Trek v. StarCraft

[Imperial528]

Well, today I was bored, fiddling with various things, and I decided to calculate the speed of Terran warp engines and compare it to Trek warp drive speeds. I made a new thread since the previous Trek vs SC thread is long dead.

Anyway, the data I used is as follows:

It took 28 years for the four Terran supercarriers to get to the Koprulu sector, which is 60,000 light years away from Sol. Doing the math, one gets that each supercarrier is capable of traveling 2142.857 light years per year, or about 5.8 ly/day. This establishes the lower limit for Terran/Human warp speed, and it appears to have advanced since, due to the fact that the UED expedition force in Brood War arrived at the sector in a much shorter time, which I estimate to at max five years travel, although I doubt that is the case.

For Star Trek, I used the estimated length of time it would take the USS Voyager to return to Federation space, namely 70 years to cross 70,000 light years. The math gives us 1000 ly/year, or about 2.7 ly/day. For both this and the above example, I assumed a straight path to be conservative.

To me this was a very interesting conclusion, since that would put the races of StarCraft at a definite speed advantage to the UFP and its neighboring powers. Given that I doubt Terran starships would fare well against UFP firepower (torpedo-wise, if we accept 64 megatons as the yield of the standard phototorp), but they would be able to match them in firepower (there are modern nukes near that yield, and the capability to best it exists) and exceed them in FTL speed.

So, I was wondering, in the event of the UED or the Terran Dominion somehow facing the UFP in a full-scale war (possibly due to things like Q, wormholes, or both), would this make a difference?

EDIT: Also, something I noticed, remembering from the SC v. Halo thread, this would also put Terran vessels at speeds above UNSC vessels.

[Sarevok]

Federation transporter + photon torpedo beaming is not going to end well for the unshielded Terran vessels.

[Imperial528]

Let's hope that they learn quickly to generate transporter-blocking interference.

Of course, this begs the question as to why the UFP hasn't done this to unshielded vessels before.

On that topic, have we ever seen the UFP use transporters to move antimatter? Since a phototorp could definitely fit on that pad, and a detonation inside an shield-less enemy ship would definitely cripple it at the least, saving more torpedoes for combat.

[Sarevok]

Let's hope that they learn quickly to generate transporter-blocking interference.

On that topic, have we ever seen the UFP use transporters to move antimatter? Since a phototorp could definitely fit on that pad, and a detonation inside an shield-less enemy ship would definitely cripple it at the least, saving more torpedoes for combat.

They did. Like in Best of the Both worlds for example. http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Antimatter_spread

[Purple]

A better question is how the materials of the SC ships and any weapons/equipment would effect transporters.
We are talking about a machine that breaks down every episode and can be blocked by just about anything to the point where I and my friends jokingly theorize it uses alpha rays.

Or that was my impression at least. How much armor do the Terran ships have anyway?

[Srelex]

Terran vessels do have shields--I believe they mentioned as much in SC2.

[Imperial528]

They did. Like in Best of the Both worlds for example. http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Antimatter_spread

The containers weren't transported, IIRC, but ejected from the hull. In the image you can see spots where it looks like the containers are exiting from hull-based launchers.

[Crazedwraith]

Never the less Voyager did transport a photon torpedo on at least one occasion ; on to a borg vessel no less.

[NecronLord]

Terran vessels do have shields--I believe they mentioned as much in SC2.

Indeed, it's where the prince's ship appears IIRC.

[Imperial528]

I was reading up on the SC wiki, and it appears that the shields referenced during the cut scene could be the force fields from the wiki, which have been used on BCs to protect hangars from decompression and boarding, and also the battlecruiser itself, according to the page.

I think it's reasonable to assume that the BC would not have shields in-game due to the fact that the Protoss do, since the Terran's 'thing' is the ability to repair units and buildings, while the Protoss' is the rechargeable shielding, and the Zerg's is recharging health.

