The Federation vs the Commonwealth

[Tartarus]

I just finished Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, and i'm wondering which power would win in a war, the Commonwealth or the Federation. Im fairly sure the Commonwealth would, on the ground, gun down redshirts with ease, but im not sure about the space battles. Any insights would be appreciated.

[Aaron]

Could we get some info on the Commonwealth? Is this the one that is basically the British Commonwealth in space, complete with Royal Marines?

[tim grail 3]

I just finished Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, and i'm wondering which power would win in a war, the Commonwealth or the Federation. Im fairly sure the Commonwealth would, on the ground, gun down redshirts with ease, but im not sure about the space battles. Any insights would be appreciated.

I just finished the series myself. The Commonwealth has ready access to uninterceptable FTL drives, 'quantum buster' missles which can destroy planets, and 'enhanced quantum busters' which will cause a star to go nova in a matter of hours.

The commonwealth leadership was reluctent to commit genocide, but any thing up to that they would do. And hell, they did decide to commit genocide in the end; it was only by a slim margin that they didn't.

In an actual total war fare situation the commonwealth likely wound mop the floor with the Federation. The question is what would compel them to go to war, as politicllay they have a lot more in common than they do different. A more interesing vs. would be Morninglightmountian, the antagonist from the commonwealth series, against the Feds, bonus points for Starflyer infiltration

[Axiomatic]

I wouldn't call it interesting. MorningLightMountain has the unfair advantage of numbers and an insane industrial base.

[Dahak]

Sheldon buys out Ferenginar, other Dynasties follow suit. Federation Council dies from a terminal stroke from all the hyper-capitalism. The End.

But seriously, I think the Federation is outgunned in this. On the ground as in space.

[Axiomatic]

Space is the only place where the federation has any chance, because the Commonwealth starts out with a very small navy. Its ground forces are so insanely mismatched compared to redshirts, but while the Commonwealth has very powerful ships, it doesn't have MANY of them, which means that they can be very few places at the same time.

There's also the bit about how everyone in the Commonwealth is esentially immortal.

[Stark]

Not bothering to even link to information about shit like this is lame. Once Ghost Rider notices it, ten bucks says he's going to lock the shit out of it.

[Aeolus]

I think a more interesting question is ... How many redshirts can an Alamo Avenger kill?

[Ford Prefect]

I think a more interesting question is ... How many redshirts can an Alamo Avenger kill?

No, the more interesting question is: what the fuck is an Alamo Avenger? Honestly.

[Glimmervoid]

FTL
“A Crew of thirty were in command of a marquee 4 hyperdrive with a top speed of one light-year per hour.” Page 1006

This was the newest ship with there best hyperdrive to data. But they do have better hyperdrives in the research stage.

There hyperdrives work by the ship generating a worm hole last it is travailing thought it. The presence of nearby worm holes stops them doing this.

They also have an extensive rail network connecting planets Vera instant travle worm holes. They have over 600 planets “humanity has colonized over six hundred planets” Back Cover

Sub-light

This talks about the Primes who are the most villains of the book. They are described as having better sub light than the common wealth.

“Now they were accelerating towards each other at over seven gees. Missiles and gamma lasers turned the shrinking gap in to a lethal hurricane of energy.” Page 56

Weapons

“fifty missiles containing fifteen independent twenty-gee sub-warheads carrying hundred-megaton charges capable of diverted energy function, and thirty directed energy beam weapons.” page 1003

This referees to there latest warship.
From this we can take that that there ships can lunch a total bombardment of 75 gigatons (50*15*100=75000 Megatons) in missiles. However we can not take a rate of fire from this statement. If they were externally mounted it may be possible to fire all at once but this is pure speculation.

This also tells us nothing about there beam weapons. There is one quote which may be useful.

"Occasionally, energy beams would penetrate the atmosphere, becoming intense sparkling pillars of violet light tens of kilometres high, lasting for a second or more. Where they touched the ground lethal gouts of molten rock would spew up, adding to the wildfire which raced outwards from touch point.”

This also tells us next to nothing.

Some of you may be wondering at this point what a diverted energy function is? I first thought it might be some kind of shaped charge but that turned out to be incorrect. It is a “something” that allows the energy of the nuclear explosion to be channelled in to different forms of energy. For example 80% of the energy of the 100 megaton explosion can be channel in to a single gamma ray laser burst or in too massive EM blasts. I am trying to find the quote now.


Sheilds.

