A Star Destroyer vs. YOU

[Eternal_Freedom]

If you are being sarcastic: hooray. If not, would those be the awesome targeting computers that take 8-15 seconds to target a probe, travelling from a planet to it's star in a straight line?

[Panzersharkcat]

Seriously. I had to do some calcs for a nerfed Imperial Star Destroyer once. There were some assumptions made that threw the accuracy off but I think it's good enough for my purposes. Based on the main site's description of the firepower needed to pull of a BDZ, 240 petatons, and its description of an ISD-I having 120 light turbolasers and 12 heavy turbolasers, with the heavy ones 125 times larger, and presumably in the ballpark of 125 times more powerful. Based on the assumption of one shot every two seconds from twenty-five Star Destroyers taking twelve hours to pull off BDZ, I came up with around 274 megatons for light turbolasers and around 34 gigatons for the big guns. I think that's about right, but if anybody wants to check my math for errors, I'll show my work and accept corrections.

That's generally the ballpark I imagine SW firepower to be at, although you do seem to make the same assumptions that a lot of other people seem to do when calcing SW firepower: First, you assume an arbitrary timeframe, and then you assume an arbitrary amount of ships. Perhaps for better clarity it would be best to assume a general range of ships, and then work out the firepower requirements for a variety of timeframes (sort of what Conner does for some of his calcs).

It was a 25 Star Destroyers in twelve hours for the calcs I did, versus something like 3 Star Destroyers in a much shorter timeframe (I think only 3-6 hours) from what I remember being stated in canon. It is also a conservative figure for the nerfed ISDs as it assumes 100% efficiency in doing their jobs in blowing shit up. The reason it's a bit of an arbitrary number of ships and an arbitrary time frame was because it was something arbitrary somebody in my NationStates role-play group came up with to placate somebody who was annoyed by the fact that I insisted that her newest Defiant-sized ship should not be able to take on an Imperial Star Destroyer, which is what I use for my fleet, what with the 300+ to 1 size disparity. She just kept insisting "It's their most advanced ship" as if that meant anything against such a massive size disparity when all her previous ships were merely matched or slightly better pound for pound than mine. It'd be like talking about having the most advanced patrol boat around and expecting it to duke it out and win against a WWII-era destroyer.

[Connor MacLeod]

Everyone has done a SW calc of some kind or another at some point, either by calcing the same incidents Mike did (the way Brian did - I know a number of other people did like CmdrWilkens) using different assumptions (or similar in some cases) or by using other instances (like the ones for Nar Shadaa, or whatever.) I've done my share of calcs and I don't personally find GT or TT level sw weapons impossible. I suppose my calcs could be called bullshit too. woudln't be the first time

Having the yields is one thing. those yields translating into something else is another. Bombarding a stationary planet with gigatons or teratons is one thing, but how does that translate into ship to ship firepower? Sure in theory they can throw that at teh enemy, but starships move (for one thing) and they fire back. And that can sort of require you to move, to fire back, or to power shields... it gets alot more complicated when you factor in targeting considerations, recoil issues, and so on.

In the ST example you could have ISDs that have heavy TLs that can blast off gigaton or teraton level blasts. But we konw from Slave Ship that unless an ISD is properly "braced" even a GT range shot would tear the ship apart. This could mean that GT range shots are dangerous without shields or forcefields (the only sort of bracing that could handle it i suspect.) It can also mean that if your enemy's forcefields aren't able to handle the shot properly (distribute the force imparted to teh ship by the impact of the shot on the shields - even if it is a massless beam) the ship could destroy itself without knocking down shields. Which carries some limitations for high yield firepower. having to brace the guns means it can't turn or track as well - hell it may not even be able to track at all without firing off axis or turning the ship. The ship's engines might have to fire (or the ship brace itself against something else, like a planet) to fire off long range shots. REcoil may impose some delay between firings (depending on recoil handling mechanisms). And so on.

That means heavy guns at higher yields would only be useful against relatively slow moving or stationary targets (crippled or immobilized somehow). More agile targets would require reduced yields or even smaller guns - it's quite possible that Star Wars anti ship weapons are too large or cumbersome to effectively track some kinds of targets because the high firepower potential requires it (or because turrets need to be armored, braced, etc.) High firepower can come with some hefty drawbacks.

