Can the UFP stop the Black Lance?

[FOG3]

While not good as a straight up fight is seems appropriate as a scenario to shall we say, establish how the Federation would weather things if not for writer’s insuring their survival in the kind of scenario they like to put them in.

The year is 2672. While Tolwyn is beginning to get things lined up for his deception to get the Confed government to declare war on the Union of Border Worlds, he receives a report of a new Jump Point in the Enigma Sector. This Jump Point leads to a system in Federation space with a space based scientific outpost studying Scientific Anomaly of the Month.

The TCS Vesuvius and escorts follow up on the initial probe and make contact. After getting an earful about Federation philosophy and attitude, Tolwyn decides he likes the UFP less then he likes his own politicians. He orders the seizure of the station and his analysts are able to pull enough data from it to map out where some of the jump points are throughout Federation space.

A group of the Black Lance with a squadron of Dragons is setup in a nearby asteroid field, and Tolwyn orders them to map out the jump point routes, deploy the GenSelect Bioweapon on the Population Centers, and to infiltrate the Utopia Planetea Shipyards in order to pull down information on the UFPs most advanced technology and how to fabricate it in case some of it will prove useful. After this his battlegroup jumps out.

Tolwyn does _not_ order to annihilation of Star Fleet as his warped philosophy of the Strong Shall Prevail, does not technically mean he wishes the annihilation of this other human race so much as whatever insanity he planned for Confed.

The classic fighter of the Black Lance is the Dragon Heavy Fighter, which has a cloaking device in addition to other equipment. With Scoops Open these things do 500 kps with dry thrust and 1,200 kps with afterburners engaged. In the novel End Run among other ships a Venture-class corvette is confirmed at hitting 10,000 kps with scoops closed, a vessel that with scoop open doesn’t do more then 200 kps and cruises at 150 kps. Scoops Open is used in virtually all combat scenarios in the Wing Commander Universe because they grant greater agility and help with fuel.

Power generation of the Wing Commander universe by this era at least is arguably better then Star Wars. The Behemoth-class Dreadnought is portrayed as being able to Death Star a planet, while being more along the lines of the size of the Executor.

Fighters have gained dominance because of developments in technology that analyzes phase shields, and can disrupt them. Early models simply could not be used on large warships as the interference from their own shields would prevent the sensors from working as per the novel Action Stations. The common form of this is the Torpedo. If we take the variance in how Phase Shields are handled throughout the series the implication is that there’s an ongoing battle between advancements in Phase Shield technology and hardware to analyze them rendering fighter guns nominally effective at times when the balance is in their favor. Prior to this it was the all brute force battleship style, with fighters being more in the role of recon and scouting.

The advantage for Starfleet is that the Black Lance will have to transit their systems while going through their territory, giving them the opportunity to intercept if they can figure out a way to detect them. Further if they’re smart enough if the sniff enough around the Research sector they will find the Asteroid base the Black Lance is operating out of. By OP caveat, Trek writer caveat cannot magic up a counter to the GenSelect nanomachines in time to matter. Their victory conditions are destruction of the Black Lance or to at least halt the attacks on their populace.

Admiral Tolwyn will be dealt with by Colonel Blair in relatively short order, so there will be no follow up.

The Black Lance has the advantage of cloaking devices, non-intuitive Awkende Drive based FTL, and fighter deployable weapons of mass destruction. Their victory conditions will be hitting all 150 Federation worlds with GenSelect Weapons and downloading the contents of the Utopia Planetea mainframe.

Can the UFP stop the Black Lance?

Note this is analogous to what a rogue Klingon faction could do with the ill thought out capability to mess with planets given to them for a episode, so not exactly from far left field.

[Connor MacLeod]

A group of the Black Lance with a squadron of Dragons is setup in a nearby asteroid field, and Tolwyn orders them to map out the jump point routes, deploy the GenSelect Bioweapon on the Population Centers, and to infiltrate the Utopia Planetea Shipyards in order to pull down information on the UFPs most advanced technology and how to fabricate it in case some of it will prove useful. After this his battlegroup jumps out.

Tolwyn does _not_ order to annihilation of Star Fleet as his warped philosophy of the Strong Shall Prevail, does not technically mean he wishes the annihilation of this other human race so much as whatever insanity he planned for Confed.

I'm not really going to comment on much of this but it seems really contrived to me.

The classic fighter of the Black Lance is the Dragon Heavy Fighter, which has a cloaking device in addition to other equipment. With Scoops Open these things do 500 kps with dry thrust and 1,200 kps with afterburners engaged. In the novel End Run among other ships a Venture-class corvette is confirmed at hitting 10,000 kps with scoops closed, a vessel that with scoop open doesn’t do more then 200 kps and cruises at 150 kps. Scoops Open is used in virtually all combat scenarios in the Wing Commander Universe because they grant greater agility and help with fuel.

1.) Velocity matters little. Acceleration matters much.

2.) The "scoops" idea from the novels was insanely retarded and did not take into account the density of hydrogen in space. Pushing this idea really isnt smart.