“The electromagnetic sensors spotted it first, several large EM pulses erupting halfway between the orbits of two gas-giants. They were quickly confirmed nuclear explosions. The second barrage broke out as exhaust plums suddenly streaked around the trio of explosions…” page 562

And referring (I think- it was the first explosion) to this event.
““Defence”, he asked slowly. “Could our force fields have stood up to that kind of assault?” The initial blasts, sir, possibly. But it got pretty hellish in there towards the end.” “

Unfortunately we don’t know how large those explosions were so this entire section is pointless. But what it dose tell us is there ships are equipped with energy screens that can stand up to 3 nuclear blasts of an unknown yield with an unknown amount hitting the shields. This is also is referring to an exploration ship (Armed yes) not the warships they started to build latter.

We do know the primes have megaton level weaponry and use it in ship to ship combat.

“The stabilizers has done there best, but not even superconductors could handle surges induced by mega ton blasts”- Page 1103.

This referees to one of the human’s ships being attacked by primes.

Sensors

They can detect megaton nuclear explosions from across the system with EM seniors and have a FTL hyperrader. Quotes comings.

Fleet

They are only just starting up and as yet have a fleet of no more than 20 ships(less likly). Only 5 of which are warships (they are also fighting a war).
The rest scout ships converted to missile carriers and one exploration ship with weapons.

I wrote that up a while back for Commonwealth, it is however based only on the first book so they may have gotten better since then.

[Dartzap]

Is Hamilton a good author? I've not read any of his stuff before. If there is a decent British Sci-Fi author out there, I would be most interested, heh.

[Jon]

Hamilton is good, he just tends to be a little verbose at times, and could be criticised for spending too much time padding out characters with irrelevant background details or side stories that don't entirely contribute to the overall plot.

Could the commonwealth make strategic use of their wormhole technology in the same way that MLM did towards the end of Pandora's Star to deploy weaponary and ground forces onto Federation worlds? I've not read Judas Unchained yet, so I'm not entirely aware of their response to the attack, aside from city shielding and such. I do remember that the wormhole 'trains' as a means for transport and having only encountered benevolent aliens out there meant little or no space fearing war fleet at the point of the invasion at the end of Pandora's Star?

[Ghost Rider]

And Stark is right, the only person who fucking tried is Glimmervoid.

So anything people before I go itchy again?

[UCBooties]

I just finished Judas Unchained last night. I'm at work right now and can't add anything right now, but I will try to find some numbers tonight or tomorrow night.

[Aeolus]

I think a more interesting question is ... How many redshirts can an Alamo Avenger kill?

No, the more interesting question is: what the fuck is an Alamo Avenger? Honestly.

They are Combat Robots from Pandora's star. Really nasty ones.

[Ford Prefect]

I think a more interesting question is ... How many redshirts can an Alamo Avenger kill?

No, the more interesting question is: what the fuck is an Alamo Avenger? Honestly.

They are Combat Robots from Pandora's star. Really nasty ones.

'Really nasty' is not a quantification. Could you perhaps give us some indications of abilities?

[UCBooties]

Ooookay, maybe we can make a bit of progress here but I don't have much time.

First thing's first, for general (and I mean general) background, here is the wiki entry for the duology. Be warned, it's spoilerific.

The Intersolar Commonwealth is a earth-centric human civilization set in the 2400s. Because of a historical quirk, human expansion relied entirely on worm-holes and spaceships were never developed. After an experimental space mission led to disastrous first-contact with an Alien life-form known as MorningLightMountain (species is also referred to as Prime) the Commonwealth begins a crash program to create a navy and starts cranking out superweapons. Quantification of human weapons and defenses will be difficult because we may need to quantify the Prime's abilities first. This is because the human technology is almost always described in interactions with Prime technology.

I have some ideas of where we can start.

Planetary defenses: Human worlds have force-fields over major cities. Could someone who has a copy of Pandora's Star please look over the chapters dealing with the Prime invasion of the Lost23. Specifically we're looking for descriptions of how human shields stand up against bombardment by the Primes. I believe I can locate some relevant passages detailing the Prime's second invasion in Judas Unchained but I will not be able to do so tonight. Descriptions from the Lost23 invasion would give us a base-line for commonwealth ground defenses.

Ship Defenses: I've got a wacky idea for establishing a high-end estimate for commonwealth ship shields. Spoilers Ahoy! The climax of the second book is an event called the Planet's Revenge. A continent sized superstorm is used to destroy a Prime ship which is preparing to take off from a Mars-sized world. This ship is described as having force-fields stronger than any ship in the commonwealth. They are destroyed by the storm which is essentially a pent up hurricane of immense size which has picked up a huge amount of rock and debris. My question for anyone out there is whether or not a grounded Starfleet ship has ever withstood a similar situation with shields intact. If so, we would know that the most powerful shields in the setting are not as powerful Starfleet shields. If not, I think we can get some more information out of Judas Unchained.

