Who can beat the Fifth Imperium?

[Vehrec]

I don't think the Forerunners have the power required. The Planetoids were in effect larger, more resource efficient Death Stars. Multi-gigaton weapons barely cause any real damage to them, certainly not enough to slow them effectively and never even destroy them and we've never seen--to my knowledge--the Forerunners or the Covenant employ weaponry that went beyond gigatons in terms of yeild.

I would think that, the Culture could probably take on the 5th Imperium, i'm personally not sure about their chances against the 4th Imperium however. You know, effectors only go so far, at a certain point having half your ship vanish into hyperspace will prevent you from continuing combat operations effectively.

I'll agree we haven't seen any ship-mounted weapons from the Forerunner in the Gigaton+ range, but that's because we haven't seen any ship-mounted weapons from the Forerunners at all. Not once, in all the fiction has there been any hard-calcable events involving their anti-ship weapons. We've seen bits their construction technology, their most basic anti-personnel systems and their astro-engineering skills. But very little on how they fought their final war except a few passing lines calling for the release of ships to cut 'fire breaks' in the galaxy to slow the Flood.

This bit of text from the Second Terminal should shed some light on the closest we've ever come to something that can be calced.

Recommendations:

It is my opinion that any system where there is evidence that the enemy has established a physical presence is lost and must be razed. This fleet currently retains the capacity to force premature stellar collapse; I advise that this be established as standard operating procedure for all compromised systems forthwith. We cannot fight this war by half measures if we intend to win.

What exactly is meant by 'premature stellar collapse' is not clear, but this is clearly achievable by a fleet of only 1000 ships. At the end of the war, the Flood had over 4.8 million ships.

And if they take off the kid gloves, they can do thinks like this-

I throw away all the rules of acceptable conduct during battle; near the (slipspace) ruptures I throw away all the accepted ideas of how the natural world is supposed to behave. I toss around [37,654 tonne] dreadnoughts like they were fighters; dimly aware of the former crews being crushed to liquescence.

Aside from the tiny size of the ships, its a rather impressive if vague passage. The AI who wrote it was using FTL drives as area-denial weapons and accelerating his ships fast enough to liquefy their former crews despite the artificial gravity on the ships. Standard enough high-end Sci-fi fare.

[Vain]

I would think that, the Culture could probably take on the 5th Imperium, i'm personally not sure about their chances against the 4th Imperium however. You know, effectors only go so far, at a certain point having half your ship vanish into hyperspace will prevent you from continuing combat operations effectively.

I've only read a little about this series on wikipedia. I understand the Dahak is inhabited by an AI. How smart is this thing? How quick are its reaction times? Is it authorized to take aggressive action without waiting for a human order?

Any ship beholden to mere mortal reaction time and decision making is helpless against the Culture, assuming the Culture can detect it. You'll be dead a thousand times in a thousand different ways before you're even aware you're under attack. Even assuming the Dahak is authorized to react on its own, is it fast enough to outdraw Minds which explicitly think at faster than light speeds? Does it have any defense against being effectorized? Can it even detect Culture-craft in order to fight back?

Given the energy levels of the weapons employed by the planetoids (tens or hundreds of gigatons? I'm not sure I understand what these gravitonic missiles are supposed to do), I think they wouldn't last long against any Culture scale major weapons. Strategic weapons in the Culture-verse result in destroyed stars, not just planets or moons. That having been said, I think the likely outcome of any conflict would be Culture ships zipping around in hyperspace effectorizing everything, and in less time than it takes to type, the Culture will have its population expanded by a fleet of (likely) quite obsolescent planetoids.

Of course, this begs the question of whether they can detect each other. If the planetoids spend all of their time in some funky hyperspace layer the Culture can't see, then that changes things somewhat. Can planetoids fight that way? Can they stay there indefinitely? I am given to understand that they care about holding territory, so at some point they'll have to come out and fight, unless they want to lose all of their 'stuff'.