Power generation of the Wing Commander universe by this era at least is arguably better then Star Wars. The Behemoth-class Dreadnought is portrayed as being able to Death Star a planet, while being more along the lines of the size of the Executor.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHA No. Power generation for Behemoth has been flat out stated in the novel AND the game, and it was far less impressive than what you claim it to be. As I recall it was something like half a billion gigawatts or some such.. not even gigaton level destruction, and that was enough to demolish any ship or station that existed i the WC universe. and the Temblor bomb was some triple digit MT.

So really, we're probably looking at around ST level firepower and power generation.

Fighters have gained dominance because of developments in technology that analyzes phase shields, and can disrupt them. Early models simply could not be used on large warships as the interference from their own shields would prevent the sensors from working as per the novel Action Stations. The common form of this is the Torpedo. If we take the variance in how Phase Shields are handled throughout the series the implication is that there’s an ongoing battle between advancements in Phase Shield technology and hardware to analyze them rendering fighter guns nominally effective at times when the balance is in their favor. Prior to this it was the all brute force battleship style, with fighters being more in the role of recon and scouting.

Which is going to be relevant to ST how?

The advantage for Starfleet is that the Black Lance will have to transit their systems while going through their territory, giving them the opportunity to intercept if they can figure out a way to detect them. Further if they’re smart enough if the sniff enough around the Research sector they will find the Asteroid base the Black Lance is operating out of. By OP caveat, Trek writer caveat cannot magic up a counter to the GenSelect nanomachines in time to matter. Their victory conditions are destruction of the Black Lance or to at least halt the attacks on their populace.

You've neglected other issues like sensors and communications, construction capabilities, ground combat capabilities, etc. etc.

Also, the ability for the Black Lance to do anything like this is going to depend greatly on the number and location of jump points found. It will also depend on how cloaking works (its not going to be infallible.) and so on and os forth . There's alot omre to discuss, basically.

[Nephtys]

Wing Commander is really impossible to quantify. On the one hand, you travel at 'KPS', whatever that means, fight in visual range... and yet, travel to dense asteroid fields/other moons/planets within minutes. On another hand, your fighter weapons (depending on source) range from 'nJ' to 'kT', which is again, too widely divergent to reconcile in the slightest.

Meanwhile, the Sivar superweapon seems to scare everyone, despite doing what a single nuclear bomb could (or according to one source, a single DF missile's low kiloton yield). Heat Seeking missiles for some reason only work in the rear aspect, despite fighters blazing with 'ion drives' through outer space... hell, the fact that DF missiles are even viable is ridiculous.

Oh, and of course the classic 'my heavy cruiser has the combined firepower of two medium fighters'.

Oh. And the Behemoth has enough different dimensions/stated capabilities to make heads spin.

[Samuel]

Starfleet wins when the Black Lance grinds to a halt due to lack of fuel, spare parts, munitions or any other gear they need that cannot be produced in this area. Given what Conner has said, it will be obscenely easy for Starfleet to bottle up the Black Lance forces. How do the jump points work in WC? Because the Feds have shown their willingness to mine their equivalent before...

[Ariphaos]

Starfleet wins when the Black Lance grinds to a halt due to lack of fuel, spare parts, munitions or any other gear they need that cannot be produced in this area. Given what Conner has said, it will be obscenely easy for Starfleet to bottle up the Black Lance forces. How do the jump points work in WC? Because the Feds have shown their willingness to mine their equivalent before...

The idea is that there is a fuckton lot of them, and they cover huge areas.

They make rather little sense, however. If you fail WC1 for example, the Confederation retreats from Vega sector to Deneb sector (!?) which threw me even at fourteen.

I liked Wing Commander and have many fond memories, but sense, the game did not make.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The classic fighter of the Black Lance is the Dragon Heavy Fighter, which has a cloaking device in addition to other equipment. With Scoops Open these things do 500 kps with dry thrust and 1,200 kps with afterburners engaged. In the novel End Run among other ships a Venture-class corvette is confirmed at hitting 10,000 kps with scoops closed, a vessel that with scoop open doesn’t do more then 200 kps and cruises at 150 kps. Scoops Open is used in virtually all combat scenarios in the Wing Commander Universe because they grant greater agility and help with fuel.

Whatever the hell a 'kps' is. If we assume that it corresponds to "kilometers per second," then already we're talking nonsense, since these are ships in a vacuum. Acceleration means much more than velocity. Of course, going by visual evidence, ships traveling at many hundreds of "kps" seem to be doing no more than a few hundred meters/sec and accelerating at, optimistically, a few tens of gees, further complicating the issue.

Power generation of the Wing Commander universe by this era at least is arguably better then Star Wars. The Behemoth-class Dreadnought is portrayed as being able to Death Star a planet, while being more along the lines of the size of the Executor.

No. As has been stated, the ship's power output is stated as being in the terawatt range. Like the 'Temblor' bomb, the Behemoth doesn't destroy planets through DET, but through magic. Of course, since the Black Lance has neither of these (both being one-off contrived acts of plot superweapons,) this matters not.

Fighters have gained dominance because of developments in technology that analyzes phase shields, and can disrupt them.