Like I said earlier, I'd really like to take a crack at finding the info we need to do this properly, but this is as much as I can do tonight. Any thoughts on this before I go number hunting tomorrow night?

(A final note on the Alamo Avengers, we really can't begin to quantify them until we have a better idea of what commonwealth ground defenses are like pre-contact with the Primes)

[MJ12 Commando]

'Really nasty' is not a quantification. Could you perhaps give us some indications of abilities?

The paragraph where they get really shown off-I'm fairly sure (didn't do any calcs though) that this is a rather sizable amount of firepower:

"The Alamo Avengers stormed over the highway at barely a hundred meters altitude. When they were a kilometer from the force field, they opened fire with their particle lances. It was as if sheet lightning was bridging the gap between them and the dome. The entire sky transformed into a blinding white maelstrom as the air disintegrated from the tremendous energy discharge. The sound blast alone shattered every window on the cars and vans and buses below; people were hurled about by the sonic wavefront. Ears and eyes ruptured, capillaries tore apart; blood started to foam out of their mouths and noses and ears, unprotected skin liquefied.
The force field dome maintained its integrity under the strike. Right across its surface, air molecules collapsed and punched upward in a seething coronal cloud. From above, it looked as though a small red dwarf sun had become buried in the ground. Huge lightning bolts spun outward from the seething ion cloak, lashing against the surrounding earth. Guardbots, waiting alertly along the base of the force field, their lasers and magnetic rifles tracking the incoming enemy, simply detonated into fragment swarms that vaporized in nanoseconds as the energy cascade engulfed them. Every scrap of vegetation within four hundred meters of the perimeter burst into flame."

[Ghost Rider]

I'll say this much. I will keep this open because UCBooties is trying. So give something other then paragraphs because one could make plenty of hyperbole and description of Trek that make it look both weak or fucking grand.

[Luzifer's right hand]

This post is full SPOILERS for Judas Unchained.
The page numbers are for the Limited edition uncorrected bound proof.

Douvoir missiles:

The human starships began to slow. They came to halt b]twenty-five AUs[/b] distant from the interstellar wormhole, and emerged into real space. MorningLightMountian immediately opened twenty wormholes around each starship. Six hundred missiles were launched through each one, followed by forty ships.

humans ships emerge 25 AU from their target and are attacked by MorningLightMountain, that's the range from which the missiles are deployed.

Within twenty seconds, three hundred small human vehicles were approaching the interstellar wormhole at four light-years per hour.
...
As the interference grew stronger, human missiles were torn from their superluminal flight millions of kilometres away from their target, traveling at close to ninety per cent lightspeed. It was a velocity that gave even the tenuous solar wind particles a lethal kintic impact. Furious spheres of plasma spewed out around every emerge point, far brighter than the local star.

The missiles are deployed by the human ships.

FTL drive-wormhole:

The Moscow opened a wormhole and quickly slipped inside. Five seconds later, and two million kilometres out from the moon, the starship slid back out into real space.

The ship jumps away after it deployed the quantumbuster prototype.

MorningLightMountian detected the approaching ships while they were still fifteen light-years distant. Twenty of them were approaching the staging post star at four light-years per hour; the fastest human ships he had observed so far.

Human ships approach the system with MorningLightMountians interstellar wormhole at maximum speed.

FTL drive-hyperdrive:

"We are currently traveling at thirteen point five light-year per hour."

The hyperdrive replaces the wormhole drives, speed as of the end of Judas Unchained.

"Okey. Let's get read to drop out of hyperspace five thousand kilometres above the outer lattice sphere."

A ship emerges near a target.

Outside the Dark Fortress, the Scylla fired a quantumbuster and immediately dropped back into hyperspace.

Tacitcal FTL use of FTL, there is a lot of it in the books.

Quantumbuster and nova bomb:

The gas-giant's third moon was twenty thousand kilometres away, a heavily cratered ball of rock, three thousand kilometres in diameter.

The target for the test.

The missile was hurled out of its launch tube by a powerful magnetic pulse. When it was ten kilometres from the starship, its fusion drive ignited, accelerating it hard towards the moon.

The prototype is deployed.

