Star Trek Vs. Babylon 5

[Ender]

LOL, I don't believe I've ever heard the phrase "generously insane" before.

I've coined it recently - its a tribute to my past debates with SB Fivers.

For example, we have Dark Lord/Elizar from Spacebattles who claims that the Shadow Planetkiller really could generate up to a trillion megatons worth of destructive power rather than a hundred million. He bases this logic on the semantic nitpick that "thousands" clearly means anything from 2,000 to 999,999 - or in other words, greater than two thousand but under a million. His "proof" is usually the fact that in a prior episode of b5 (the one involving the berserker probe - a Knife in the Dark, IIRC) the yield of the nuke was stated as "500,000 megatons".

So basically, because they can state a specific figure (500,000) in megatons rather than saying "500 gigatons), we must assume "thousands of megatons" means anything up to a million.

So I've used this figure to just prove how badly the Shadows are fucked against someone like say, the Empire - the Culture, the 4th Empire, etc.

1e12 Megatons (1,000,000 missiles x 1,000,000 megatons) is the total yield deliverd to the planet. The stated timeframe for total destruction is stated as 10-12 hours. Therefore, we can assume that any other Shadow vessel (IE shadow cruiser) smaller than said PK cannot deliver this m uch to the planet in that timeframe.

Assuming the 10 hour timeframe gives us a "insanely generous" upper limit of just under 28,000,000 Megatons, or 28 Teratons. Such a yield *might* penetrate the shields of an Acclamator or a Trade Federation core ship, but any decent SW warship woudl bitchslap said vessel handily.

OF course "insanely generous" is also relative - In the "teraton" example, I am blatantly ignoring a whole slew of limiting factors that put the value orders of magnitude lower, as well as other factors (like the 500 megaton nukes).

In the case of ISA firepower, the "insanely generous" calcs are baserd on B5-wars supported notions that its POSSIBLE for a Shadow cruiser (or at least larger kinds than the one destroyed in ITF) to survive multiple nukes (or for a same sized one to, although its still possible to overload defensers and destroy one in the right conditions- one assumes the conditions were met in ItF) - in such a case "insanely generous" would be assuming the cruisers absorbed anywhere from 16%-50% of the nuke, and may have survived several (probably 4-5, but no more than 10 or so) - again the figures fluctuate depending on how "insanely generous" I wanted to be and how fanatical a person I might be engaging with.

In more reasonable/practical debate the "insanely generous" calcs would probably assume only a couple nukes (2, maybe 3 at the most) probably for a bigger Shadow vessel, and no more than 15-16% of the total energy (About 1/6th the blast).

Heh, I did something like that too. If you go with the fact that the 60 MT or so that killed the BC was from a nuke, meaning that 90% was released in the first microsecond and adjust to watts since the shadow ships radiate off so much energy per second from their diffusers, they end up taking 2.2572E23 watts, or 54 teratons. Of course, this ignore the fact that the real energy was still only 60 MT.

Stuff like that makes the 362 MT EA lasers, exawatt green beams and 10 TT/sec Vorlon gun look possible.

[Ender]

We saw a Triad ship very briefly against the VPK.

Couldn't have been as shit-hot as the rabid Fivers on SB are saying then, since the VPK took quite a while to go down.

The Walker ship (the second most powerful ship at Coriana 6 compared to the Triad, i f we ignore Lorien, who never involves himself in fights.) destroyed a Shadow cruiser in a fraction of a second (bertween 1/10th to 1/3rd of a second I think) with only a fraction of the beam discharge - suggesting they delivered 250,000 TJ to the Cruiser (BRian's estimate on Shadow Cruiser tolerances, approximately within my own estimated figures) and a sustained firepower of betwen 750,000 tw to 2,500,000 tw (the beam can fire for several seconds.)

But this ship is much larger than most Vorlon and Shadow vessels at Coriana 6, and in the B5 era they only have one of them.

So if that was a left over primordial era ship, I guess the babtech absolute upperlimits for the FOs ships aren't unreasonable then. Low GT for their best ships I could possibly see.

[Ted C]

Heh, I did something like that too. If you go with the fact that the 60 MT or so that killed the BC was from a nuke, meaning that 90% was released in the first microsecond and adjust to watts since the shadow ships radiate off so much energy per second from their diffusers, they end up taking 2.2572E23 watts, or 54 teratons. Of course, this ignore the fact that the real energy was still only 60 MT.

Ender, you can't twist 60 MT of energy into 54 TT of energy like that. The wattage doesn't affect the total energy delivery, only how fast it gets to the target. Wattage is only important when the energy delivery rate has to exceed the rate at which the target can redirect that energy.

