Space Pirates vs. 24th Century UFP

[ChosenOne54]

Another Metroid match-up here. A fairly interesting match that I thought of recently, pitting the Space Pirates, from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, against the 24th Century UFP from Star Trek. The Space Pirates get all of their equipment seen up until that point in the Metroid series, and they are under the command of Dark Samus, stationed on Phaaze. They are allowed Phazon, and Dark Samus is allowed to spread it through use of Leviathan Seeds/wormholes like she does in the game. The Pirates get their entire attack fleet.

How does this turn out?

[StarSword]

First question: in the Metroid series, do we ever get to see a space battle from which we can judge the capabilities and numbers of Space Pirate ships (or any ships in the series, for that matter)? If not, this matchup can't be judged: we have reliable data on the UFP's abilities, but as far as I know the only weaponry we ever see in the games are of the antipersonnel and anti-armor varieties.

Second question: can the Leviathan Seeds and wormholes transport things from planet to planet?

[ChosenOne54]

To answer your first question, we don't really have too much reliable data on their ships. We know from the manga, however, that they have in the past used black holes as weapons. Here are the relevant links:

http://images.wikia.com/metroid/images/9/9a/T04_17.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/metroid/images/8/8c/T05_01.jpg

Note that it's also a fairly damn massive ship. As for actual firepower, we have very little. There's this particular instance of a Space Pirate destroyer one-shotting a ship with a pretty large explosion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QuybdpcApc#t=8m

It would be pretty hard to calc that however. Another instance is, when flying down to the planet (a battle is occurring down there) you see large flashes of light which may or may not indicate explosions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4FLiTv9XrA#t=5m45s

Apart from that, we know they posses the ability to mass-scatter planets with a self-destruct sequence (seen at the end of Super Metroid):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx-oNUud0Qk#t=15m25s

If we take TheBlackCat's calcs seriously as well, they haev kiloton level firepower in their handheld weapons, though it's not like the UFP could put up any sort of resistance on the ground anyway.

To answer your second question: leviathan seeds are basically massive meteors containing Phazon. Their purpose is to slam into planets and spread phazon around. Phazon is essentially a highly radioactive, and lethal substance, which was also 'corrupt' people (basically they go insane, and their goal becomes to spread Phazon around further). Leviathan seeds move around by use of wormholes, which basically provide instantaneous FTL travel. During the events of Prime 3, Dark Samus takes control over Phaaze, the planet which is the source of all Phazon, and starts coordinating the Leviathan seeds to target certain planets.

[Steven Snyder]

In other words no, we don't have much.

[StarSword]

It's apparent we don't have enough evidence on the Metroid universe side to judge the contest, but one last question: how late in the 24th century are we allowed to go?

Because by 2387 (only eight years after Nemesis), the UFP can generate black holes as well (ST 2009). So all they'd need to do would be fire a red matter-equipped probe into the middle of the Pirate fleet and detonate it. Might not get all of them, but it'd do serious damage.


In any case, the evidence indicates:

• Ground Engagements: Federation gets shredded (as usual). Even bog-standard Space Pirates are tougher, stronger, more tactically creative, and in general, deadlier than any Federation soldier we've ever seen in canon. Shatner's Kirk might be able to pull off a win, but it'd be dicey. If you include phazon-modified Pirates, it's no contest.
  Heh, I now have a mental image of the troops at AR-558 running screaming from the Omega Pirate in Metroid Prime. It took me two tries to beat that thing on my second time through the game.
• Naval Engagements: Not enough data to call.

[avatarxprime]

Here's a bit of info that might help things.

Spacecraft
Name: Samus Aran's Ship - Hunter-Class gunship
Principle Use: Gunship
Weight in Tons: 136
Crew: 1
Dimensions: 9.144 meters x 6.096 meters x 2.4384 meters
Drive Type: Relativistic: 44MHz
Power Source: Field-exclusion Gluino
Maximum Velocity: Relativistc: 7.2 x 10 C

We now have something of a defined size (Samus' ship) for scaling everything else in Prime. I imagine that although the ships change in the games, Samus does not so you can use her to scale everything else. The speed is of note in terms of trying to get an idea on just what Metroidverse tech can do, although it should be said that Samus' ship is unique in terms of its power.

Another thing, Galactic Federation space ships uses rail guns (the Mk XIII "Twin Hydra" Multiturret) for defense. Likely they are only anti-fighter weapons, but still a rough lower limit can be calculated by scaling the barrels and doing a frame-by-frame on the projectiles leaving the barrel to get the power of the shots. I personally have no desire to do any of this but I thought it'd start the ball rolling for anyone who does. Really though ChosenOne54 you should start trying to provide numbers when doing VS with series that aren't well quantified/known.