"Oh heavens, yes. The quantumbuster field will initialize just before the missile hits the surface. That should give us an intersection over several hundred metres of the moon's mass. It works out to quite a substantional volume." "And the whole thing just turns to energy?"
"Any piece of matter inside the field, yes. That's the theory, the effect completely breaks down quantum-level cohesion. The discharge radiance will be on a scale we've never seen before."

Technoabbable behind the prototype.

The quantumbuster activated its effect field. Light flared around the moon, creating a perfect white halo. It was as if the ancient sphere of rock was eclipsing a white dwarf star. The edges began to dissolve as the glare poured across the cratered surface like an advancing tsunami. Dazzling cracks appeared, opening deep into the moon's interior. Low rolling hills heaved, transforming into volcanoes that jetted debris hundreds of kilometres out into space. Dusty plains crumbled as they separated ponderously from the highlands surrounding them. Slowly and inexorably, the moon disintegrated inside its cocoon of lurid stellar light.

The prototype is activated.

The violence of the explosion was extraordinary. MorningLightMountian thought the sensors on its ships were simultaneously malfunctioning. The surface of Hanko's sun heaved. A titanic crater bulged downwards into photosphere, overwhelming the still-rising flare. From the centre, a gigantic sphere of plasma leapt upwards, as if the star was giving birth to an infant of its own kind. Hard radiation from the middle of the explosion sliced clean through the force fields on every ship MorningLightMountian had sent sent trough to provide cover, vaporizing them instantly.
...
When it reopened the wormhole five million kilometres away and cautiously extend sensors through, it saw the photosphere crater wall collapsing, sending a circular wave racing out across the star's surface. The plasma sphere had separated from the corona, racing into space at near-relativistic speed, and expanding fast.

A quantumbuster at full power is deployed against a star to counteract a flare inducing weapon)

The first flotilla of missile platforms to slide ouf from the initial blast umbra showed what looked like the crescent of a blue-white giant appearing behind the staging post star. And MorningLightMountian finally realized what the humans had done. The star was going nova.

The next stage after the quantumbuster, the nova bomb.

"The weapon when fired into a star release a nova-level energy burst, and destroys the star in the process. Such an event will envelop the entire Dyson Alpha civilization. As they have undoubtly spread beyond their original star by now, my Dynasty tacticians have proposed a firewall strategy. We will run scout missions centered around Dyson Alpha, and nova every star where we detect their presence. It will, of course, sterilize all life on neighbouring star systems.

Human leaders talk about how to deal MorningLightMountian after the staging post star is destroyed, unless it surrenders of course.

"Nova bomb? Is that what your secret weapon is? Nobody on the unisphere knows. What the fuck is it?" "Same principle as a diverted energy nuke, but bigged up like you wouldn't believe. Our Dynasty weapons development team took the diverted-energy principle, and bolted it onto a quantumbuster. Simple really, the quantumbuster effect field converts any matter within its radius directly into energy, only now the energy is diverted into expanding the effect field further. And that's a lot of energy. The field grows large enough to convert a measurable percentage of a star; which gives us an explosion an the same scale as a nova. It annihilates the star and any planet orbiting within a hundred AUs. The radiation will be lethal to any habitable planet within another thirty-or so light-years."

More information about the nova bomb. The guy is not scientist's and just mentions the stuff he knows about it.

There were over forty prime worlds at the end of Judas Unchained.
Spoilers for the time between Judas Unchained end the The Dreaming Void
It's not empty talk:
From http://www.peterfhamilton.co.uk//index. ... e=timeline
2384... Firewall project concluded, no further outposts of Prime aliens detected.

Outside the Dark Fortress, the Scylla fired a quantumbuster and immediately dropped back into hyperspace. The missile intercepted a Prime ship, converting a modest percentage of its mass directly into energy. For a brief instant, the radiative output of the medium-sized star contaminated space around the Dark Fortress.

Quantumbuster in ship vs. ship battle.)

STL drives and shields: I remember 10+ g and stuff max. But I can't be bothered to search the book for it right now, as such things seem rather unimportant to me in the light of tactical FTL which also allows objects to emerge with huge velocities, like the Douvoir missiles or the ship which made the relativistic ramming attack in the first book(my copy is already packed away as I'm going to move in 2-3 months and I already started packing them, I have no fucking clue how I amassed hundreds of books...) maybe someone else could post that part.

Shields seem rather unimportant to me in the light of tactical FTL which is acctully used in battle, MorningLightMountain had to force ships out of FTL with his own wormholes to kill them and he had the ability to attack them extremly fast by appening wormholes right next to them. Maybe a will find the time to search the book for useful information about those two in the next few days.