For instance, if I hit you with 100 J of energy in 10 seconds, I'm hitting you with 10 W.

If you can redirect energy at a rate of 10 W, your safe.

If I can cut the delivery time to 1 second, I'm hitting you with 100 W. You're redirecting 10 W, so you end up absorbing 90 J of energy.

The amount of energy I dropped on you didn't change.

[Ender]

If trek didnt have those fucking torpedos, B5 would assrape trek.

Isn't that a bit like saying "If America's army didn't have any weapons, the roman legions would stomp them"?

Absolute MAXIMUM for photon torps are 64 megatons, which i am a little skeptical on.

Even with lower numbers it's bad. I assume 50 MT, partly out of genorosity, partly because I think they do hit the MT ranges. But When I did Night Terrors stuff in the last Trek B5 thread, I got 18 MT for photons and 55 MT for Quantums, both enough to tear up the First Ones. However they got ignored so if there were flaws, I didn't see them.

Hyperspace with ion drive is about the same as high warp, so EA vs. UFP would have similar speed capabilities.

Not necessarily, as Hyperspace speeds depend on where you are going. You travel faster going to Centuari then to Earth even though Centuari is further because of the Hyperspace path.

The only way this would go to the EA is if the war is fought in the B5verse. If not, the EA would need to make a completely new hyperspace system, which would take time.

And even then simply blowing up one could cost the B5 entire fleets when they lost the signal in hyperspace. This is similar to why the Empire crushes the Federation: No effective way to go on the offensive due to mobility issues.

I'd love to consider the destruction of the black star a writing fuck-up, but i cant..

I remember reading there was a fan out there who wrote a petition demaning it be changed. That's going further then even Darkstar has gone.

Fighters would make a hard time for fed ships, and thats the only reason an omega would be able to take on a galaxy.

What, are they going to do Kamakazi attacks? Thunderbolts with missiles would be bad, but starfuries would be ignored, or worse be met with Tac fighters and Delta Flyers

If it's the ISA vs. the UFP, I think it would go to the ISA. I doubt a feddie could get a torpedo anywhere near anything with gravimetric drive. (Besides the Excalibur)

Umm, why?

[Ender]

Heh, I did something like that too. If you go with the fact that the 60 MT or so that killed the BC was from a nuke, meaning that 90% was released in the first microsecond and adjust to watts since the shadow ships radiate off so much energy per second from their diffusers, they end up taking 2.2572E23 watts, or 54 teratons. Of course, this ignore the fact that the real energy was still only 60 MT.

Ender, you can't twist 60 MT of energy into 54 TT of energy like that.

I'm aware of that. And mention it in my last sentance. This was a "screw around and try and twist things" calc. I figured I'd submit it to Earthforce R&D.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Do you have any evidence for these 10000 TW figures?

He's referring to the 12, 500 TW upper limit Brian Young established for the White Star based on the destruction of the Shadow cruiser in Into the Fire (It destroyed a cruiser in about 20-30 seconds with sustained fire from its beam weapons.)

So it takes around 75 megatons to kill a Shadow cruiser?

According to certain numbers babtech gives, the upper limit on a shadow's destruction was something in the range of 60 MT when it could not use active shielding, ie really fast large explosion or teep jamming. The numbers babtech gives for the Shadow vessel dying in Into the Fire, when hit with a 500 MT nuke, which transfered ~60 MT of energy.
I was trying to give a lower end limit. If a BattleCrab is not blocked telepathically, then it can hold it's own against a 100000 TW beam for a little while.

A wing of 7-9 Nials could probably destroy a galaxy class feddie ship, so many nice open areas to hit, nacelles, big middle array, the neck, the elbows on the nacelles.
Thus maybe 13-15 Thunderbolts.

[Uraniun235]

So, um, I guess the shields never entered into the equation? Or the phasers?

Plus, B5 is one to talk when it comes to "big, wide open areas". Look at the Omega's rotating section. Mmm, nice big target, full of machinery that could fuck up and cause a world of hurt if it were to suddenly jam up from weapons fire. Big, ponderous, slow, rather like a flying brick with a twisty part in the middle.

If anything, an Omega's profile would be an easier target to hit than the profile of a GCS. Granted, there are weak points on the GCS hull, but given your claims, do you think it'd make much difference if it didn't have those pylons and what-not?

[Ender]

According to certain numbers babtech gives, the upper limit on a shadow's destruction was something in the range of 60 MT when it could not use active shielding, ie really fast large explosion or teep jamming.