[Ariphaos]

It's pretty clear that the in-game strength of battlecruisers and carriers is not reflective of their actual storyline size or power. Except maybe in that Escape from Mar Sara mission where the Hyperion chews a hole in a zerg army to rescue Raynor.

[Lord Revan]

Federation transporter + photon torpedo beaming is not going to end well for the unshielded Terran vessels.

as per Starcraft 2 Terran ships (or at least the battlecruisers aren't unshielded (the lack of shields during game play is game mehcanics) as Matt Horner (Captain of the Hyperion) notes that the Dominion battlecruisers they encountered (during a cutscene) hadn't raised their shields yet)

[Sarevok]

Ingame is dumb because marines can shoot down BCs with gunfire. But cutscenes don't show very impressive nuclear yield firepower for Terran BCs either.

[Ariphaos]

We've never seen the Yamato Cannon in a cutscene.

The rest of its weapons are more akin to point defense and lots of it.

[Zor]

We've never seen the Yamato Cannon in a cutscene.

The rest of its weapons are more akin to point defense and lots of it.

Wrong



Zor

[Shroom Man 777]

Assuming that Battlecruiser the cannon blew up was a spherical piece of iron, what would be the weapon's yield then? It's not a vaporization. What is it?

[Simon_Jester]

I really like that speech. It was a good cutscene. Also, the Yamato gun blows the hell out of that battlecruiser, which does suggest a pretty respectable level of firepower even by Trek standards. I mean, it must have been dozens of meters across and it went right through the enemy battlecruiser's hull.

It looks like a lot of the damage came from secondary explosions, but that kind of damage wouldn't be possible against something as well protected as battlecruisers are implied to be without... dunno, probably megaton range, I would think.

Terran vessels do have shields--I believe they mentioned as much in SC2.

Hmph. They didn't in SC1, so far as I recall. It was implied in the manual that the closest they had to shielding was the Science Vessel's Defense Matrix capability, which presumably required massive specialist equipment to generate since they had to put it on dedicated electronic support ships.

Of course, besides that, there's:

"Shields up, weapons online."
"We're not equipped with shields."
"Well then, buckle up!"

...though of course that was comedy text.

Maybe the Terrans got the technology from the Protoss during the intergame period...

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Slight nitpick: That's not a battlecruiser that gets owned by the yamato cannon, it's one of those smaller support/scavenger ships (the type seen in the opening cinematic as well), which looks to be about one-fourth the size of a battlecruiser. There's a shot with both types of ships in close proximity a little earlier in that video.

[Imperial528]

Battlecruisers have force fields around them, which protect from small-arms fire, small impactors, and boarding parties, but it seems that any true warship weapon will blast through it, if only for it to reform after the blast is gone.

The defense matrix is basically a projectable super-strong force field.

Also, in the cinematic, the ship being shot is definitely a battlecruiser. I'm not sure of the class (likely the Behemoth class), but only battlecruisers have the hammerhead and wings.

[Simon_Jester]

Battlecruisers have force fields around them, which protect from small-arms fire, small impactors, and boarding parties, but it seems that any true warship weapon will blast through it, if only for it to reform after the blast is gone.

The defense matrix is basically a projectable super-strong force field.

Yes. As I noted earlier, it also requires massive specialist equipment to generate and doesn't last very long.

Now, the gameplay defense matrix may be stronger than it should be, since it effectively makes a unit invulnerable while the matrix lasts; the "real" thing may be substantially less impressive. But the fact that the thing is used does suggest two things:

1) The SC1 Terrans have at least the concept of protecting their ships with shields of some kind, but
2) They don't seem to use any kind of integral warship shields, in contrast to the Protoss who use integral shielding on everything from fleet flagships to the equivalent of Predator drones.

[Imperial528]

The defense matrix has a hit point limit and a time limit in-game (and in-universe) actually, and after it drops to about 70-50% of its hp damage will leak through it and damage it. Unlike Protoss plasma shielding, which does not leak at all.

The wiki says that using defense matrix technology, personal shields that last for about a minute or two have been developed, but they are one-shot deals.