[UCBooties]

I haven't found anything that Luzifer's Right Hand hasn't posted yet, but I believe there is a description of the commonwealth's most advanced ship's armaments in the book. (I too don't have a copy of Pandora's Star at the moment.) I'd still like to figure out the shield strengths because that way we'll have a more complete picture.

Unfortunately, I've never even attempted something like this before, I'm terrible at math, and I have no idea where to start. Can someone please give me some pointers on what to look for and what equations to use?

[skies]

Ooookay, maybe we can make a bit of progress here but I don't have much time.


Ship Defenses: I've got a wacky idea for establishing a high-end estimate for commonwealth ship shields. Spoilers Ahoy! The climax of the second book is an event called the Planet's Revenge. A continent sized superstorm is used to destroy a Prime ship which is preparing to take off from a Mars-sized world. This ship is described as having force-fields stronger than any ship in the commonwealth. They are destroyed by the storm which is essentially a pent up hurricane of immense size which has picked up a huge amount of rock and debris. My question for anyone out there is whether or not a grounded Starfleet ship has ever withstood a similar situation with shields intact. If so, we would know that the most powerful shields in the setting are not as powerful Starfleet shields. If not, I think we can get some more information out of Judas Unchained.

The only think I can think of is when Voyager landed on the Hell (or was it Demon?) Class planet, which are supposed to be particularly tough. It was in the episode where the crew gets duplicated by the deuterium based "silver blood".

[Admiral Valdemar]

I've only ever read the Night's Dawn Trilogy, so I presume this is not the same Commonwealth, yes? I was going to start this series, but know the waiting for the next volume would send me mad. I still have a load of Reynolds' stuff to read anyway, typically, Hamilton and Reynolds join Banks in my British triumvirate of SF authors.

Some of the capabilities of the Commonwealth in NDT were quite nasty, if ineffective against their foe to an extent. Sounds like there's similar tech being used here; hard bar the FTL and shielding.

[Axiomatic]

I've only ever read the Night's Dawn Trilogy, so I presume this is not the same Commonwealth, yes? I was going to start this series, but know the waiting for the next volume would send me mad. I still have a load of Reynolds' stuff to read anyway, typically, Hamilton and Reynolds join Banks in my British triumvirate of SF authors.

Some of the capabilities of the Commonwealth in NDT were quite nasty, if ineffective against their foe to an extent. Sounds like there's similar tech being used here; hard bar the FTL and shielding.

Nope, this is his other series, the one composed of Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. I don't think it was called the Commonwealth in NDT, it was the Confederation.

[Minischoles]

I've read this series and its pretty good, its quite Hard Sci Fi and Hamilton does have a tendency to pad his books out with a good dose of technobabble, but they're still very good stories.

Planetary defenses: Human worlds have force-fields over major cities. Could someone who has a copy of Pandora's Star please look over the chapters dealing with the Prime invasion of the Lost23. Specifically we're looking for descriptions of how human shields stand up against bombardment by the Primes. I believe I can locate some relevant passages detailing the Prime's second invasion in Judas Unchained but I will not be able to do so tonight. Descriptions from the Lost23 invasion would give us a base-line for commonwealth ground defenses.

The Shields are able to take multiple direct nuclear blasts without even wavering, and these are the high yield ones MorningLightMountain was using.

Ship Defenses: I've got a wacky idea for establishing a high-end estimate for commonwealth ship shields. Spoilers Ahoy! The climax of the second book is an event called the Planet's Revenge. A continent sized superstorm is used to destroy a Prime ship which is preparing to take off from a Mars-sized world. This ship is described as having force-fields stronger than any ship in the commonwealth. They are destroyed by the storm which is essentially a pent up hurricane of immense size which has picked up a huge amount of rock and debris. My question for anyone out there is whether or not a grounded Starfleet ship has ever withstood a similar situation with shields intact. If so, we would know that the most powerful shields in the setting are not as powerful Starfleet shields. If not, I think we can get some more information out of Judas Unchained.

IIRC (been a while since i read this series working through his Night's Dawn Series right now) but the ships have the most powerful shields the Hargath Dynasty can build, they build the shields that cover cities as well. I'm assuming since all shield technology was basically fed into them by the Starflyer they'd have roughly equivalent shields.

I think personally the Commonwealth would win, but only if they went Genocidal. And if we were talking the Commonwealth by the next set of books (he's writing more sequels now IIRC) they'd wipe the floor with ST.