[XaLEv]

A planetoid is vulnerable to attack whenever it is in real space, enchanach drive or otherwise, from a Culture vessel in either hyperspace or real space. A Culture vessel is at least slightly vulnerable to attack in real space but is beyond the planetoid's reach in hyperspace. A planetoid in hyperspace is blind and can neither affect nor be affected by anything outside, other than hyperspace itself if its drive field fails.

[fgalkin]

Which is why a war with any of the higher-level Involveds of the Cultureverse is a foregone conclusion. I am more interested in the mid-to-low-level Involved like the Affront, Azadians, Chegrians, etc and their chances against the Imperium.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Vultur]

Well, in Armageddon Inheritance, the shields take "millions" of multi-gigaton Achuultani missiles in the space of seconds or minutes. Galactic Empire missiles also don't seem to warp in and out of realspace, which would mean they would be unable to pop behind the shields. Nothing we've seen can pierce a Fifth Imperium shield, just go around it through hyperspace or damage the ship/station so it stops generating it. (The fact that the fleet flees a star going supernova does seem to give an upper limit on what the shields could take, though.)

EDIT: I was talking about the Galactic Empire; Culture star-killing weapons could presumably overload 5thEmp shields.

[consequences]

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet, but the Culture could. They have too many things the Imperium couldn't defend against, and more sheer power.

Actually, I recall a thread here from way back where it was determined that a GSV vs a Planetoid would end in a draw as neither ship could hit each other.

And that thread would be masturbation on the part of the Fifth Imperium. The absolute most the planetoid could do would be to flee into hyper to a destination a gabillion light years away(before the GSV ever enters range, because if it waits, it dies), and pray that the GSV can't use the intervening 1/3200th of a gabillion years to determine its destination from the easily readable by Fifth Imperium tech readings, and be waiting there for it having traversed the distance in around a sixtieth of the time.

If it stays local, the GSV can spam smaller platforms to its heart's content to find it, probably before the planetoid can arrive at its destination.

[Stark]

LOL. So the GE just has to rally a fleet of hundreds (ie, an infintesimal amount of mass in comparison) and use their regular multi-teraton weapons to bring their shields down?

Laughable. How many TT+ guns does a single Executor have again? Hundreds of batteries?

[Ender]

LOL. So the GE just has to rally a fleet of hundreds (ie, an infintesimal amount of mass in comparison) and use their regular multi-teraton weapons to bring their shields down?

Laughable. How many TT+ guns does a single Executor have again? Hundreds of batteries?

Just shy of a thousand, actually. Each one containing 8 guns that have an output of about 35 teratons. Oh, and those are just the ones we can see.

[Ford Prefect]

I think it might be pertinent to note that the mutineers from the first book possessed a shielded base which Dahak informs the main character cannot be penetrated by his weapons without vapourising the earth in the process. I don't see any reason why Dahak would be any less shielded, given that the base is the tiniest fraction of Dahak's size and mass. I think it would take very roughly 4.687x10^31 J to vapourise the earth (if someone would like to come up with a more accurate figure which doesn't model the earth as some uniform ball of iron, that'd be ace ), or just over 11 zettatons.

[Stark]

Was it demonstrated? If not, who cares what some idiot said. Maybe the implication is he's just a fucking terrible shot?

[XaLEv]

Not quite

. "All right," he said finally, "I can accept that, I suppose. But why haven't you blasted them off the planet since? Surely that comes under the heading of taking them into custody or destroying them?"
"It does. Such action, however, would conflict with Alpha Priority core programs. This vessel has the capacity to penetrate the defenses Fleet Captain Anu has established to protect his enclave, but only by using weaponry that would destroy seventy percent of the human race upon the planet. Destruction of non-Achuultani sentients except in direct self-defense is prohibited."

[Ford Prefect]

Oh, I had totally forgotten the passage. Ignore me.

[fgalkin]

EDIT: I was talking about the Galactic Empire; Culture star-killing weapons could presumably overload 5thEmp shields.