[ChosenOne54]

The only Metroid game that offers some sort of, *ahem,* 'numbers' for the weapons is Metroid Prime: Hunters, and I think it's pretty clear the people who came up with them didn't really know what they were talking about:

Volt Driver:

The VOLT DRIVER draws energy from the planetary electromagnetic field and converts it into multi-terawatt bursts of HIGHVOLTAGE.

Magmaul:

The MAGMAUL, powered by a hyperstatic hydrogen core, fires cohesive projectiles of SUPERHEATED MAGMA.

Judicator:

The JUDICATOR is powered by cold-fusion synthesis. It fires SUPERCOOLED PLASMA at temperatures approaching absolute zero.

Battlehammer:

The BATTLEHAMMER is powered by a miniature nuclear reactor. This HEAVY-DUTY repeater is recommended only for those familiar with high-caliber weaponry.

Shock Coil:

The SHOCK COIL is a prototype federation weapon that emits a concentrated beam of high-density NEUTRINOS within a set radius.

Note that these are handheld weapons.

[StarSword]

We now have something of a defined size (Samus' ship) for scaling everything else in Prime. I imagine that although the ships change in the games, Samus does not so you can use her to scale everything else. The speed is of note in terms of trying to get an idea on just what Metroidverse tech can do, although it should be said that Samus' ship is unique in terms of its power.

So, according to the stats, Samus' Hunter-class gunship can travel at a maximum of 72c. What was the calculated speed for warp 9 again? 1000c or so?

I'm starting to think Starfleet might actually win one of these matchups for once.

<snip weapon idiocy>

To quote On Her Majesty's Occult Service by Charles Stross*:

Jesus fucking Christ driving into town in a pickup full of DLT backup tapes!

That's gotta be the worst case of technobabble-itis I've ever seen! It's quite clear that the Metroid writers pay even less attention to their technical advisers than the Star Trek writers do. I mean, "supercooled plasma"? That's absurd.


* Great book. Think James Bond crossed with Cthulhu crossed with Dilbert.

[StarSword]

So, according to the stats, Samus' Hunter-class gunship can travel at a maximum of 72c. What was the calculated speed for warp 9 again? 1000c or so?

EDIT: Just checked elsewhere. According to the TNG chart*, warp 9 is just over 1500c, so even faster than I thought.

* I use TNG numbers because they appear to be the most consistent.

[avatarxprime]

The only Metroid game that offers some sort of, *ahem,* 'numbers' for the weapons is Metroid Prime: Hunters, and I think it's pretty clear the people who came up with them didn't really know what they were talking about: *snip*

Those aren't numbers, those are vague descriptions. The only one with something close to numbers is the Volt Driver and that apparently relies on the conditions of the electromagnetic field on the planet of the user to power it. Also, I would say, what timeframe is the energy of the beam delivered in? Terawatts does not translate to terajoules. Even relatively normal amounts of energy delivered in a sufficiently small enough amount of time can result in terawatt and up. This is why we have petawatt lasers today. That being said, even assuming terawatt=terajoule then the blast translates into something like 0.48 kilotons (assuming 2 terawatts), which is comparable to 2 regular missiles from Samus (0.50 kilotons) so it's within the realm of reasonability for Metroid, but requires a planet to equal what Samus can do in a tiny missile.

We now have something of a defined size (Samus' ship) for scaling everything else in Prime. I imagine that although the ships change in the games, Samus does not so you can use her to scale everything else. The speed is of note in terms of trying to get an idea on just what Metroidverse tech can do, although it should be said that Samus' ship is unique in terms of its power.

So, according to the stats, Samus' Hunter-class gunship can travel at a maximum of 72c. What was the calculated speed for warp 9 again? 1000c or so?

I'm starting to think Starfleet might actually win one of these matchups for once.

I'm not sure that's an accurate read of the numbers, mostly because it really doesn't make a lot of sense to write 7.2 x 10C instead of 72C like you did. I'm not entirely sure what interpretation should be. I got the numbers from the Metroid wiki as the Prime site is long since defunct so I don't know if the formatting is correct. One interesting thing though I did find while searching for a functional version of the Prime site (wayback machine's version doesn't actually load content) is that the Federation is composed of 140,328 permanent member systems.

[Steven Snyder]

That's gotta be the worst case of technobabble-itis I've ever seen! It's quite clear that the Metroid writers pay even less attention to their technical advisers than the Star Trek writers do. I mean, "supercooled plasma"? That's absurd.