What is a WC phase shield? How does it compare to a Starfleet shield? You're apparently just C&Ping BS-babble out of the Wing Commander source books and expecting us to do the work for you.

. . . rendering fighter guns nominally effective at times when the balance is in their favor. Prior to this it was the all brute force battleship style, with fighters being more in the role of recon and scouting.

A thirty meter fighter shouldn't be able to mount weapons powerful enough to do more than mildly inconvenience a multi-hundred meter long starship. Since the source material seems to suggest near-ST levels of power generation, we can ascertain that WC capital ships are apparently constructed from tissue-paper.

[FOG3]

1.) Velocity matters little. Acceleration matters much.

2.) The "scoops" idea from the novels was insanely retarded and did not take into account the density of hydrogen in space. Pushing this idea really isnt smart.

In a universe with all the other technology they have you want to whine about the Scoops? If you know enough to whine about the scoops you can answer the acceleration yourself with the linear velocity and turns with the given deg/s stats. It's not exactly hard, but seems as how the inevitable follow up will be that Warp Drive will allow intercept if they can find them, why do they matter?

Power generation of the Wing Commander universe by this era at least is arguably better then Star Wars. The Behemoth-class Dreadnought is portrayed as being able to Death Star a planet, while being more along the lines of the size of the Executor.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHA No. Power generation for Behemoth has been flat out stated in the novel AND the game, and it was far less impressive than what you claim it to be. As I recall it was something like half a billion gigawatts or some such.. not even gigaton level destruction, and that was enough to demolish any ship or station that existed i the WC universe. and the Temblor bomb was some triple digit MT.

So really, we're probably looking at around ST level firepower and power generation.

When SW has given stats on velocity and otherwise before relatively recently they were even less impressive. Barely able to break Mach 1, etc. ST lists their power figures so low even the listed figures you give utterly outclass them. Yet I know for a fact you don't hold those over the series. They were overruled by visuals, seems as how the same statement makes it clear it's a DET effect with the Behemoth and it was clearly shown taking out a planet your point is what?

There's more justification to give ST the equivalent of cannonballs. Watts could just as easily be modified ala Terminator to refer to a bigger unit, and it wouldn't hurt anything now would it?

Fighters have gained dominance because of developments in technology that analyzes phase shields, and can disrupt them. Early models simply could not be used on large warships as the interference from their own shields would prevent the sensors from working as per the novel Action Stations. The common form of this is the Torpedo. If we take the variance in how Phase Shields are handled throughout the series the implication is that there’s an ongoing battle between advancements in Phase Shield technology and hardware to analyze them rendering fighter guns nominally effective at times when the balance is in their favor. Prior to this it was the all brute force battleship style, with fighters being more in the role of recon and scouting.

Which is going to be relevant to ST how?

And it's not worth mentioning how fighter can deal with cap ships as that will be what's sent against them, why?

You've neglected other issues like sensors and communications, construction capabilities, ground combat capabilities, etc. etc.

How is construction and ground capabilities relevant to a strike force deploying bioweapons? It's rather hypocritical for you to whine about information on fighters, which are in OP, and then whine about lack of info on cap ships which are not.

The Confederation and Kilrathi empire are both bigger then any of the Alpha Quadrant powers, and as per WC3 have construction capabilities well in excess of what ST is implied capable of. Further in a previous thread years ago it was already established the Kilrathi Empire would steam roll the Klingon Empire, so what are you getting at?

Also, the ability for the Black Lance to do anything like this is going to depend greatly on the number and location of jump points found. It will also depend on how cloaking works (its not going to be infallible.) and so on and os forth . There's alot omre to discuss, basically.

How does a Klingon cloaking device work, without Technobabble? Seems as how I doubt you can answer that why are

Starfleet wins when the Black Lance grinds to a halt due to lack of fuel, spare parts, munitions or any other gear they need that cannot be produced in this area.

With an established base and ability to use out of the way uninhabited systems if they want to? Pleeze.

Given what Conner has said, it will be obscenely easy for Starfleet to bottle up the Black Lance forces. How do the jump points work in WC? Because the Feds have shown their willingness to mine their equivalent before..

Awkende Drive drive uses spacial phenomena with this anti-graviton/graviton cancellation trick. They're not wormholes, as you were informed the last time you claimed such nonsense years ago. Tracking them down when they don't even know what a Awkende Drive is nonsense, and they themselves do mining yet can overcome those problems.

Whatever the hell a 'kps' is. If we assume that it corresponds to "kilometers per second," then already we're talking nonsense, since these are ships in a vacuum. Acceleration means much more than velocity. Of course, going by visual evidence, ships traveling at many hundreds of "kps" seem to be doing no more than a few hundred meters/sec and accelerating at, optimistically, a few tens of gees, further complicating the issue.

WC1 manual aka Claw Marks explicity states kps is Kilometers per Second, and that it's relative velocity. If you want to rip into the implications of the game play of other franchises including the X-wing series, by all means do so because they will come out worse.

No. As has been stated, the ship's power output is stated as being in the terawatt range.