A) It doesn't have shielding, it has energy diffusers
B) Energy diffusers are a built in property of the hull.

Your explanation fails.

The numbers babtech gives for the Shadow vessel dying in Into the Fire, when hit with a 500 MT nuke, which transfered ~60 MT of energy.
I was trying to give a lower end limit. If a BattleCrab is not blocked telepathically, then it can hold it's own against a 100000 TW beam for a little while.

We saw that happen where?

A wing of 7-9 Nials could probably destroy a galaxy class feddie ship, so many nice open areas to hit, nacelles, big middle array, the neck, the elbows on the nacelles.
Thus maybe 13-15 Thunderbolts.

Yes, because KT level shots are going to rip through MT level shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

Heh, I did something like that too. If you go with the fact that the 60 MT or so that killed the BC was from a nuke, meaning that 90% was released in the first microsecond and adjust to watts since the shadow ships radiate off so much energy per second from their diffusers, they end up taking 2.2572E23 watts, or 54 teratons. Of course, this ignore the fact that the real energy was still only 60 MT.

Stuff like that makes the 362 MT EA lasers, exawatt green beams and 10 TT/sec Vorlon gun look possible.

Its not quite the same. I n the case of B5 Wars, its analogous to someone using WEG figures to scale up TL figures or shielding or something like that. The highest I ever figured I think was betwen 15-30 nukes, assuming a fully tricked out Primordial.

Alot of the figures are also established upon already known upper limits and ignore alot of concerns. For example, for the 1e12 MT "SPK", we're ignoring that the energy input would more or less result in instant extinction around the planet - 10 to 12 hours would be far too long.

Whereas with the Vorlon guns, EA lasers, and green beams, you're dealing with deliberate and questionable manipulation of data.

[Connor MacLeod]

Heh, I did something like that too. If you go with the fact that the 60 MT or so that killed the BC was from a nuke, meaning that 90% was released in the first microsecond and adjust to watts since the shadow ships radiate off so much energy per second from their diffusers, they end up taking 2.2572E23 watts, or 54 teratons. Of course, this ignore the fact that the real energy was still only 60 MT.

Ender, you can't twist 60 MT of energy into 54 TT of energy like that. The wattage doesn't affect the total energy delivery, only how fast it gets to the target. Wattage is only important when the energy delivery rate has to exceed the rate at which the target can redirect that energy.

For instance, if I hit you with 100 J of energy in 10 seconds, I'm hitting you with 10 W.

If you can redirect energy at a rate of 10 W, your safe.

If I can cut the delivery time to 1 second, I'm hitting you with 100 W. You're redirecting 10 W, so you end up absorbing 90 J of energy.

The amount of energy I dropped on you didn't change.

ACtually, if you deliver taht energy with a knife, there's momentum.. and een if he absorbs the joules, there's the momentum to consider..

[Connor MacLeod]

So if that was a left over primordial era ship, I guess the babtech absolute upperlimits for the FOs ships aren't unreasonable then. Low GT for their best ships I could possibly see.

IIRC the Walkers used those ships in primordial times, but its only the Shadows that use "Primordial" cruisers (their primordials are more powerful because they used to fly their own ships. When they started using younger race pilots, the ships became less powerful. Thsi was partly because they had to artificially grow them faster, which resulted in less powerful cruisers than a "natural" shadow vessel allowed to grow, if I recall the timeframe correctly - centuries. Some required thousands of years to become effective.)

[Ender]

So if that was a left over primordial era ship, I guess the babtech absolute upperlimits for the FOs ships aren't unreasonable then. Low GT for their best ships I could possibly see.

IIRC the Walkers used those ships in primordial times, but its only the Shadows that use "Primordial" cruisers (their primordials are more powerful because they used to fly their own ships. When they started using younger race pilots, the ships became less powerful. Thsi was partly because they had to artificially grow them faster, which resulted in less powerful cruisers than a "natural" shadow vessel allowed to grow, if I recall the timeframe correctly - centuries. Some required thousands of years to become effective.)

Ah, ok I thought primordial was a general description of the ships of that time, not a term limited to describing Shadow and some Vorlon ships.

[Connor MacLeod]

So if that was a left over primordial era ship, I guess the babtech absolute upperlimits for the FOs ships aren't unreasonable then. Low GT for their best ships I could possibly see.

IIRC the Walkers used those ships in primordial times, but its only the Shadows that use "Primordial" cruisers (their primordials are more powerful because they used to fly their own ships. When they started using younger race pilots, the ships became less powerful. Thsi was partly because they had to artificially grow them faster, which resulted in less powerful cruisers than a "natural" shadow vessel allowed to grow, if I recall the timeframe correctly - centuries. Some required thousands of years to become effective.)

