenite missiles rampaged out to meet them. Fire control sensors and reconnaissance platforms all over the star system found themselves half-blinded by the interference and massive impeller source of almost seven hundred thousand attack missiles and many times that many counter-missiles. And then the EW platforms began to add their own blinding efforts to the chaos."

[Jaevric]

This has, I believe, been done before. There's nothing to debate; a lone Honorverse SD would be sufficient to smash Starfleet flat, particularly with the new bow and stern wall technology. Given the distances an impeller wedge and sidewalls reach out around an Honorverse vessel, a Federation ship would have to be inside the impeller wedge before its weapons could even engage the Honorverse starship--at which time the Honorverse starship's point defense laser clusters and countermissiles are going to rip the Feddie ship into tiny pieces. Much less the broadside weapons. And that assumes that a Federation starship could warp that close to an impeller wedge--haven't we seen intense gravity wells cause the Feddies issues before?

I will, however, note that the broadside energy mounts used in the Honorverse are Grasers, not Glasers.

[Zor]

We have argued this one into the ground several times. Starfleet is very much fucked here, Phasers and Photorps cant get through sidewalls as both of them have mass, nor do they have anywere near sufficient PD to punch through said honerverse salvos. Contact nukes put into cruiser level missiles (of which there are several per missile) are rated at 80 megatons, well above Starfleet Photorp antimatter warheads. On the ground this is an even worse slaughter, as Starfleet simply has nothing to deal with Honorverse Powersuited Tribarral weilding Infantry with Pinnance Support.

Zor

[Ritterin Sophia]

I don't think I've ever heard of a Sci-Fi Universe that Trek can beat... anyone got one?

[JGregory32]

Trek could possibly beat up the "younger" races of B5 couldn't they?

[The Grim Squeaker]

I don't think I've ever heard of a Sci-Fi Universe that Trek can beat... anyone got one?

There are plenty (If you ignore ground combat [which limits it to the Sign aliens]), Trek has FTL and megaton range weaponry along with shields capable of resisting hits, thats way above most "Hard" sci-fi verses for one (Though not the nastier, smarter ones if you only take one on one fights into account and not the strategical scene).

[Coyote]

Starr Trek, theoretically, 200-400 years in our future, would have a hard time with the "Space: Above and Beyond" civilisation, which is portrayed as being about 60 years in our future.

If fightign was contained to space only, as mentioned earlier, they may be able to beat up the "Aliens" universe.

[Straha]

I don't think I've ever heard of a Sci-Fi Universe that Trek can beat... anyone got one?

Maybe Gundam? I hold fast that Battletech is superior to Trek (which is not praise on BTech by any means) but Starfleet could probably bring down some of the IS Nations and Clans if matched one on one (if only because BTech lacks any real spacefleet.) Ditto with the B5 Races. Firefly only spans one system so it's possible that Trek could win there to thanks solely to FTL drive (though I'm no expert on Firefly so take that with a pound of salt.) Really I think it devolves to what you define by "beat," technologically Trek loses to almost any popular Sci-Fiverse. However if you compare StarFleet with other nations mano a mano, so to speak, it's possible that Trek could win...

[Feil]

Well, Trek could handily stomp nBSG. Firefly too, seeing as Trek has ftl and Firefly doesn't.

Honor Harrington is hardly hard scifi. Among other things, it assumes that gravity propogates instantaniously (it propogates at c) and damned near everything in the universe happily flouts conservation of momentum. The Honorverse stands out in the realism department because, given the available technology (nevermind that it couldn't possibly function), the applications of that technology make sense, more or less.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

New Battlestar Galactica, Aliens, Babylon 5 (only the Young Races), Firefly, pretty much any hard sci-fi, Gundam... Star Trek's just always presented against the heavy hitters of Sci-fi, so it just looks puny. They do have FTL, megaton-ranging torpedos and shields to match.

[Prozac the Robert]

Just an idle thought, how does trek stand when compared to pre modernisation Grayson or Saganami era Manticore? There must be some point in the Honorverse timeline when a matchup might be interesting.

[CJvR]

Podnoughts are probably worse at fighting ST than the older designs. The missile range is wasted against ST warpdrives, energy weaponry is the real killer. Internal missile salvoes are more than enough vs the Feds and since combat with ST units will take place so close that the missiles will barely clear the sidewalls before actually hitting their targets.

[Beowulf]

The Honorverse doesn't assume gravity propogates instantaneously. It does assume that wedges have effects which can be seen at speeds greater than light.

Podnaughts may be better at fighting ST, because they are able to devote more hull space to energy weapons.

[phongn]

The Honorverse doesn't assume gravity propogates instantaneously. It does assume that wedges have effects which can be seen at speeds greater than light.

Yeah, but the wedges are tracked by gravimetric sensors and the FTL communications system relies on the same effect, IIRC.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Among other things, it assumes that gravity propogates instantaniously (it propogates at c) and damned near everything in the universe happily flouts conservation of momentum.

No, they don't ignore momentum, they just have an external energy source, the hyperspace tap effect of their wedges. That's not ignoring momentum any more than a sailing vessel ignores momentum by getting energy from the wind.

The Honorverse doesn't assume gravity propogates instantaneously. It does assume that wedges have effects which can be seen at speeds greater than light.

Yeah, but the wedges are tracked by gravimetric sensors and the FTL communications system relies on the same effect, IIRC.

That's because gravity in the Honorverse has effects on the "alpha wall" that seperates normal space from hyper space; they don't actually use sensors that detect gravity directly AFAIK, but the alpha wall effects, which are FTL.