They don't need to overload 5thImp shields- they can simply bypass them the way 5thImp weapons do.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Vain]

With regards to the lesser Involved as fgalkin had asked, do we have any verifiable feats for them? AFAIK, we don't have much except that they are in general shittier than the Culture. They have some similar techs (hyperspace FTL travel, not-as-good effectors, fields, and AIs, etc), so a lot of the same arguments may apply, but I don't feel like I know enough about say the Chelgrians or the Affront to make a compelling case.

[lordofFNORD]

Laughable. How many TT+ guns does a single Executor have again? Hundreds of batteries?

Well, in Armageddon Inheritance, the shields take "millions" of multi-gigaton Achuultani missiles in the space of seconds or minutes.

A single Executor has firepower around the order of 10^26 W, or ~10^17 tons TNT/second, the equivalent of 100s of millions of multigigaton warheads each second. Unless there's an instance of the shields actually being overwhelmed, there's no way to know if this is enough, but it's more than they withstand in the quoted instances.

Given that the gravitonic warheads apparently create big-ass black holes and and travel faster than light, they could prove to be a big problem for the GE. It's not clear what sort of gravitational force is needed to "strip" shields and overwhelm inertial compensators. IRC, the YV never stripped the shields off anything larger than a blastboat, though a ISD is destroyed by a Maw black hole in the Jedi Academy Trilogy.

[lordofFNORD]

I think it would take very roughly 4.687x10^31 J to vapourise the earth (if someone would like to come up with a more accurate figure which doesn't model the earth as some uniform ball of iron, that'd be ace ), or just over 11 zettatons.

The magic number is probably the gravitational binding energy, when a planet is referred to as being "vaporized" off-hand, in order for it to match the intuition of vapor diffusing apart (rather than remaining a gravitationally bound ball of gas). For earth, this would be about 2*10^32 J.

[consequences]

I think it would take very roughly 4.687x10^31 J to vapourise the earth (if someone would like to come up with a more accurate figure which doesn't model the earth as some uniform ball of iron, that'd be ace ), or just over 11 zettatons.

The magic number is probably the gravitational binding energy, when a planet is referred to as being "vaporized" off-hand, in order for it to match the intuition of vapor diffusing apart (rather than remaining a gravitationally bound ball of gas). For earth, this would be about 2*10^32 J.

Which is why my age-old standard whenever this crops up on SB is to ram them till they give up. The fleet that yoinked the oceans off of one world alone provide sufficient tonnage at high relativistic velocity to potentially do for the entire Fourth Empire fleet, presuming no mistakes, and not too much defensive improvement beyond the 20x total combat capability given for Fourth Emp civilian tech. Fortunately, it's not like the 'I'm a dick, say goodbye to your oceans' fleet is the entirety of the GE's shipping capacity.

And in any case, killing 70% of the Earth's population would require a heck of a lot less than 1332 joules. A better figure can probably be derived from the potential yield of Iapetus smacking us in the face.

[Vultur]

Which is why my age-old standard whenever this crops up on SB is to ram them till they give up. The fleet that yoinked the oceans off of one world alone provide sufficient tonnage at high relativistic velocity to potentially do for the entire Fourth Empire fleet, presuming no mistakes, and not too much defensive improvement beyond the 20x total combat capability given for Fourth Emp civilian tech. Fortunately, it's not like the 'I'm a dick, say goodbye to your oceans' fleet is the entirety of the GE's shipping capacity.

This assumes that relativistic weapons can penetrate the 4thEmp/5thEmp shields. We've seen no evidence of that; the only way we've seen to damage a shielded ship involves bypassing it via hyperspace. Also, if that would work, the Achuultani probably would have tried it. (Considering that they lost 291,000 ships vs. the Imperium losing 8, it would probably be cheaper!)

The missiles seem to have pretty incredible range (a little under 25 light-minutes), although those seem to be antimatter warheads. The energy beams are shorter-ranged, but they seem to be insanely powerful. In addition to damaging the target directly, they cause its atoms to undergo nuclear fission, turning the ship struck into a nuclear weapon. It says, "No Achuultani shield could stop those furious beams", but I don't know how Empire shields stack up to Achuultani ones.