Ah, ok I thought primordial was a general description of the ships of that time, not a term limited to describing Shadow and some Vorlon ships.

The point is is that "primordial" rarely means "more powerful than Ancient" (the classification used for more modern FO vessels) unless applying to the Shadows (and somewhat to Vorlons.) The reason that Shadow Primordial vessels are more powerful than Ancients is because the fact the Shadows piloted primordial vessels themselves, whereas Ancient vessels use YR CPUs. There's differences in capability as a result as well.

[SWPIGWANG]

Earthforce at the beginning > Enterprise

Time frame time frame.....

[Lt. Nebfer]

I onced read somewhere that the ISA had something like 30,000 ships

and isent the firepower of the ISA ships at like 200 kt to 3mt??

and the omegas in ITB are modiyied novas(prototypes for the omegas)

[Darth Wong]

I onced read somewhere that the ISA had something like 30,000 ships

These ships would have come in handy when Earth was attacked by Sheridan, and again when it was attacked by the Drakh. Instead, they managed to rustle up a few dozen. You'd think you could find more ships to defend your homeworld against the biggest threat in town.

[Hotfoot]

I onced read somewhere that the ISA had something like 30,000 ships

These ships would have come in handy when Earth was attacked by Sheridan, and again when it was attacked by the Drakh. Instead, they managed to rustle up a few dozen. You'd think you could find more ships to defend your homeworld against the biggest threat in town.

ISA = Inter Stellar Alliance
EA = Earth Alliance

EA != ISA

ISA wasn't even founded until after Sheriden attacked Earth, and even then it wasn't their mandate to provide defenses for the Homeworlds of their various members, just border patrol, as I understand it.

[Stormbringer]

I onced read somewhere that the ISA had something like 30,000 ships

These ships would have come in handy when Earth was attacked by Sheridan, and again when it was attacked by the Drakh. Instead, they managed to rustle up a few dozen. You'd think you could find more ships to defend your homeworld against the biggest threat in town.

That quote, is off by an order of magnitude and refers to the time of the Centauri trilogy. And it of course, assumes rough parity with the Centuari Republic.

[Darth Wong]

I onced read somewhere that the ISA had something like 30,000 ships

These ships would have come in handy when Earth was attacked by Sheridan, and again when it was attacked by the Drakh. Instead, they managed to rustle up a few dozen. You'd think you could find more ships to defend your homeworld against the biggest threat in town.

ISA = Inter Stellar Alliance
EA = Earth Alliance

EA != ISA

ISA wasn't even founded until after Sheriden attacked Earth, and even then it wasn't their mandate to provide defenses for the Homeworlds of their various members, just border patrol, as I understand it.

That might work for the Sheridan attack, but not for the Drakh attack. Try again.

PS. Even if you assume the ISA has 10 times the resources of the EA, the leap from a few dozen to 30,000 ships is still pretty big (unless "ships" includes fighters).

[Connor MacLeod]

I onced read somewhere that the ISA had something like 30,000 ships

These ships would have come in handy when Earth was attacked by Sheridan, and again when it was attacked by the Drakh. Instead, they managed to rustle up a few dozen. You'd think you could find more ships to defend your homeworld against the biggest threat in town.

That quote, is off by an order of magnitude and refers to the time of the Centauri trilogy. And it of course, assumes rough parity with the Centuari Republic.

Some fan estiamtes go into the tens of thousands.. but insofar as I can see low to mid thousands, at best. The Army of Light composed a substantial majority of the League and Minbari fleets (dozens of league races and 2/3 of the Minbari, IIRC) and had only "Thousands" (8,000 as per JMS commentary, and was the largest fleet ever assembled)

The Third Centauri prime novel had a "secret" fleet that was considered impressive by those standards - it was also said that with that fleet the Centauri had the "single largest fleet" of any individual power, even if the IA outnumbered them.

[Connor MacLeod]

These ships would have come in handy when Earth was attacked by Sheridan, and again when it was attacked by the Drakh. Instead, they managed to rustle up a few dozen. You'd think you could find more ships to defend your homeworld against the biggest threat in town.

ISA = Inter Stellar Alliance
EA = Earth Alliance

EA != ISA

ISA wasn't even founded until after Sheriden attacked Earth, and even then it wasn't their mandate to provide defenses for the Homeworlds of their various members, just border patrol, as I understand it.

That might work for the Sheridan attack, but not for the Drakh attack. Try again.

