Starkiller Base vs...4th Empire planetoid!

[Boeing 757]

I believe that this would make an epic fight. Both adversaries are located in our modern-day solar system. Starkiller Base is stationed near Mercury, and the planetoid lurks somewhere in the Kuiper Belt. Whichever blows up the other one first wins....

[Elheru Aran]

Good question. I'd say it depends on what *type* of Planetoid. IIRC they had a few different ones.

I'd say it comes down mainly to the shielding. Can 4th Empire weapons overcome Star Wars shielding? And vice versa.

Some Googling brings forth a thread from this very forum's distant past:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... =4&t=51420

In general it appears that SW might have an edge, but the sheer amount and volume of the 4th Empire weapons could do the job. Just depends on who gets the first shot in.

[Lord Revan]

Pardon my ignorance but who and/or what is the 4th empire and can anyone give any brief(ish) summary as to their overall tech.

[Elheru Aran]

Pardon my ignorance but who and/or what is the 4th empire and can anyone give any brief(ish) summary as to their overall tech.

'Dahak' series by David Weber. We are talking some WTFLOL stuff here.

Battle Fleet was a little short of 1 million ships... many of which are the size of the Moon. Like, not 'a' moon, *the* Moon.

They have black hole weapons. Gravitic weapons. Energy weapons. Capable of spamming missiles by the millions. One blast from an (upgraded) Earth weapon using their tech tore a gash literally a mile long in an enemy craft.

To compare, the namesake ship Dahak *is* the Moon, or a significant chunk of it anyway. The enemy's headquarters ship *is* Jupiter (or was that Saturn?)'s moon Iapetus.

They destroy a significant portion of an enemy flotilla by detonating a star with six (possibly eight?) of their ships doing some kind of ridiculous gravitional drive move.

Some pretty absurd stuff here.

[Sky Captain]

It depends on how SW shielding works against 4th Empire weapons. 4th Empire has all sorts of weird weapons. Missiles that travel in hyperspace and materialize inside targets and only special shielding that exists also in hyperspace can block them. Gravitonic warheads that create some sort of short lived extreme tidal forces that can tear apart even planets. If SW shields can't block those weapons then planetoid has good chance to destroy Starkiller base.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, Starkiller Base also has a weapon that apparently travels through hyperspace... but then, the Fourth Empire has shields that explicitly do defend against such attacks, albeit probably not at the kind of power level Starkiller Base outputs.

[Murazor]

To compare, the namesake ship Dahak *is* the Moon, or a significant chunk of it anyway. The enemy's headquarters ship *is* Jupiter (or was that Saturn?)'s moon Iapetus.

This is not right as such.

While the main characters left the solar system with Dahak, to look for reinforcements, a scout fleet of the alien enemies (a small affair of some ten thousand ships) showed up. Upon finding that the planet was shielded, they put some engines on that moon and tried to use it as a kinetic impactor against Earth.

[Purple]

The way I see it both will immediately detect one another. Once they do they will try and engage. So the SKB will waddle over to the sun and start sucking it up painfully slow and get promptly blown up. Really, that is the only plausible outcome. Unless of course we assume that the SKB starts the scenario with weapons charged in which case it's a doublekill.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Pardon my ignorance but who and/or what is the 4th empire and can anyone give any brief(ish) summary as to their overall tech.

A partial description by Dahak:

"Very well. Please observe the visual display, Commander."

Earth vanished, and another image replaced it. It was a sphere, as bronze-bright as the cylinder that had captured his Beagle, but despite the lack of any reference scale, he knew it was far, far larger.

The image turned and grew, and details became visible, swelling rapidly into vast blisters and domes. There were no visible ports, and he saw no sign of any means of propulsion. The hull was completely featureless but for those smoothly rounded protrusions . . . until its turning motion brought him face-to-face with a tremendous replica of the dragon that had adorned the hatch. It sprawled over one face of the sphere like a vast ensign, arrogant and proud, and he swallowed. It covered a relatively small area of the hull, but if that sphere was what he thought it was, this dragon was about the size of Montana.