[consequences]

Which is why my age-old standard whenever this crops up on SB is to ram them till they give up. The fleet that yoinked the oceans off of one world alone provide sufficient tonnage at high relativistic velocity to potentially do for the entire Fourth Empire fleet, presuming no mistakes, and not too much defensive improvement beyond the 20x total combat capability given for Fourth Emp civilian tech. Fortunately, it's not like the 'I'm a dick, say goodbye to your oceans' fleet is the entirety of the GE's shipping capacity.

This assumes that relativistic weapons can penetrate the 4thEmp/5thEmp shields. We've seen no evidence of that; the only way we've seen to damage a shielded ship involves bypassing it via hyperspace.

And... Wrong.

Remember that little suicide drive on the part of Dahak and company at the end of the final battle in Armageddon Inheritance? Not just the ram which took out Nest Protector(and Dahak's shield was specifically mentioned as being upgraded to 4th Empire standards), but one of his accompanying planetoids KO-ing a flotilla by running into it?

Plus, of course, the idea that no relativistic weapon, no matter how massive or fast(and I'm talking about a trillion tons at .9-something C as my opening bid, per target) can be effective is some fine no-limits masturbation. You'll want to cut down on that around here.

Also, if that would work, the Achuultani probably would have tried it. (Considering that they lost 291,000 ships vs. the Imperium losing 8, it would probably be cheaper!)

Aku'ultan ships, the upgraded ones mind you, were limited to about two-thirds the speed of a 4th Empire planetoid, the vast majority to half of that. The only times they got into range to even try was when the planetoids were actively trying to reach the center of their formation, and one of those times they lost some ridiculous number of their closest ships just from the planetoids coming out of ftl, and had their flagship taken out moments later. Plus of course, the fact that it happened twice anyway.

The missiles seem to have pretty incredible range (a little under 25 light-minutes), although those seem to be antimatter warheads. The energy beams are shorter-ranged, but they seem to be insanely powerful. In addition to damaging the target directly, they cause its atoms to undergo nuclear fission, turning the ship struck into a nuclear weapon. It says, "No Achuultani shield could stop those furious beams", but I don't know how Empire shields stack up to Achuultani ones.

Closer to 40 light minutes by Heirs of Empire. And Aku'ultan shields had previously been shown to be ineffective against 4th Imperium parasite battleships(rated at no more than sixty gigatons for a one shot kill).

[Ender]

Which is why my age-old standard whenever this crops up on SB is to ram them till they give up. The fleet that yoinked the oceans off of one world alone provide sufficient tonnage at high relativistic velocity to potentially do for the entire Fourth Empire fleet, presuming no mistakes, and not too much defensive improvement beyond the 20x total combat capability given for Fourth Emp civilian tech. Fortunately, it's not like the 'I'm a dick, say goodbye to your oceans' fleet is the entirety of the GE's shipping capacity.

This assumes that relativistic weapons can penetrate the 4thEmp/5thEmp shields. We've seen no evidence of that; the only way we've seen to damage a shielded ship involves bypassing it via hyperspace. Also, if that would work, the Achuultani probably would have tried it. (Considering that they lost 291,000 ships vs. the Imperium losing 8, it would probably be cheaper!)

The missiles seem to have pretty incredible range (a little under 25 light-minutes), although those seem to be antimatter warheads. The energy beams are shorter-ranged, but they seem to be insanely powerful. In addition to damaging the target directly, they cause its atoms to undergo nuclear fission, turning the ship struck into a nuclear weapon. It says, "No Achuultani shield could stop those furious beams", but I don't know how Empire shields stack up to Achuultani ones.

If nothing else the momentum would rip their shields from the mounts.