Since they were using 'superheated magma' on one of the weapons (which I cannot say without invoking Dr. Evil)...maybe they were referring to blood plasma, another equally bizarre choice for munitions?

[ChosenOne54]

So, according to the stats, Samus' Hunter-class gunship can travel at a maximum of 72c. What was the calculated speed for warp 9 again? 1000c or so?

I'm starting to think Starfleet might actually win one of these matchups for once.

That number frankly makes no sense, as the whole plot of Metroid Prime: Hunters has Samus, the Space Pirates, and the Galactic Federation travel to a completely different galaxy in under six months, and there's no possible way that's happening if their maximum speed is 72c.

[StarSword]

So, according to the stats, Samus' Hunter-class gunship can travel at a maximum of 72c. What was the calculated speed for warp 9 again? 1000c or so?

I'm starting to think Starfleet might actually win one of these matchups for once.

That number frankly makes no sense, as the whole plot of Metroid Prime: Hunters has Samus, the Space Pirates, and the Galactic Federation travel to a completely different galaxy in under six months, and there's no possible way that's happening if their maximum speed is 72c.

Wasn't Hunters the FPS they released for the DS? I never had the opportunity to play it so I didn't know about that incident.

All right, so Hunters disproves the 72c number by several orders of magnitude, so I'm now thinking the 7.2 x 10c number was supposed to be 7.2 x 10^something c, but they left out the exponent by mistake.

But dammit, I don't know how to calculate an FTL speed from this. Assuming they went to the nearest galaxy to us, Andromeda, that's 2.5 million light-years in six months. Can someone please do the math and show me the calcs they used?

[ChosenOne54]

Wasn't Hunters the FPS they released for the DS? I never had the opportunity to play it so I didn't know about that incident.

Yes, that's the one (and you really don't want to play it, it was shite ).

But yeah, the whole plot was 'a lot of groups get a telepathic message telling them that the ultimate power lies in the 'Tetra Galaxy' so they all travel there to recover it.'

[Lord Relvenous]

So, according to the stats, Samus' Hunter-class gunship can travel at a maximum of 72c. What was the calculated speed for warp 9 again? 1000c or so?

I'm starting to think Starfleet might actually win one of these matchups for once.

That number frankly makes no sense, as the whole plot of Metroid Prime: Hunters has Samus, the Space Pirates, and the Galactic Federation travel to a completely different galaxy in under six months, and there's no possible way that's happening if their maximum speed is 72c.

Wasn't Hunters the FPS they released for the DS? I never had the opportunity to play it so I didn't know about that incident.

All right, so Hunters disproves the 72c number by several orders of magnitude, so I'm now thinking the 7.2 x 10c number was supposed to be 7.2 x 10^something c, but they left out the exponent by mistake.

But dammit, I don't know how to calculate an FTL speed from this. Assuming they went to the nearest galaxy to us, Andromeda, that's 2.5 million light-years in six months. Can someone please do the math and show me the calcs they used?

5,000,000c if they did it in 6 months. It takes half a year to cover what light does in 2.5 million, so it's just a case of doubling the coefficient and that's your speed. Proof (probably unneeded):

300,000,000m/s*78892315000000s=2.366e22m
2.36e22m/15778463s=1499512341601333m/s
(1499512341601333m/s)/(300000000m/s)=4998374c, or roughly 5 million c.

[Srelex]

Then again how do we know this wasn't like one of the Magellanic clouds? It seemed pretty damn small for a 'galaxy'.

[ChosenOne54]

Then again how do we know this wasn't like one of the Magellanic clouds? It seemed pretty damn small for a 'galaxy'.

Well, obviously you didn't see the entire galaxy in-game... only a small part of it. More specifically, the Alimbic Cluster.

Unless I'm misinterpreting you.

[StarSword]

5,000,000c if they did it in 6 months. It takes half a year to cover what light does in 2.5 million, so it's just a case of doubling the coefficient and that's your speed. Proof (probably unneeded):

300,000,000 m/sec * 78,892,315,000,000 sec = 2.366e22 m

2.36e22 m / 15778,463 sec = 1,499,512,341,601,333 m/sec

1,499,512,341,601,333 m/sec / 300,000,000 m/sec =4,998,374c, or roughly 5 million c.

(Quote edited with spaces and thousands separators to make it more readable.)

Lord Relvenous gets a cookie.

The calculations weren't really needed as proof. I requested you post them because I genuinely wanted to know how to calculate it. Thanks for going to the effort.

