Starcraft vs Halo

[Shroom Man 777]

Carriers don't do BDZs! We don't even see them mount any external or secondary weapons, like when Tassadar rammed the Overmind. The BDZ ship seen in the cinematics of the original Star Craft wasn't even a carrier.

Besides, fuck it, how about this then?

1 - Since the UNSC and Flood can effectively fight the Covenant, their "power" levels would be roughly equal

2 - Covenant ships are the ships that do BDZs, and we've SEEN them do this

3 - Star Craft is fucked

Based on the games, and not on bullshit novels nobody's heard of, Star Craft's shit doesn't inspire much confidence. They're a load of crap. Aside from Tarsonis and Aiur and a bunch of other minor worlds, the K-Sec powers don't have any other assets. While we've got the UNSC and the Covenant forces with more assets on hand, and with multiple incidents of BDZing on planets that aren't just fringe world yokeldoms, and we've seen the UNSC consistently thrown shit like relativistic rail rounds and nuclear weapons of all kinds.

[Formless]

1- Since Terrans and Zerg can effectively fight the Protoss, their "power" levels would be roughly equal.

2- Carriers are the ships with do BDZ's.

3- Halo is fucked.

Actually, I don't think we've ever seen the Terran's win any significant engagement against the protoss, and the novels indicate that the terrans are shocked at how far the protoss's capabilities outstrip their own. Note the difference in firepower between blackening the outer crust of a planet and melting through the crust and into the planet's mantle. I find it far more likely that to the extent that the terrans can fight on equal terms with the protoss its due to the protoss's use of archaic/anachronistic fighting methods (i.e. their bizarre preference for melee fighting and apparent idealization of "honorable" combat).

[Guardsman Bass]

That's a good point. Without any real good stuff on their tech, it would seem like the Protoss are more limited by themselves than anything else. They have very extensive automation and robotics (probes and Reavers are fully automated) and crust-melting beam weapons (the introductory cinematic to Starcraft).

Yet they fuck around with melee fighters (albeit better melee fighters than the norm, due to the whole "personal shields" thing), and their biggest ships are carriers for smaller craft rather than mounting heavier weapons on them. Hell, they use cyborgs in the form of dragoons instead of just using robots, even though it basically amounts to the same thing.

Also, I think it's important to remember that after the first few planet-meltings, the Protoss were holding back against the Terrans. The Protoss actually came to the surface on Tarsonis to fight the Zerg rather than simply burning the surface from orbit like Chau and Mar Sara.

The BDZ ship seen in the cinematics of the original Star Craft wasn't even a carrier.

You sure about that? I thought it looked like a carrier, and it's easier just to use an existing ship and postulate a reason as to why it can't use the planet-melter (perhaps it takes a long time to power up, or whatever) than to invent an entirely new ship with unknown capabilities.

As for the Overmind, that's because he had to kill it with "dark templar energy" or whatnot.

[Balrog]

Battlecruisers have taken down Carriers in battle though, and they don't come anywhere close in terms of raw "lol I melt your planet's crust" power.

You sure about that? I thought it looked like a carrier, and it's easier just to use an existing ship and postulate a reason as to why it can't use the planet-melter (perhaps it takes a long time to power up, or whatever) than to invent an entirely new ship with unknown capabilities.

It's highly unlikely, considering its shape and coloration is all wrong for a Carrier.

Anyways, that's pretty irrelevant for this debate, since the two sides aren't engaged in an all-out war but a limited engagement.

[Iosef Cross]

In terms of fleet size the Terrans could field at least a hundred battlecruisers:

Each battlecruiser had probably 1 km in length.

That is comparable to the fleet size of Battle of Reach, were the UNSC had 152 ships and Covenant had 314.

[Formless]

In terms of fleet size the Terrans could field at least a hundred battlecruisers:

*snip*

Each battlecruiser had probably 1 km in length.

That is comparable to the fleet size of Battle of Reach, were the UNSC had 152 ships and Covenant had 314.

With no numbers on their firepower, that doesn't really tell us much.

[adam_grif]

As for the Overmind, that's because he had to kill it with "dark templar energy" or whatnot.

I mean they could shoot it with their crust melting beam weapons, but they are TOTALLY IMMUNE to EVERYTHING EXCEPT DARK TEMPLAR ENERGY. Whatever the fuck that is.

I hate shit like this in fiction.

With no numbers on their firepower, that doesn't really tell us much.

Thank fuck for Starcraft that gameplay isn't cannon, otherwise we'd be forced to conclude that 1 battlecruiser can be killed by a handful of marines.

[Iosef Cross]

With no numbers on their firepower, that doesn't really tell us much.

Well, there is a cinematic were a battlecruiser uses its yamato cannon on another one, and apparently destroys it completely. But it doesn't vaporize the ship completely.

Considering it's size (about 1,400 to 1,500 meters in length, if you assume that it's hangar bay entrance is 20 meters tall), it would have the mass of an 500 meter asteroid nickel-iron, its vaporization energy is around 1 gigaton. That would be maybe the upper limit of Terran firepower.