"This is Dahak," the voice told him, "Hull Number One-Seven-Seven-Two-Nine-One, an Utu-class planetoid of Battle Fleet, built fifty-two thousand Terran years ago in the Anhur System by the Fourth Imperium."

MacIntyre stared at the screen, too entranced to disbelieve. The image of the ship filled it entirely, seeming as if it must fall from the display and crush him, and then it dissolved into a computer-generated schematic of the monster vessel. It was too stupendous for him to register much, and the schematic changed even as he watched, rolling to present him with an exploded polar view of deck after inconceivable deck as the voice continued.

"The Utu-class were designed both for the line of battle and for independent, long-term survey and picket deployment, with core crews of two hundred and fifty thousand. Intended optimum deployment time is twenty-five Terran years, with provision for a sixty percent increase in personnel during that period. Maximum deployment time is virtually unlimited, assuming crew expansion is contained.

"In addition to small, two-seat fighters that may be employed in either attack or defense, Dahak deploys sublight parasite warships massing up to eighty thousand tons. Shipboard weaponry centers around hyper-capable missile batteries backed up by direct-fire energy weapons. Weapon payloads range from chemical warheads through fusion, anti-matter, and gravitonic warheads. Essentially, Commander, this ship could vaporize your planet."

"My God!" MacIntyre whispered. He wanted to disbelieve-God, how he wanted to!-but he couldn't.

"Sublight propulsion," Dahak went on, ignoring the interruption, "relies upon phased gravitonic progression. Your present terminology lacks the referents for an accurate description, but for purposes of visualization, you may consider it a reactionless drive with a maximum attainable velocity of fifty-two-point-four percent that of light. Above that velocity, a vessel of this size would lose phase lock, and be destroyed.

"Unlike previous designs, the Utu-class do not rely upon multi-dimensional drives-what your science fiction writers have dubbed 'hyper drives,' Commander-for faster-than-light travel. Instead, this ship employs the Enchanach Drive. You may envision it as the creation of converging artificially-generated 'black holes,' which force the vessel out of phase with normal space in a series of instantaneous transpositions between coordinates in normal space. Under Enchanach Drive, dwell time in normal space between transpositions is approximately point-seven-five Terran femtoseconds.

"The Enchanach Drive's maximum effective velocity is approximately Cee-six factorial. While this is lower than that of the latest hyper drives, Enchanach Drive vessels have several tactical advantages. Most importantly, they may enter, maneuver in, and leave a supralight state at will, whereas hyper drive vessels may enter and leave supralight only at pre-selected coordinates.

"Power generation for the Utu-class-"

[Enigma]

Weren't the 5th Imperium ships larger and more powerful?

[Tandrax218]

compared to this 4th imperium monstrosity the SKB is just gay and wimpy ass hell.

[Sky Captain]

The way I see it both will immediately detect one another. Once they do they will try and engage. So the SKB will waddle over to the sun and start sucking it up painfully slow and get promptly blown up. Really, that is the only plausible outcome. Unless of course we assume that the SKB starts the scenario with weapons charged in which case it's a doublekill.

Yeah, planetoid has much better reaction time than most superweapon systems in SW. Any sort of weapon that can destroy planetoid also must be with similar or better reaction time or it will get blown up first. From Empire From The Ashes I got impression that planetiods exit FTL and immediately can engage with FTL capable missiles and long range beam weapons. Dahak even had advanced AI in command so it could get first shots off simply because there is no slow human reflexes and decision making process involved.

Putting planetoid against Deathstar would end with similar outcome. Death star just don't have the necessary reaction time. It could only win if it somehow could make a hyper jump within the superlaser range of a planetoid and fire instantly when exiting FTL. Even then planetoid may be able to get off some gravitonic missiles and turn it into a MAD.

[Thanas]

compared to this 4th imperium monstrosity the SKB is just gay and wimpy ass hell.

Hey you.

We have some rules around here.

One of them even has "no hate speech". Homophobic remarks fall under that.

So enjoy your two-week temp-ban and pray that a less lenient admin does not chose to upgrade it to a permanent ban.