PS. Even if you assume the ISA has 10 times the resources of the EA, the leap from a few dozen to 30,000 ships is still pretty big (unless "ships" includes fighters).

Insofar as any canonically or officially verifiable source is concerned, I could only consider the EA having at most maybe 5,000-6,000 ships. Definitely less than 8,000. Some sources suggest its less than 3,000 as well.

ISA as a total probably would have high thousands/low tens of thusands of various types (we're literally talking dozens of races.) I'd say at least 8000 (based on Army of light figures), but probably fewer than 30,000 (assuming 5,000 among the four major races, and another 10,000 for the league - which works out to fleets in the hundreds for each race on average.)

ISA vs Feds though, its close. I dont think the Feds have a huge fleet (the largest I've ever seen is 12,000 ships) but they might have an edge on territory and planets/colonies (but not substantial.. less than 50% I think.)

[Connor MacLeod]

According to the ACTa novelization, the majority of the fleet defending Earth was human, except for some ships that had been either around Earth for diplomatic/trade purposes, on IA buisiness, or had been called in abruptly.)

[Hotfoot]

That might work for the Sheridan attack, but not for the Drakh attack. Try again.

I didn't pay much attention to that movie, to be honest. All I really remember was that it involved technomages, some prophecy or something, and it was supposed to be the launching point for Crusade, which I've never watched. I don't know how much time they had to prepare for the Drakh attack.

PS. Even if you assume the ISA has 10 times the resources of the EA, the leap from a few dozen to 30,000 ships is still pretty big (unless "ships" includes fighters).

ISA, as best I understand it, is rather like an actual, working UN model that has a decent military force. For all I know, some of those ships could be modified cargo haulers. I don't remember hearing 30,000 being tossed around anywhere, I was just trying to clear up that one point of confusion of ISA/EA.

However, if Stormbringer is correct, then that number isn't from the period of time in which the Drakh attack occured, but around fifteen years later instead.

[Stormbringer]

Some fan estiamtes go into the tens of thousands.. but insofar as I can see low to mid thousands, at best. The Army of Light composed a substantial majority of the League and Minbari fleets (dozens of league races and 2/3 of the Minbari, IIRC) and had only "Thousands" (8,000 as per JMS commentary, and was the largest fleet ever assembled)

Fan estimates tend to be crap. I'd wager the AoL having probably closer to 2000-200 given they have some very powerful ships (Victories and Whitestars) where as the Centauri had upgraded old designs. That doesn't include the various member navies though. Those would probably vary greatly but I doubt they would exceed the AoL for fleet size.

The Third Centauri prime novel had a "secret" fleet that was considered impressive by those standards - it was also said that with that fleet the Centauri had the "single largest fleet" of any individual power, even if the IA outnumbered them.

It was indeed, in terms of numbers, the largest though the Army of Light fleet was supposedly as tough if not more so.

[Connor MacLeod]

Fan estimates tend to be crap. I'd wager the AoL having probably closer to 2000-200 given they have some very powerful ships (Victories and Whitestars) where as the Centauri had upgraded old designs. That doesn't include the various member navies though. Those would probably vary greatly but I doubt they would exceed the AoL for fleet size.

The Army of Light was from season 4 and the strongest ships were White Stars and Minbari Cruisers (to my memory). the "victory-class" (I dont remember whether or not the Victory or Excalibur was the first, and the class name was never given to my memory) didnt come into the picture until the Crusade era, and there were only one of those for awhile.

I also am not sure where you get "upgraded old designs" for the Centauri. Whiel they did use older designs, they still had some newer ones as well (the Centauri medium cruiser, for example) and the fleet they used in the third Cent. Prime novel was of new designs.

The AoL was mostly league worlds as well. At that point EA and the Centauri were Shadow puppets (with EA in civil war, IIRC) and the Narn were all but decimated/dominated by the Centauri. That left the Minbari (rwithout the Warrior caste, IIRC) and the League (or at elast a couple dozen League members..) I dont think the actual IA number is MUCH more than this (at most, 3-4x times), but its clearly more (since the IA incorporated the four major powers plus the dozens of league members.)

It was indeed, in terms of numbers, the largest though the Army of Light fleet was supposedly as tough if not more so.

Post Shadow War and EA civil war the AoL wasnt the AoL anymore - it was the IA. The Centauri prime novels take place some 15 years or so after this. Granted, that 3,000 some odd fleet had been built in secret over a period of 20 years (by slave labor) - but it does set some constraints (And ther was implication that the Drakh had augmented Centauri tech with some of their own.)