The statement is 500 million gigawatts, that's 500e15W not 500e12W and referred directly to the beam not the powerplant. Please try to keep your units straight. On the other hand a Galaxy-class starship has a stated power rating of 1.21GW or 1.21e9W so if you insist on that vector you lose anyway, so what's the point? Or did you forget about the low figure quotes sprinkled throughout ST in your mad dash to show you think e15 is a trillion?

[Stark]

Oh we've got a live one here.

So you're using a pastiche of the godawful novels (complete with scoops lol), the goddamn WC1 fluff text AND ingame stuff?

Highlight - saying ST is doomed because a single 'behemoth' has significantly larger power output than a GCS. Remember, needing information about WC cloak is rude and mean, because we don't know EXACTLY how a Klingon cloak works.

I don't see how A History Of Phase Shields as a Stupid Universe Concealing Game Mechanic has any relevance to their likely success vs ST capital ships, either. Whinging about crappy SW/ST EU numbers is retarded when they're overridden by canon. What's canon in WC, again? I'd never even HEARD of these appalling novels until I looked them up for this thread.

[Nephtys]

WC hurts my head. Look at the blueprint for the Hornet-class Light Fighter

http://www.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/ ... eprint.gif

This one's right from the stuff you got in the Wing Commander 1 box (awesome goodies btw). And already there's a problem. If the ship's maximum 'velocity' (however the hell THAT works) is 420KPS, and that means KILOMETERS per second... it's longest ranged weapon, a Dart-class DUMBFIRE missile only has a 10 kilometer range, with a 50 meter blast radius. Nevermind how newtonian vectors even would allow for a 'maximum range' for a DUMBFIRE weapon. It's Javelin 'Heat Seekers' are even worse, having a NINE Kilometer max range, with an effective range of six! That's worse than any heat-seeking air to air missile today.

Wing Commander stats are screwed up across the board, especially taking in later documents saying that their fighter weapons are in the 20-50 GJ range.

[FOG3]

Worf: "The vessel is firing jacketed streams of streams of positrons and anti-protons. Equivalent firepower: forty megawatts. Shields are holding."
[Vessel fires again]
Worf: "Again, forty megawatts. No damage."
Riker: "Well if that's the best they can do this should last about five minutes."

A second engagement occurs later in the episode:

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Picard: "Damage?"
Worf: "Superficial. But I am having trouble reassembling the shields."
[Vessel fires again]
Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."
Data: "The warship is capable of striking us with far more powerful bursts."

In episode dialogue, Next Generation episode was the Survivors. You were saying something about non-canon, Stark? This incident is even one of the classics from the ST vs SW debate. Utterly pathetic, from you.

We know HS don't work as the Confed uses them, they block visual, and they otherwise can't detect them easily, which is more then can be said for a Klingon cloaking device. So I say again if you're so obsessed on operational mechanisms how does a Klingon cloaking device work.

[Stark]

But the velocities are relative so clearly this represents the missile's limited delta-v to effect an intercept, right?

Don't forget, Nephtys - the Mass Drivers fire GIANT SLOW MOVING GREY BALLS.

[Stark]

But the velocities are relative so clearly this represents the missile's limited delta-v to effect an intercept, right?

Don't forget, Nephtys - the Mass Drivers fire GIANT SLOW MOVING GREY BALLS.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Power generation of the Wing Commander universe by this era at least is arguably better then Star Wars. The Behemoth-class Dreadnought is portrayed as being able to Death Star a planet, while being more along the lines of the size of the Executor.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHA No. Power generation for Behemoth has been flat out stated in the novel AND the game, and it was far less impressive than what you claim it to be. As I recall it was something like half a billion gigawatts or some such.. not even gigaton level destruction, and that was enough to demolish any ship or station that existed i the WC universe. and the Temblor bomb was some triple digit MT.

So really, we're probably looking at around ST level firepower and power generation.

When SW has given stats on velocity and otherwise before relatively recently they were even less impressive. Barely able to break Mach 1, etc. ST lists their power figures so low even the listed figures you give utterly outclass them. Yet I know for a fact you don't hold those over the series. They were overruled by visuals, seems as how the same statement makes it clear it's a DET effect with the Behemoth and it was clearly shown taking out a planet your point is what?

The ship's power output, as you stated is on the order of 1x1017W. The gravitational binding energy of an Earth-sized planet is on the order of 1x1032J. The time it would take a ship with the stated power generation capacity to impart the requisite number of joules is on the order of 1x1015 seconds, or around 31.7 million years. The visuals clearly show the Behemoth shooting at the planet, and the planet blowing up, which may or may not be DET. We'd have to examine the video to be sure. Yet, other evidence suggests that they can't build a weapon with enough brute-force power to blow up a planet, since the Temblor bomb backup plan relied on the Kilrathi homeworld being, evidently, comprised of explodium. Ergo, we have reason to suspect that the Behemoth may also rely on some sort of technobabble magic, since if the Confeds could build a ship with genuine planet-cracking power levels at its disposal, then the logical backup plan to the Behemoth would've been a Confed fleet conducting a Base Delta Zero against the Kilrathi homeworld.