Of course in a 'war' situation the Empire wouldn't be stuck using the same design if they were under serious threat. They might abandon 'current' ISD designs and go for a starship packing numerous smaller, less powerful guns (not unlike an Age of Sail 'broadside') Or they might opt for some sort of guided projectile (turning a starfighter into a bomb isn't a big leap).

analysis-wise, There is also a sort of symmetry going on with calcs. If one side argues one set of calcs are invalid this can invalidate other sets of calcs (EG TESB asteroid calcs vs voyager Rise calcs - botha re based on similar premises and methods.) so you have to have some consistency of method there across both universes or things degenerate into nitpicking. Or else you just declare all calcs are shit and say Star Trek wins because its computers are smooth shiny plastic rather than dull plastic or something equally arbitrary.

[Connor MacLeod]

Like I said.. its not the first time any of my calcs have been called shit...

so shall we go by the "how shiny is your console" debate benchmark?

[Connor MacLeod]

Probably as many who have said ST is more realistic because.." I used to think in terms of "realism" in sci fi until I realized how fucking retarded I was. Realism is just another penis compensation factor, and I can remember trying to make up or find alot of those in vs debating when I was being retarded.

I know what you're getting at though. Sci fi calcs are treated as alot more precise than they actually are, and that is silly. but that sort of precision is impossible forthe most part, unless you get someone creating a Mass-Effect like Codex for the universe (and even then that probably isn't precise enough.)
But if you don't set some sort of standard, debate is impossible and all you're left with is arguing (or posturing, as the case may be.) Some will come for that, others won't.

The kicker is, using 'less precise' analysis calcs generally requires some sort of consensus amongst those involved, so it actually becomes a matter of negotiation. So I'll trade you TDIC as long as we get the Dodonna calcs!

[Cesario]

If you are being sarcastic: hooray. If not, would those be the awesome targeting computers that take 8-15 seconds to target a probe, travelling from a planet to it's star in a straight line?

The one that's less than two meters wide, yes.

[Connor MacLeod]

If we were going to say America vs Canada, would we spend very much time on shit like "the American rifle has a peak firepower of 5 KJ per shot but the Canadians use a blah blah blah"?

Or, would we talk about the readiness of the military industrial complex or the longest undefended land border in the world the two countries share or whatever things like that?

Ideally we'd talk about all of it, including the nonmilitary aspects. Or at least as much of it as we have information for.

"but lol ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DIFFERENCE", well, if, hypothetically, Canada invented a gun that could kill American soldiers with one bullet, would that mean they would just steamroll America?

(and moreover, another fallacy that annoys me, just because this Canadian has a gun that can kill someone in one hit, that doesn't mean Canadians can easily survive being shot!)

The source of contention isn't with the calcs, it's with the fact people use the calcs as precise figures and assume there are absolutely no drawbacks tied to having stupidly huge firepower. Things like "gigaton turbolasers would have tremendous recoil and consume tons of fuel which cuts into the endurance of the ship" and so on. Hell most of those conclusions are based off canon (The Slave ship quote says an ISD can't take a multi-GT TL hit unless its properly 'braced', we know they consume huge amounts of fuel from the ICS, etc.)

Half the firepower? Take it.

That's something about the sense of scale... this is a Galactic Empire, but Han talks about "a thousand ships". Ben says "a million voices". We're supposed to believe that just one battlestation, as beefy as it is, is going to make a difference... by blowing up just one moon.

Well some sources I recall actually said the beam was EQUAL to the superlaser. thing is, what setting are we talking at? Its not like the DS doesn't have variable settings form "vape starship" to "vape planet" so the analysis has to be a bit more in depth - the recharge rate alone skews things if you don't remember it. Besides, that only shows what might be possible with ISDs built using DS technology - it doesn't reflect on 'current' designs - the ones that might run on 'primitive' fusion.

Oh, it gets better! Yeah, those two three are just coincidentally related. OK, I can buy that since they might have reason to find each other. Same with the robots.

But Chewie totally knew the one great jedi who survived the slaughter.... yeah, small world.

You just found a great story hook for the EU. HOW CHEWBACCA LOST HIS MEMORY! I imagine it may involve a moon dropping on his head.