[Darksider]

That's an awful lot of "assumption" there Iosef. There aren't any confirmed length calcs for a Terran Battlecruiser, and even if you did know how long it was, how the hell would you calculate the mass of a ship, given that they are shown to have large empty spaces in their interior for holding troops and stuff like that.

This is the problem with Starcraft. Even with tedious observation, all you can really get regarding firepower and shield strength is a general ball park figure like your 1 gigaton upper limit.

[Iosef Cross]

yep, data is very limited. maybe in the next few years, with more starcraft games and cinematics and stuff it will be able to calculate something precisely.

[Ford Prefect]

(albeit better melee fighters than the norm, due to the whole "personal shields" thing)

They're also huge superfast psychic killing machines, many of whom have decades or centuries of experience. We've actually seen vaguely above average Protoss do shit like backflips off an attacking Ultralisk's tusks.

Also, the length of a battlecruiser is two leagues, as given in Uprising. However, exactly what is meant by 'leagues' is a total mystery in the context of StarCraft.

[Guardsman Bass]

I mean they could shoot it with their crust melting beam weapons, but they are TOTALLY IMMUNE to EVERYTHING EXCEPT DARK TEMPLAR ENERGY. Whatever the fuck that is.

I said nothing of the sort. He had to kill it with dark templar energy not because it was otherwise invulnerable (you can destroy the physical form, just like you do with a cerebrate in the early Protoss missions), but because otherwise the damn thing just reincarnates, if not specifically there. But using the dark templar power seems to almost "burn" them out of the collective hive-mind of the Zerg - as Daggoth mentions in one of the briefings in the Zerg campaigns, it "nullified" Zasz's (another cerebrate's) reincarnation.

Also, the length of a battlecruiser is two leagues, as given in Uprising. However, exactly what is meant by 'leagues' is a total mystery in the context of StarCraft.

True - a "league" in Starcraft might be something different from a "league" in real life (although if we used the real-life "league", that would mean a battlecruiser is about 11.1 kilometers long using the Google calculator).

If that was the case, though, then zerg guardians and scourge are seriously bigger than they look in terms of game mechanics (compare them and the Norad II in the cinematic before Terran mission 6 in original Starcraft).

[Ford Prefect]

League has been used to a describe a distance of anywhere from 1.5km to upwards of 6. Even if we assumed it was a 'real' league, that would refer to a whole bunch of possible sizes. In any case, I have heard of estimates that the new battlecruisers for SC2 have hammerheads six hundred metres across, but it was stressed that they were very rough indeed.

[Shroom Man 777]

Bullshit, Terran Battlecruisers can't be a kilometer plus long. That's ridiculous. Can someone scale up the size of those windows Admiral DuGalle and Stukov were looking out of, compared to the rest of the BC's size?

[adam_grif]

I said nothing of the sort...

-some other stuff-

I've played the game and I know. I misspoke earlier, what I meant by "totally immune to" was "will only be put down for good by". What I'm saying is stupid is this lock-and-key mentality to things that doesn't belong anywhere but a fantasy setting, which ought only to get away with it by virtue of having actual magic.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

I said nothing of the sort...

-some other stuff-

I've played the game and I know. I misspoke earlier, what I meant by "totally immune to" was "will only be put down for good by". What I'm saying is stupid is this lock-and-key mentality to things that doesn't belong anywhere but a fantasy setting, which ought only to get away with it by virtue of having actual magic.

How is Starcraft not fantasy? Since when did it not have psionics magic?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Ghetto edit: Not to say the lock-and-key mentality isn't stupid, because unless done really well it's stupid regardless of the genre. But Starcraft is quite definitely fantasy and has what is functionally magic. Maybe in the sci-fi subsect of fantasy, but fantasy nevertheless

[Balrog]

With no numbers on their firepower, that doesn't really tell us much.

Their big bad superweapon, the Yamato Cannon, uses magnetic fields to direct the blast of a "small nuclear device" at the target. Small obviously being a subjective term, however I'd be very surprised if it's something greater than megaton range, what with regarding Apocalypse nukes as strategic weapons. Which would make their normal weapons an order of magnitude or less, otherwise there wouldn't be much point in using the Yamato.

And Shroom, according to Oskuro on the first page, it's 800m in length

[Shroom Man 777]

And the Pillar of Autumn is more than a kilometer long (and is regarded as a "small" cruiser by Haloid UNSC standards). The cinematics show that the Yamato blasts are pathetically slow, and will thus be outraged by Haloid relativistic railgun rounds. For all the SQUAWKS, it seems like the Haloids have the upper hand in space combat.

The Covenants, for all their SQUAWKS, have also displayed consistently high levels of naval space firepower. A lot of their ships can do orbital bombardment, and a whole lot of their ships seem consistently armed with badass weaponry. Star Craft, on the other hand, has the Protoss' stuff more ambiguously detailed.

[Lord Revan]

As for the Overmind, that's because he had to kill it with "dark templar energy" or whatnot.