Whatever the hell a 'kps' is. If we assume that it corresponds to "kilometers per second," then already we're talking nonsense, since these are ships in a vacuum. Acceleration means much more than velocity. Of course, going by visual evidence, ships traveling at many hundreds of "kps" seem to be doing no more than a few hundred meters/sec and accelerating at, optimistically, a few tens of gees, further complicating the issue.

WC1 manual aka Claw Marks explicity states kps is Kilometers per Second, and that it's relative velocity. If you want to rip into the implications of the game play of other franchises including the X-wing series, by all means do so because they will come out worse.

The notion that 'kps' is relative velocity is absolutely retarded. The first question someone with half a brain might ask is "Relative to what?"

No. As has been stated, the ship's power output is stated as being in the terawatt range.

The statement is 500 million gigawatts, that's 500e15W not 500e12W

That was a genuine math fuck-up on my part.

[FOG3]

You know what let’s do some calcs. At 400 kps you would pass a 8km long object in 1/50 of a second or in other words in one frame. Nobody depicts those kinds of relative velocities.

Maybe we should start quantifying things off relative velocities depicted in battle of the TV shows, and when it becomes clear a WW1 Fokker is doing better mock them? People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones Stark.

[Stark]

What's my 'house', jackass? If you want to say 'SW dogfights take place at slow relative velocities', I'm NOT GOING TO GIVE A SHIT. If you're going to say 'WC speeds are xyz which means abc in a versus situation', you're going to have to prove it.

Y'know, instead of getting butthurt and firing off personal attacks.

[Nephtys]

But the velocities are relative so clearly this represents the missile's limited delta-v to effect an intercept, right?

Don't forget, Nephtys - the Mass Drivers fire GIANT SLOW MOVING GREY BALLS.

That's okay though. Lasers fire slightly less slow moving orange balls. Except on the Nintendo, where they fire smaller, somewhat slow moving blue balls.

Also, another inconsistancy in the stats.

The Broadsword heavy bomber, mainstay of the Confed Bomber wing through the Enigma Campaign (WC2) was an armored beast with an 7cm of 'armor' (whatever it may be) on it's front arc, and powerful shields that gave an 'equivilent' of 7 more cm of ablative protection. It masses 25-odd tons. A Gilgamesh-class Heavy Destroyer sports an impressive 200cm of armor, two antimatter cannons and three whole flak guns. The mighty Confederation-class Supercarrier/Battleship sports a godlike 300cm of armor, nine antimatter cannons, one giant BFG and.. uh... three whole flak guns.... um...

Two years later, the Hellcat V, an upgraded version of an early war plane is sporting 100 cm of 'armor' and 200cm thick 'shields'. It masses about 15 tons.

What?

As much as I adore Wing Commander games, even from the literature, it's painful trying to figure out what makes sense.

[Stark]

As a kid I just mentally separated the sprite games from the 3D games, since they were so hugely different, particularly in the stats.

[Nephtys]

It's more fun trying to see what Freespace can do. Their fighter planes after all, travel about as fast as a somewhat crappy automobile. Also, space is made out of a very viscous jello-like substance that project multicolored nebula backgrounds.

Also, Juggernaut > Destroyers > Frigates = Corvettes > Cruisers.

[Stark]

Man, if you believe the FS fluff, it gets even CRAZIER. Like, Avengers are actually auto-targeting guns firing massive amounts of shells... and not yellow-er balls. Banshees work through a giant pile of technobabble. They even claim that the MX-50 is a 50kT weapon!

[Batman]

1.) Velocity matters little. Acceleration matters much.
2.) The "scoops" idea from the novels was insanely retarded and did not take into account the density of hydrogen in space. Pushing this idea really isnt smart.

In a universe with all the other technology they have you want to whine about the Scoops? If you know enough to whine about the scoops you can answer the acceleration yourself with the linear velocity and turns with the given deg/s stats.

Why should he? That's YOUR job. HE's not the one claiming the WC side can win. Incidentally, their turning ability doesn't say beans about their linear acceleration or about how long they can keep it up.

It's not exactly hard, but seems as how the inevitable follow up will be that Warp Drive will allow intercept if they can find them, why do they matter?

They don't. I don't really see how that means Connor has to do the math showing so.

Power generation of the Wing Commander universe by this era at least is arguably better then Star Wars. The Behemoth-class Dreadnought is portrayed as being able to Death Star a planet, while being more along the lines of the size of the Executor.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHA No. Power generation for Behemoth has been flat out stated in the novel AND the game, and it was far less impressive than what you claim it to be. As I recall it was something like half a billion gigawatts or some such.. not even gigaton level destruction, and that was enough to demolish any ship or station that existed i the WC universe. and the Temblor bomb was some triple digit MT.
So really, we're probably looking at around ST level firepower and power generation.

When SW has given stats on velocity and otherwise before relatively recently they were even less impressive. Barely able to break Mach 1,

Patently wrong as per ALL of the Star Wars movies leave alone the EU stuff,

ST lists their power figures so low even the listed figures you give utterly outclass them. Yet I know for a fact you don't hold those over the series. They were overruled by visuals, seems as how the same statement makes it clear it's a DET effect with the Behemoth and it was clearly shown taking out a planet your point is what?