[Connor MacLeod]

Fun example I was playing around with:

The WW2 era 16" naval gun turrets according to here had a turn rate in the ballpark of 4 degrees per second. Which means to cover a a 90-120 degree arc is some 20-30 seconds. What does that say about the tracking speed and precision (conservation of momentum plays in here) of the fuckoff huge 50 metre diameter turbolaser turrets, which without doubt will be larger and doubtless heavier?

by that same token, we hear about the targting/tracking ability of phasers, but under what context is that occuring under? The nature of the target, the speed, the range, the firepower settings, etc.

[the atom]

The firepower calcs have shitloads of posturing behind them, too. There's plenty to discuss without going into that though.

If we were going to say America vs Canada, would we spend very much time on shit like "the American rifle has a peak firepower of 5 KJ per shot but the Canadians use a blah blah blah"?

Or, would we talk about the readiness of the military industrial complex or the longest undefended land border in the world the two countries share or whatever things like that?


"but lol ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DIFFERENCE", well, if, hypothetically, Canada invented a gun that could kill American soldiers with one bullet, would that mean they would just steamroll America?

(and moreover, another fallacy that annoys me, just because this Canadian has a gun that can kill someone in one hit, that doesn't mean Canadians can easily survive being shot!)

That analogy doesn't quite hold though. Infantry are still capable of minimizing the effects of any superior firepower through use of cover and strategy. Naval combat doesn't work like that, especially in space based sci-fi settings like SW or ST where ships are expected to handle more then what they can dish out. You're expected to take the damage and keep on trucking, which is why firepower discussion matter so much in this is because it kinda determines just how well one side will be able to handle getting hit from the other and how much punishment they can give out in return.

For example, if we were discussing the modern U.S. Navy vs. the British Royal navy circa 1750, there wouldn't be any sort of discussion about naval tactics or readiness of the military industrial complex, because one side would horrifically mangle the other with casual effort just by firepower alone. There's absolutely nothing a fleet of 1st rates could do to hurt or impede an aircraft carrier or battleship any way you spin it.

Now the disparity between SW and ST isn't quite that big, but it's big enough that the Empire holds most of the cards.

[the atom]

That's still an assumption, though, and one that doesn't really make much physical sense. Why would shields take power input at all?

But, putting that aside, how is damage done and how long to ships last against each other? In Star Trek, if they aren't holding back, battles tend to be over in a matter of minutes, with each hit both hurting the shields and bleeding through to internal systems. Damage isn't really some "shields have X hit points energy capacitance and guns do Y damage points gigatons so it will be over in Z hits".

They can't really take the same thing they dish out, not short term (seen in bleedthrough) and not long term.

Well as a rule it usually takes a few volleys of disruptors, PTs, or phasers until a ship's shield's drops and it goes kablooey, so in a sense they can take more then their individual weapons dish out.

I don't agree. Here's a question about readiness... where is the fight taking place? If it is 1750, what are the American ships going to do for fuel, maintenance, ammo, and navigation?

When the Americans shoot off their million dollar missiles to sink some wooden ships... the British can build new ones. The Americans can't.

The US might win each and every battle there, but still lose the war.

.....Or they send a few missiles to blow up the king of england, and then annihilate the rest of their fleet.

I don't even agree with this though. What would happen when a cannonball exploded on the deck of an aircraft carrier? I don't really know, but my gut says they might not be able to sink it, but I betcha they could cause enough damage to take it out of the fight, taking out the people, damaging the aircraft or the runway/catapult, etc. (Assuming they get close enough to land some shots without being sunk, but that's where the human wave tactics come in.)

Er..you don't exactly know a lot about naval combat or it's history do you? The cannonball would likely bounce off the deck, or smash a plane. This is of course assuming a horribly convoluted scenario where the aircraft carrier has actually let the enemy ship get within line of sight, let alone close enough to fire a shot, assuming it mattered of course. This is what I mean about firepower. Modern ships could sink a wooden ship of the line in a single shot from nearly any of their weapons. Meanwhile the British navy's weapons are incapable of doing anything besides superficial damage even if they had a horrific numerical advantage.

Now apply the same or similar logic to sci-fi.