[Luzifer's right hand]

This assumes that relativistic weapons can penetrate the 4thEmp/5thEmp shields. We've seen no evidence of that; the only way we've seen to damage a shielded ship involves bypassing it via hyperspace. Also, if that would work, the Achuultani probably would have tried it. (Considering that they lost 291,000 ships vs. the Imperium losing 8, it would probably be cheaper!)

You mean the Aku'Ultan would have tried it like this?

"It's true, Ger." Amesbury's weary face looked back from Hatcher's com screen. "It took some time to get a probe near enough to burn through their ships' energy emissions and confirm it, but we found it right enough. Dead center in their formation: Iapetus—the eighth moon of Saturn."
"I see." Hatcher wanted to curse, to revile God for letting this happen, but there was no point, and his voice was soft. "How bad is it?"
"It's the end, unless we can stop the bloody thing. This is no asteroid, Ger—it's a bleeding moon. Six times the mass of Ceres."
...(snipped some in between stuff)
"They're coming at us at upwards of five hundred kilometers per second—seven times faster than a 'fast' meteorite. I haven't bothered to calculate how many trillions of megatons that equates to, because it doesn't matter. That moon will punch through our shield like a bullet through butter, and they'll reach us in about six days. That's how long we've got to stop them."

In ship versus ship battle they could not do it because their drives have a maximum speed which is way lower than the maximum speed of planetoids.

It is difficult to tell just how the Planetoids destroyed in the books were finally destroyed, as all kinds of weapons both hypermissiles, beams and sublight missiles where thrown around.
However the shields of small vessels and ground bases have been overwhelmed in fights in which clearly no hyper missiles were used and even Dahaks shields were nearly overwhelmed by sublight missiles once, the defenses around Kano-III had no hypermissiles after all.
Also there was ramming involved in the battles against the Aku'Ultan fleet.

[open_sketchbook]

I know bringing these guys up is a sin of sorts on this board, but could the Borg do it? The Borg have demonstrated an ability to transport through shields, they can assimilate a lot of varied technology and their cubes carry some pretty hefty numbers. If they get a large force aboard a battle planetoid and assimilate enough of it's systems fast enough, they would prevent the use of gravity-manuplation tricks, and they could slowly begin assimilating their way towards the planetoid's juicy center. And once they have one planetoid, they have a good deal the Fifth Imperium's tech, and that'll go interesting places (planet-sized cubes?)

As I see it, if the Borg can transport through the 5th Imperium's shields, then the Borg will get them in the end. If they can't, it's an absolute curb stomp not meriting discussion.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I know bringing these guys up is a sin of sorts on this board, but could the Borg do it? The Borg have demonstrated an ability to transport through shields, they can assimilate a lot of varied technology and their cubes carry some pretty hefty numbers. If they get a large force aboard a battle planetoid and assimilate enough of it's systems fast enough, they would prevent the use of gravity-manuplation tricks, and they could slowly begin assimilating their way towards the planetoid's juicy center. And once they have one planetoid, they have a good deal the Fifth Imperium's tech, and that'll go interesting places (planet-sized cubes?)

As I see it, if the Borg can transport through the 5th Imperium's shields, then the Borg will get them in the end. If they can't, it's an absolute curb stomp not meriting discussion.

Even assuming they could transport through the shields, AND can actually assimilate the ship, Imperium ships have both "Condition Red Two, Internal" which means completely flooding the ship with "chemical and radioactive agents" sufficient to kill even bioenhanced Imperials in powered armor, and just plain old self destruct. Plus someone could just do something to destabilize the core tap. And then there's the problem that the people on the ship would annihilate Borg drones; they use weapons that they probably can't adapt well to if at all, and are perfectly capable of tearing them to literal pieces bare handed so fast that the drones can't stick them with those assimilation tubules. Assuming that they can actually assimilate someone who's bioenhanced.

[Darth Ruinus]

How would they get in range to do this?

[White Haven]

Yeah, that would the the problem, what with them measuring their combat ranges in kilometers and naked-eye sightings.

Completely aside from a Versus scenario, now I'm imagining a conversation between Dahak and a Culture Mind.