That'd be the part where Behemoth DIDN'T DET the target to anyone who actually knows what DET means. It's a really really really really big phaser.

There's more justification to give ST the equivalent of cannonballs. Watts could just as easily be modified ala Terminator to refer to a bigger unit, and it wouldn't hurt anything now would it?

Evidence for that actually happening. Especially as ALL available evidence shows Behemoth NOT to be a DET weapon.

Which is going to be relevant to ST how?

And it's not worth mentioning how fighter can deal with cap ships as that will be what's sent against them, why?[/quote]
That'd be the part where WC fighters can deal with WC capships due to those apparently being made of cardboard. This applies to Trek ships why?

Also, the ability for the Black Lance to do anything like this is going to depend greatly on the number and location of jump points found. It will also depend on how cloaking works (its not going to be infallible.) and so on and os forth . There's alot omre to discuss, basically.

How does a Klingon cloaking device work, without Technobabble? Seems as how I doubt you can answer that why are

Both of them work 'somehow'. Onus to show that the WC cloak will work against Trek sensors is on YOU.

Starfleet wins when the Black Lance grinds to a halt due to lack of fuel, spare parts, munitions or any other gear they need that cannot be produced in this area.

With an established base and ability to use out of the way uninhabited systems if they want to? Pleeze.

Yes. Established exploration base does NOT equal industrial base able to support what amounts to an expeditionary force.

Given what Conner has said, it will be obscenely easy for Starfleet to bottle up the Black Lance forces. How do the jump points work in WC? Because the Feds have shown their willingness to mine their equivalent before..

Awkende Drive drive uses spacial phenomena with this anti-graviton/graviton cancellation trick. They're not wormholes, as you were informed the last time you claimed such nonsense years ago. Tracking them down when they don't even know what a Awkende Drive is nonsense, and they themselves do mining yet can overcome those problems.

Which is meaningless nonsense, wherever you got it from. Jump points as actually depicted in the WC games, while possibly too large to be effectively mined, WERE distinct locations of space which means mining the IS a perfectly viable tactic (and indeed HAS been used effectively in WC history at least once).

Whatever the hell a 'kps' is. If we assume that it corresponds to "kilometers per second," then already we're talking nonsense, since these are ships in a vacuum. Acceleration means much more than velocity. Of course, going by visual evidence, ships traveling at many hundreds of "kps" seem to be doing no more than a few hundred meters/sec and accelerating at, optimistically, a few tens of gees, further complicating the issue.

WC1 manual aka Claw Marks explicity states kps is Kilometers per Second, and that it's relative velocity.

IOW it's MEANINGLESS without knowing what it's relative TO.

If you want to rip into the implications of the game play of other franchises including the X-wing series, by all means do so because they will come out worse.

They're also completely irrelevant to this debate.

No. As has been stated, the ship's power output is stated as being in the terawatt range.

The statement is 500 million gigawatts, that's 500e15W not 500e12W

Which is still hopelessly short of what DS1 did.

and referred directly to the beam not the powerplant. Please try to keep your units straight. On the other hand a Galaxy-class starship has a stated power rating of 1.21GW or 1.21e9W

As per what, if you could be bothered?

[Alan Bolte]

The Broadsword heavy bomber, mainstay of the Confed Bomber wing through the Enigma Campaign (WC2) was an armored beast with an 7cm of 'armor' (whatever it may be) on it's front arc, and powerful shields that gave an 'equivilent' of 7 more cm of ablative protection... Two years later, the Hellcat V, an upgraded version of an early war plane is sporting 100 cm of 'armor' and 200cm thick 'shields'. It masses about 15 tons.

This is similar to the way some modern armor is rated: RHAe, or rolled homogeneous armor equivalent. A meter or more frontal turret RHAe is not unusual for a modern tank's thickest armor, but the actual thickness might be perhaps a third of that IIRC.

Also, getting good sources for what the actual game stats were is difficult. For example, some websites list all WC1+2 fighters as having a turn rate of less than ten degrees per second, which is clearly not true. Extracting the stats from the games themselves is also difficult. There also seems to be some confusion between between the listed stats and the in-game values, because 18 hitpoints is supposed to mean 1.8 cm. For example, the "laser" does the same amount of damage per shot in every game. If the games really had increased armor values from 7cm to over 100 cm, then the laser would be entirely useless in later games, which it is not. The confusion stems in part from the game manuals, which made the same mistake.

This is not to say that WC isn't horribly inconsistent about a lot of things, like ship sizes, and as mentioned completely fails to provide a plausible explanation for ship speeds. I believe the original, and best, explanation was that the in-game speeds (kps=mps?) were limited by the flight computer, but that this governor could be turned off, and this was handled automatically for gameplay reasons. Anyway, it's not like the ingame ship speeds are any slower than the speeds at which Star Wars fighters dogfight. If anything they're faster. It's long-distance speed that's more of an unknown, but that can be inferred if we can find some information about how long it takes a WC ship to travel a known intrasystem distance. I don't think we can use Privateer as an example, the ingame travel is clearly an abstraction. If ingame acceleration can be assumed to be real acceleration, then we can reasonably say that no major warship exceeds 100 m/s2

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh we've got a live one here.