[Simon_Jester]

Atom, why do you keep trying to block off other people's lateral thinking? You can't talk, can't retreat, can't this and can't that...

What's the point? Are you trying to force a fight? Why? What are you hoping to achieve?

Because if you just wanted to know how people would react to a situation, you wouldn't keep modifying the situation on the fly to stop people from doing what they tell you they're going to do.

[the atom]

The only conditions are that you can't run away, which I initially thought was obvious enough with the whole vs. bit of the equation. Turns out that needed a little clarification.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The trouble is you have this image of "running away" being a Bad Thing (TM).

Withdrawing to consider options/inform superiors/rally reinforcements/gather intel are perfectly viable tactics.

[Connor MacLeod]

Shields may or may not consume power, and even if they consume power it does not require alot. It depends on how you figure them working.

40K void shields for example operate on opening a warp portal to 'dump' energy into the warp (which has all sorts of interesting implications for stirring up the warp and creating warp storm activiity...) but it takes energy to open up or hold that portal, especially close in to the gravity wells. It's implied to even be quite energy intensive.

Likewise there are 'flicker' shields of Renegade Legion, which are fields which must be constnatly re-created because the magic forcefield creates Bad Things if it is constantly maintained (and the energy input ramps up dramatically the longer it is on.) Both are fairly energy intensive devices (relative to their power generation capabilities for weapons and engines, at least.)

Because of the whole thermodynamics thing, that doesn't disappear into thin air. That can mean there may be all sorts of unpleasant conseqeucnes for shielding depending on how it works. One of them is that they will generate some sorts of emissions that can be detected by sensors. I know Void shields have this problem, and I believe Flicker shields do. we also know from ROTJ that deflector shields can be 'read' by sensors as well.

Think of the drawbacks this implies. Ships with shields active would be considerably easier to detect (and avoiding the whole 'stealth in space' argument which is tied to this). This also makes shields quite effective means for missiles with the right detection systems to home in on them accurately. One could argue that the stronger the shield, the better it works as a beacon, and a strongly-shielded ship might end up being a missile magnet. Reducing shield strength can make the ship harder to track via shields, but obviously the shields are correspondingly less effective.

As far as armour goes.. good luck. It's quite possible to interpret from the evidence in SW that SW starships use magic forcefields for much of their durability, and in the absence of them they would be vulnerable to vastly weaker yields than their weapons are capable of tossing out (if one assumes that the ships are in fact designed to easily withstand maximum outputs to begin with...) The Separatist ships for example are supposed to rely on this far more heavily than the Republic in their warship designs, and the Death Star itself is an obvious choice for "force field reinforcement making it work."

[Connor MacLeod]

The only conditions are that you can't run away, which I initially thought was obvious enough with the whole vs. bit of the equation. Turns out that needed a little clarification.

Why does every debate have to be handled by some arbitrary "vs" standards which you seem to treat as if they were fundamental laws of reality? Tradition?

[Connor MacLeod]

I've actually been wondering why the only kind of war would be... a straight up naval conflict. What about an economic war? What about a cold war?

I do think that if SW put all its resources and capabilities to the effort, it probably could defeat the Federation. But that would be out of character, excessive, and it runs contrary to the idea that ST isn't a threat (you only go all out against someone you believe or know could seriously harm you somehow.)

[Cesario]

In a cultural war, I imagine that would depend on how fundamentally "real" the federation's utopia is. If you have a utopia and you're trying to convince the other guy to buy into your way of life, that's a vey, very easy sell.

[the atom]

So if I am understanding your argument correctly Destructionator, there's absolutely no way possible to quantify defences on anything in sci-fi? An understandable position logically I suppose, but then it sort of renders the entire concept of sci-fi debating completely pointless then doesn't it? I find it's generally better for debating purposes to assume that ships can tank roughly the sort of firepower they can dish out for simplicity's sake (unless we have information to the contrary of course).

[Batman]

I think what he's trying to say is that's it's not quite as as simple as X amount of shield resilience vs Y amount of firepower.

[Connor MacLeod]

But, on direct evidence, Mike Wong and Curtis Saxton have tried to do this from time to time, for example, by looking at the kinetic energy of asteroid impacts in The Empire Strikes Back, or the radiation the Enterprise soaked up in Relics.