I mean they could shoot it with their crust melting beam weapons, but they are TOTALLY IMMUNE to EVERYTHING EXCEPT DARK TEMPLAR ENERGY. Whatever the fuck that is.

I hate shit like this in fiction.

well in this case it's a bit better then most of the time as the physical form of the overmind is suppose the fairly easy to destroy, it's just that unless you use Dark Templar energy the swarm will just grow another overmind.

[Guardsman Bass]

League has been used to a describe a distance of anywhere from 1.5km to upwards of 6. Even if we assumed it was a 'real' league, that would refer to a whole bunch of possible sizes. In any case, I have heard of estimates that the new battlecruisers for SC2 have hammerheads six hundred metres across, but it was stressed that they were very rough indeed.

The "long" league strikes me as being too big for a battlecruiser as well. I mean, look at the opening Brood War cinematic - unless the battlecruiser is farther up in the air than it looks, the bloody thing would cover up a significant fraction of the sky over the marine in the trench.

[Connor MacLeod]

Just a few points:

1.) Korhal can't have been a complete extinction event, as I recall mention of the attack mechansim leaving places untouched (nevermind what we apparently see later on) so that sets limits on the nuke yield deployed there.

2.) Protoss cleansing isn't terribly useful as we never have any durations for the known and most calcable incidents (mainly being Chau and Mar Sara). The most worthwhile info comes from Liberty's crusade there, but again we have no duration of how long it takes (you could at most make a guess from Liberty's Crusade, but that has its own problems.) So you could at most estimate total energy expenditure for the event (Given the loss of atmosphere and the depth of melting E26-e27 joule range seems a likely benchmark)

3.) WRT Korhal in SC2, I don't see how that is meant to indicate anything about industry - has anyone ever seen a picture of what the Earth looks like at night? Korhal looks alot similar to that.

Besides, as a rule you tend to get wonky things when you look at the artwork. For example the so called "gauss" weapons are frequently shown ejecting casings (both the pistols of the REapers and the MArine rifles)... so yeah. Same with the comics really (the Frontline comics are HUGE on showing casings flying from guns.)

4.) Battlecruisers and Leagues. There are evidently so many "battlecruisers" in the Terran naval forces that I think pinning the size to any one particular ship is pointless now. Its kinda like the term "destroyer" in B5 or Star WArs.

[adam_grif]

Besides, as a rule you tend to get wonky things when you look at the artwork. For example the so called "gauss" weapons are frequently shown ejecting casings (both the pistols of the REapers and the MArine rifles)... so yeah. Same with the comics really (the Frontline comics are HUGE on showing casings flying from guns.)

Maybe they're just double-A batteries or something

[Samuel]

3.) WRT Korhal in SC2, I don't see how that is meant to indicate anything about industry - has anyone ever seen a picture of what the Earth looks like at night? Korhal looks alot similar to that.

Except Earth has 6 billion people and Korhal... doesn't. Earth has been built up over centuries and Korhal got rebuilt in a couple decades, right?

[Sapper007]

battle cruisers are supposedly 2 leagues long
(Neilson, Micky (December 18, 2000). StarCraft: Uprising. Simon & Schuster (Pocket Star). ISBN 0-7434-1898-0)

if we go by the english definition thats 11.2 km's

the cutscene "inauguration" shows that the Yamato Cannon blasts straight through the other battle cruiser instantaniously... estimates indicate that if a battle cruiser is 11km long...
then the width of the yamato cannon blast is around 500 meters...
assume simple armor at 1 meter thick with neo-steel, but since neo-steel is only referenced as stronger than steel... we are left with an unquantifiable metal... we do have comparison metals that are "stronger than steel"
a compariable metal we have is carbon steel...
carbon steel has a density of 7.83 g/cm3
we know that at least a .5 kilometer hole was made instantaneously into the armor of the .

First we need to get out cubic centimeters to meters
7.83 g/cm^3 to g/m^3
7.83*100*100*100= 7830000 grams
7830kgs/m^3 for a cubic meter of carbon steel…
Now for a 500meter circle area there is 196349.5 meters in that area so ANS*7830kg there are 1537416585kg of steel in a 500x1meter circle.
Carbon steels boiling point is 2800degrees F is 1282 degrees Celsius(round down)
First we need to find the energy required to reach the heat of evaporation for carbon steel which is represented by E in the following equation:
E = Mcp(T2-T1)
E=Heat of vaporation
Mc=Mass(kg)= 1537416585
p=Specific heat (J/kg Celsius)= 490
T=change in temperature Celsius= (0{for simplicities sake}-1282{boil carbon steel}).
657743504x10^14 joules to reach the heat of evaporation carbonsteel
now we can figure the heat load (in joules, required to vaporize the 500x1 meter circle of carbon steel) with this formula:
E = mhv
E=Energy(joules)
M=Mass(kg)
heat of vaporization (joules/kg)
So…. To flash burn a 500m area hole through 1 meter of carbon steel takes
1.484797504x10^24 joules of energy.
this equates to the energy produced by 354 875 120 459 385.00 tons of tnt
or
354.87512 teratons