Then again how do we know this wasn't like one of the Magellanic clouds? It seemed pretty damn small for a 'galaxy'.

The Magellanic Clouds are galaxies, dummy.

But you're right: we don't know for certain which galaxy they went to. I chose Andromeda for these calculations because its distance from Earth, 2.5 million ly, is very well known. It's also the closest galaxy to Earth, meaning that if Hunters took them to a different galaxy, Samus' ship is actually even faster than we've calculated.

[avatarxprime]

5,000,000c if they did it in 6 months. It takes half a year to cover what light does in 2.5 million, so it's just a case of doubling the coefficient and that's your speed. Proof (probably unneeded):

300,000,000 m/sec * 78,892,315,000,000 sec = 2.366e22 m

2.36e22 m / 15778,463 sec = 1,499,512,341,601,333 m/sec

1,499,512,341,601,333 m/sec / 300,000,000 m/sec =4,998,374c, or roughly 5 million c.

(Quote edited with spaces and thousands separators to make it more readable.)

Lord Relvenous gets a cookie.

The calculations weren't really needed as proof. I requested you post them because I genuinely wanted to know how to calculate it. Thanks for going to the effort.

You can also do it the quick and dirty way instead, you end up with the same answer of ~5 million either way. The quickest way to take lightyear/[unit of time] to multiples of C is to simply make the unit of time=1 year. So for the Andromeda galaxy then you'd do the following: 2.5x106 ly/6 months * 12 months/1year = 5x106C. It is less accurate than doing things the way Lord Relvenous did, but it's far faster and easier.

Anyway, in that case if we interpret Samus' ship as 7.2x106C, that's a very impressive little ship. Of course her gunship does use Chozo tech so should be considered exceptional in terms of its performance.

[Darth Yoshi]

Yeah, but the other hunters in the game were there with her, so presumably their ships had similar speeds.

[avatarxprime]

I haven't played the game myself so I don't know the sequence of events. Do all the Hunters arrive at the same time?

There is also the possibility that although they all have similar speed they don't necessarily have similar overall performance. The various robotic or sentient rock/crystal/other Hunters likely don't even need to have much room for living space or stores of consumables on their ships offering up more room for engines and weapons.

[Darth Yoshi]

The whole thing was started by a psychic broadcast essentially saying "come get good shit here." The US version of the manual makes no mention of the message having to propagate across space, and the wording in fact suggests that by the time the Federation hires Samus to investigate there are already hunters on their way to the Alimbic cluster. In game, Samus encounters another hunter within a couple of planets, and the other hunter has, IIRC, already recovered one of the game's mcguffins. The other hunters also somehow manage to make it to Gorea before Samus does, despite Samus being the first to learn where the Oubliette is.

[StarSword]

All right, so we've demonstrated that the Metroidverse has a sizable superiority in FTL speeds and dirtside weaponry. Do we have any numbers on starship weapons?

[ChosenOne54]

Aside from my previous post, not really. I'd assume at least kilotons however, as their ground weapons are in that range.

That said, proper tactical use of Leviathan Seeds and wormholes could cause quite a lot of damage to the UFP. The whole point is to slam the seeds into different worlds, and Phazon will immediately start spreading across the planet. Once a planet is 'seeded,' there is very little they can do to stop the infection (doubly so in Trek's case considering their retarded ground forces). Leviathan Seeds are implied to be very durable as well, though we still don't have accurate calcs.

[avatarxprime]

The whole thing was started by a psychic broadcast essentially saying "come get good shit here." The US version of the manual makes no mention of the message having to propagate across space, and the wording in fact suggests that by the time the Federation hires Samus to investigate there are already hunters on their way to the Alimbic cluster. In game, Samus encounters another hunter within a couple of planets, and the other hunter has, IIRC, already recovered one of the game's mcguffins. The other hunters also somehow manage to make it to Gorea before Samus does, despite Samus being the first to learn where the Oubliette is.

Ah ok, thanks. I could say that since Samus apparently quickly catches up to Hunters who had a head start that she obviously has better/faster FTL, but then you have her getting beat to her final destination, which is contradictory. Oh well.

All right, so we've demonstrated that the Metroidverse has a sizable superiority in FTL speeds and dirtside weaponry. Do we have any numbers on starship weapons?

The only thing we know is that railguns can still be used as anti-ship (likely anti-fighter) weapons since they are utilized on the GF ship Samus is on in Corruption. I brought up some ways to try and use that to get some low-end calcs done on Metroid earlier in this thread.