They both make lots of bad assumptions and fallacies in the process, but the general idea is good: look at things that we a) can measure and b) know did some damage.

Actually no. This stems from the problem of trying to dumb down things so stupid people (like me) can understand them. If you have someone who understands how the calcs and such are derived (EG they have the actual education, rather than google acquired knowledge) then they understand there is more complexity than what is said involved. Whether or not they agree with the assumptions is another story. If you have a relatively moronic person (such as I myself have been) you tend to take things at face value, which leads to alot of the silly appeals ot authority that have historically happened. I've found that understanding 'shit be complex' and 'you can't dumb it down' to be acquired understanding unless you have the knowledge. And if you don't have it, its all to easy to assume there are no gaps because you're relying on someone else's work.

The only thing you can really accuse them of is not explaining enough, but to someone like me if you don't have the basis then explanations would get insanely, insanely tedious and time consuming (which is basically what happened when I had to have people explain shit to me.) But I don't think its fair to blame other people for my own shortcomings either. I really shouldn't have gotten involved in vs debating 'numbers' if I was going to be an idiot about it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Edit: Hell the 'hit points' system exisrted long before Mike or Curtis entered the scene too. People have long tried doing that sort of comparison shit both in and out of Star Wars (like many RTS games, D&D, etc.) for ages. i still see people in 40K who try to base "analysis" off the codex game stats for example (eg an "inch" equals this many feet/meters/yards, etc.) hell I still do it. Its part of the dumbing down thing 'points" are something people understand easily and they think it makes a comparison.

It's not unlike the 'force chart' phenomenon that has perpetually plagued SB.com through the years, where you tried to generalize 'technology levels' or capabilities into distinct tiers just to make vs debating simpler. It was intended with the best of intentions, but it was a forlorn hope for the beginning. It's alot like that 'Kardeshev scale' stuff you sometimes hear about.. personally I hate how it gets thrown about.

[mutanthamster]

It'd be like talking about having the most advanced patrol boat around and expecting it to duke it out and win against a WWII-era destroyer.

Actually a modern missile boat a fraction of the size of a battleship can easily take on and destroy the larger vessel with more technically advance weapons systems.

[Panzersharkcat]

It'd be like talking about having the most advanced patrol boat around and expecting it to duke it out and win against a WWII-era destroyer.

Actually a modern missile boat a fraction of the size of a battleship can easily take on and destroy the larger vessel with more technically advance weapons systems.

Does the battleship outmass the missile boat by over 300 times? No. There's a reason I picked destroyer vs patrol boat, and even then the size disparity isn't even close to the 327-to-1 ratio that be the case of a Defiant-sized ship against an Imperial Star Destroyer. One of the other things I looked up was an LA-class sub vs a Nimitz-class carrier. An LA-class sub is outmassed only 16.44 or so times by a Nimitz-class carrier.

[mutanthamster]

Does the battleship outmass the missile boat by over 300 times? No.

Maybe not 300. I read that a battleship might weigh about 50-55,000 tons and a missile boat about 250-300 tons, so a battleship is much bigger.

I think that the principle of a battleship vs a missile destroyer would be the same as an ISD vs a Starfleet star ship. The bigger, slower ship with large number of weapons vs the smaller, faster ship with superior technology.

[Panzersharkcat]

Does the battleship outmass the missile boat by over 300 times? No.

Maybe not 300. I read that a battleship might weigh about 50-55,000 tons and a missile boat about 250-300 tons, so a battleship is much bigger.

I think that the principle of a battleship vs a missile destroyer would be the same as an ISD vs a Starfleet star ship. The bigger, slower ship with large number of weapons vs the smaller, faster ship with superior technology.

Except that "superior tech" does not include guns that would make much of a dent in an ISD's shields and armor. From what I remember, sublight maneuvering in Trek and Wars are around the same range. An ISD is no slouch as far as sublight speed goes. I'll give that the Enterprise would be much more agile, though. Anyway, my annoyance was over the fact that her ships around 600 meters or so long that needed small wormhole jumps and good numbers to defeat my ISDs (we were roughly pound-for-pound equal in strength) suddenly jump far ahead enough in tech that a ship much smaller than her previous capital ships can take on an ISD in a direct attack and win.