[Batman]

Wether gravity is FTL or not in the Honorverse is a bit iffy. While there's the theory that they detect gravity's effects on hyperspace the majority of FTL sensor examples DO indicate they can detect gravity directly and that it DOES move FTL (grav pulse comms anyone?)
Not that the Honorverse ever was hard SciFi to begin with-need I mention their insane AG technology or the dumping of inertia into hyperspace?

On the subject of Trek vs the Honorverse, as has been pointed out IF the Honorverse vessel gets into engagement range the E-E is screwed. For an actual engagement were both sides are free to do as they please I see a stalemate: The E_E can't do dick to the GNS Harrington, and the GNS Harrington can't catch the E-E. IF Harrington gets into energy range it's over.

Two minor nitpicks:
Zor mentioned cruiser missiles are 80 megaton. No such mention throughout the series. Indeed as the standard warhead is a laser head that information would be worthless without knowing the efficiency of the warhead and the number of beams. As that is no doubt once more a reference to 'THOTQ' the 78 tons were the MASS of the missiles.
Which brings me to the second nitpick: Somehow I doubt pre-pod heavy cruiser missiles outmass a Podnoughts capital ones by almost a factor of two.
Of course, there WAS explicit mention of 250 MT warheads in 'AOH' where a private yacht survived a hit by one, which should bring the durability/firepower discrepancy into perspective...

[Dahak]

Well, Trek could handily stomp nBSG. Firefly too, seeing as Trek has ftl and Firefly doesn't.

Honor Harrington is hardly hard scifi. Among other things, it assumes that gravity propogates instantaniously (it propogates at c)...

Not, it doesn't. Only the interaction between gravity fields and Hyperspace are detectable at FTL.
Or, to quote DW himself:

The Manticoran FTL com and, for that matter, gravitic sensors in general, do not function solely in normal-space. Or, to put it more precisely, they do not detect solely n-space phenomena. The grav pulses of an FTL com, like an impeller wedge, distort local n-space. They also produce an echo in hyper-space--a sort of ripple or cascade effect--which is what the gravitics actually detect and measure. In theory, any gravity field--even that of an itty-bitty meteor--produces the same sort of ripple or cascade; in practice, only a very powerful gravity field produces one which present-generations gravitics can detect and/or measure. A hyper footprint, on the other hand, is detectable at far greater distances than any impeller wedge simply because the "ripple" a starship produces as it actually enters or leaves hyper is much more of a roaring cataract. The real trick for the FTL com was developing the ability to produce finely controlled pulses (ripples), and the RMN has been steadily improving that ability.

[consequences]

There are exactly two things that could be the saving grace of ST here. And by saving grace, I mean 'let them potentially force a strategic draw with likely horrific casualties on their side, if the gods are with them, and Honorverse doesn't prosecute their war aggressively'.

The first is long-range ftl communications. The absolute best that Honorverse has, barring a convenient wormhole junction, is a few thousand C, and requires back and forth trips by starships. Strategic coordination will be an absolute nightmare against an opponent that has been shown to have some real-time communication across interstellar distances.

The second is reasonably tactical ftl not restricted by a hyper limit. At close Honorverse ranges, this isn't going to matter much as there simply won't be enough time to get out of the way, but extended range MDMs getting into attack distance will require the ST officers under attack to be dumb as posts, and slowly reacting posts at that.

If the ST sides try to fight in their usual craptastic manner, throwing out a wall of battle to attack strongpoints, they are going to get butchered in short order. If they use stealthy ships on the outskirts of systems to relay enemy deployment informationa nd coordinate strikes, they can at least wear away attritionally at Honorverse resources. Of course, if the Honorverse abandons their normal startegy to just chuck a waller or two at every important Federation world near simultaneously, the raiding rapidly becomes a moot point.

[Batman]

While Trek definitely has a decided advantage in strategic mobility (faster FTL AND no need to work with grav waves/worry about hyper limits) and sensors/communications (communications seem to be realtime over low-end ly at least and sensors are lighthour ranges for just about anything if not more while Honorverse is limited to gravitics and that's at insystem ranges). Trek weapon yields and ranges are pretty pathetic by Honorverse standards so I doubt they could do more than annoy the locals.
About the only tactic I could see working against the Honorverse is a combination of touch-and-go downwarping and offensive transporter use (assuming the bloody things work through Honorverse radiation shielding and/or sidewalls and armour in the first place, which is far from a given). Given the Feds are as we see in the shows, not bloody likely.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Are we sure photon torpedoes megaton yield? I've heard from many sources (here, so i tend to trust them) that 64mt is a VERY generous upper end yeild, and the real yeilds shown and realistically posible would be as low as some kilitons. And phasers, as i understand it, work on a principle that is quite different than DET and may not even be able to hurt a gravitic shield like those common place in Honorverse.

To say nothing of the outrageous missile volleys they have on their side, or tremendous range advantage.

[Batman]

Are we sure photon torpedoes megaton yield? I've heard from many sources (here, so i tend to trust them) that 64mt is a VERY generous upper end yeild, and the real yeilds shown and realistically posible would be as low as some kilitons.

The 64MT, as has been pointed out a million times already, comes from the non-canon TNG TM and has, indeed, NO CANONICITY WHATSOEVER. That being said TNG torpedoes seem to be triple-figure KT and may be up to single figure MT on occasion.

And phasers, as i understand it, work on a principle that is quite different than DET and may not even be able to hurt a gravitic shield like those common place in Honorverse.

They DO affect shields including Borg ones even after adaption which indicates that there is at least a partial DET component to them. I agree they're not powerful enough to defeat Honorverse defenses.

To say nothing of the outrageous missile volleys they have on their side, or tremendous range advantage.

Which are going to be completely useless against a smartly handled Fed ship. While the extremely stupidly written Trek crews might fall to them thanks to being complete and utter morons on occasion, Trek technology means they can avoid them missile volleys with pathetic ease.