So you're using a pastiche of the godawful novels (complete with scoops lol), the goddamn WC1 fluff text AND ingame stuff?

Actually I have rather fond memories of the novels. Then again I also like sci fi that has magic chainsaw weapons of doom, so maybe my taste isnt as reliable

In terms of actual canon, I stick with the "fluff uber alles" policy and completely ignore ANYTHING gameplay oriented.

As far as Trek goes we can apply a little logic there. Photorp yields can vary from kiloton to low megaton range, and there's nothing unusual about the variation in yield (they're customizable weapons, so we can infer differences in propultion and tracking and warhead yield to suit varied purposes.) and we can infer that the beam wepaons are perhaps in the terawatt range somewhere (We know Enterprise phase cannons were 500 GJ) and its reasonable to infer say an order of magnitude or os increase in firepower over time, but they arne't gonna get drmatically better (maybe double or triple digit TW output for beam weapons from, say a GCS tops.)

That's not going to be dramatically different from the Behemoth being able to deathbeam anything (including capital ships) in a single shot, and thats quite likely overkill, since the behemoth is so ungoldy huge compared to the smaller warships we're likely looking at ORDERs of magnitude lower power output, and that its unknown how much energy capital ships can divert to weapons anyhow.

[Connor MacLeod]

In a universe with all the other technology they have you want to whine about the Scoops? If you know enough to whine about the scoops you can answer the acceleration yourself with the linear velocity and turns with the given deg/s stats. It's not exactly hard, but seems as how the inevitable follow up will be that Warp Drive will allow intercept if they can find them, why do they matter?

Do you have any idea of the density of the interstellar medium? Or what is required to make it workable? I'm guessing not.

Moreover, didn't the WC4 novel make mention that the dragon Heavy fighters ran on an antimatter powerplant fueled BY those scoops (supposedly, If I remember, giving them an indefninite operational range and endurance.) If I am assuming that correctly, its not going to be a good thing for WC.

When SW has given stats on velocity and otherwise before relatively recently they were even less impressive.

Oh yes, when in doubt, scream "BIAS" to cloud the issue. Yes, that's REALLY going to go over well here.

Barely able to break Mach 1, etc.

Atmospheric speed, twit. And it dependend entirely on your source. There were implications of higher velocity (not that you needed them really.) Or did you forget fighters/starships can achieve escape velocity? Or the velocities along the DS trench?

ST lists their power figures so low even the listed figures you give utterly outclass them. Yet I know for a fact you don't hold those over the series.

Yes, go ahead and scream bias again. I'm sure someone won't have heard you and this will DEFINITELY bolster your argument. Especially since you have no concept of consistency in analysis. But hey if you want to cherrypick stats for Trek we can do so for Wing commander, as other people have mentioned.

They were overruled by visuals, seems as how the same statement makes it clear it's a DET effect with the Behemoth and it was clearly shown taking out a planet your point is what?

Fine. Prove it. Lets see your analysis and the screenshots to prove it. I'm not going to buy this just because you want to be a selective fuckwit about how you interpret evidence. And I am going to laugh at you because you are an idiot. Did you ever consider, oh, recoil? How much does the Behemoth mass, and how quickly would it fly backwards from the recoil of firing a planet-smashing beam.

I can think of alot of other examples contradicting your claims: mentions of multimegaton torpedoes (WC 4 novel I believe), the Temblor bomb's yield, the fact that WC fleets evidently can NOT render a planet uninhabitable save through bioweapons or radiation weapons (a rather prominent plot point in the second Fortschen WC novel too, that, especially in light of those Kilrathi supercarriers they attacked Earth with.) Or the Devastator bomber from WC prophecy and its big antiship plasma cannon (Recoil is going to limit firepower rather severely)

There's more justification to give ST the equivalent of cannonballs. Watts could just as easily be modified ala Terminator to refer to a bigger unit, and it wouldn't hurt anything now would it?

I'm getting tired of listening to your whining about "bias". That shit doesnt fly here, ya know. So come up with something better or shut the fuck up.

And it's not worth mentioning how fighter can deal with cap ships as that will be what's sent against them, why?

How does the fact WC torpedoes technobabble their way through shields bear on Star Trek, other than pointlessly inflating the size of your replies? Of course we could just poitn to the apparent fact antimatter guns and plasma cannons can bypass phase shielding

How is construction

Right, because its not as if they're going to need replacement fighters or spare parts or munitions or anything like that to resupply, right? they'll just use an "infinite ammo" code!

and ground capabilities

In case a ship crashes? The base gets boarded? I can think of lots of reasons.

relevant to a strike force deploying bioweapons?

so basically the whole point is just "terrorize the dumb feddies!" with no discernable goal or purpose? What sort of moronic vs are you setting up exactly?

It's rather hypocritical for you to whine about information on fighters, which are in OP, and then whine about lack of info on cap ships which are not.

I'm sorry. All the detailed info about power generation, acceleration, and all that must have been written in invisible text. Let me get out my Evil Warsie Super Decoder ring!

The Confederation and Kilrathi empire are both bigger then any of the Alpha Quadrant powers, and as per WC3 have construction capabilities well in excess of what ST is implied capable of. Further in a previous thread years ago it was already established the Kilrathi Empire would steam roll the Klingon Empire, so what are you getting at?

Proof? you make alot of claims but you provide very little substantial data to back up any of it. How fucking stupid are you that you post on this forum and aren't aware of the rules? Including little things like Burden of Proof. At the very least yo ucould have linked to this hypothetical thread, you jackass. I'm not going to do your goddamn homework for you.

How does a Klingon cloaking device work, without Technobabble? Seems as how I doubt you can answer that why are

Thats right. Keep handwaving logic away. I'm sure at some point you'll simply get banned and this debate will be resolved simply.

[quoteWith an established base and ability to use out of the way uninhabited systems if they want to? Pleeze.[/quote]

Hey moron, you're the one who handwaved away the importance of ocnstruction capability. Clearly the Black Lance is so uber that they've transcended the need for something as mundane as a machine shop!

Awkende Drive drive uses spacial phenomena with this anti-graviton/graviton cancellation trick. They're not wormholes, as you were informed the last time you claimed such nonsense years ago. Tracking them down when they don't even know what a Awkende Drive is nonsense, and they themselves do mining yet can overcome those problems.

Are you really this fucking stupid? They run on THRUSTERS you dumbass. Are you telling me WC thrusters are magically immune to detection by any sort of practical sensor, and if os what the fuck do you base this on? What about cooling systems (the need to radiate or disperse heat?) What happens to the thruster exhaust? Oh yeah, and why the fuck are they not going to detect gravitons/antigravitons or fail to notice the massive (VISIBLE) phenomena that is a jump point transition??? please oh please do explain all this to me.

WC1 manual aka Claw Marks explicity states kps is Kilometers per Second, and that it's relative velocity. If you want to rip into the implications of the game play of other franchises including the X-wing series, by all means do so because they will come out worse.

Right, becuase there's nothing dishonest in comparing atmospheric speed to space speeds. Nope. not at all. Nevermind SW has nothing to do with this thread other than being a retarded red herring cry of "bias". Moron.

The statement is 500 million gigawatts, that's 500e15W not 500e12W and referred directly to the beam not the powerplant. Please try to keep your units straight. On the other hand a Galaxy-class starship has a stated power rating of 1.21GW or 1.21e9W so if you insist on that vector you lose anyway, so what's the point? Or did you forget about the low figure quotes sprinkled throughout ST in your mad dash to show you think e15 is a trillion?

You're a fine one to be lecturing someone on basic science, dumbshit. At least he can admit an error.

Oh yeah, and I am laughing at how you just randomly throw about numbers as if they mean anything in absence of ocntext or logic. The 1e19 watt figure isn't even remotely plausible or accurate, for one thing. Did you even read the fucking website? or are you here just trolling?

[Samuel]

How does a Klingon cloaking device work, without Technobabble? Seems as how I doubt you can answer that why are

All it eliminates is apparently radiation emissions- people are able to detect it by finding holes in the local interstellar medium, emissions, etc. In fact in The Undiscovered Country, when the cloaked ship fires it is lit up- cloaking could just be they "polarize the hull" to make it so it doesn't give off light.

relevant to a strike force deploying bioweapons?

Ever heard of vaccines?

Awkende Drive drive uses spacial phenomena with this anti-graviton/graviton cancellation trick. They're not wormholes, as you were informed the last time you claimed such nonsense years ago. Tracking them down when they don't even know what a Awkende Drive is nonsense, and they themselves do mining yet can overcome those problems.

...Wisky Tango Foxtrot? I have only been on the internet... lets see... maybe two years? I think you are confusing me with someone else.

With an established base and ability to use out of the way uninhabited systems if they want to? Pleeze.

The Feds will have a bigger one and I doubt unihabited systems- the Star Trek galaxy is clock full of colonies and minor powers and if you put them far enough away to be unnoticed they will be too far to reach the Federation without having to have extremely long supply lines. Node lines versus warp drive... really bad odds when your opponent will force you to peel of countless ships to cover your convoys. The Feds ARE competant enough to do that.

Do you have any idea of the density of the interstellar medium? Or what is required to make it workable? I'm guessing not.

DO they go into interstellar space though? I see no reason given that the transit points are in system- unless you want to have the invasion fleet get to Earth in the 29th century

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh, just cuz I'm bored, and I want to twist the knife more...

WCnews did host a useful vid clip that does feature a firing of the Behemoth and blowingup the planet. here is the link to the actual clip

I invite other people to watch it. You see the beam against the planet at around 1:14, and it seems like, in typical sci fi fashion, the planet is assumed to blow up like a bomb. No doubt the planet had massive planetary shield networks protecting it from the massive beam. And the Behemoth really masses as much as a planet and has ultradense fuel tanks and/or a hyperspatial energy tap or some osrt of magical recoil damping properties or some other nonsense.

I can't wait to see how that gets used as "proof" of heavy firepower.