[NecronLord]

Now back to your scheduled beatdown.

The Utu class is also tremendously outdated by the end of the 4th empire, it is from a previous age when it was the 4th Imperium.

Anyway, if I were the Imperial commander, I'd not even destroy the Starkiller. Hypermissile its shield generators from across the system, and use my energy weapons to destroy its gun apparatus, then prepare to take it by ground assault; there's a lot of technicians on that planet and they'd be worth capturing. Might even be able to repair the starkiller for our own use.

[Simon_Jester]

The main gun is powerful enough that I'm honestly not sure Fourth Imperium shielding could withstand it. I wouldn't take chances if I were commanding said Imperium war planetoid. Especially since it's a weapon with not just interplanetary range (like mine) but interstellar range. And has vastly higher FTL speed, given that it takes ships under FTL drive in the Imperium months to travel across the galaxy. Granted that's assuming the Base can move at all, which I'm pretty sure it can.

Conclusion: I would blanch at the ability of the Base to blow up star systems from umpty thousand light years away. I would then thank the deity of my choice that circumstances have placed me within firing range of it, an opportunity I doubt will ever be repeated, and lob enough hypermissiles to be sure of fully neutralizing its weapons and drive.

If there's anything left afterwards I will of course adopt NecronLord's approach and board the place; the stormtroopers aren't capable of offering meaningful resistance to Fourth Empire troops.

[Boeing 757]

compared to this 4th imperium monstrosity the SKB is just gay and wimpy ass hell.

I don't think that the ability to blow up multiple planets from thousands of lightyears away or to suck up whole stellar masses is wimpy. I reckon SW has been made into a much more credible threat in terms of the sci-fi power scale thanks to Starkiller Base.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Weren't the 5th Imperium ships larger and more powerful?

Hugely. The one number I could find (admitted in-universe to be a serious underestimate):

"In general, their progress may be thought of as coupling miniaturization with vast increases in power. A warship of Dahak's mass, for example, built with the technology we have so far encountered—which, I ask you to bear in mind, represents an essentially civilian attempt to create a military unit—would possess something on the order of twenty times his combat capability."

So, basically the spacegoing equivalent of a truck with a machine gun mounted on it would have twenty times the power if bulked up to the same size.

[NecronLord]

Weren't the 5th Imperium ships larger and more powerful?

Hugely. The one number I could find (admitted in-universe to be a serious underestimate):

"In general, their progress may be thought of as coupling miniaturization with vast increases in power. A warship of Dahak's mass, for example, built with the technology we have so far encountered—which, I ask you to bear in mind, represents an essentially civilian attempt to create a military unit—would possess something on the order of twenty times his combat capability."

So, basically the spacegoing equivalent of a truck with a machine gun mounted on it would have twenty times the power if bulked up to the same size.

Those are the ships here. The OP says Fourth Empire Planetoid. The 4th Empire post dated the Imperium, and built those ships, which were then re-commissioned by the 5th Imperium.

[NecronLord]

compared to this 4th imperium monstrosity the SKB is just gay and wimpy ass hell.

I don't think that the ability to blow up multiple planets from thousands of lightyears away or to suck up whole stellar masses is wimpy. I reckon SW has been made into a much more credible threat in terms of the sci-fi power scale thanks to Starkiller Base.

Strategically, yes. This is a tactical scenario.

Starkiller is an ICBM silo.

The Asgerd class is a battleship parked right next to it. Sure, the nuke has better range, but it doesn't matter.

It has no functional defenses against a hypermissile barrage, and the base is built with reinforced rock in sections, directly limiting its mechanical strength against bombardment.

[NecronLord]

The main gun is powerful enough that I'm honestly not sure Fourth Imperium shielding could withstand it. I wouldn't take chances if I were commanding said Imperium war planetoid. Especially since it's a weapon with not just interplanetary range (like mine) but interstellar range. And has vastly higher FTL speed, given that it takes ships under FTL drive in the Imperium months to travel across the galaxy. Granted that's assuming the Base can move at all, which I'm pretty sure it can.

Conclusion: I would blanch at the ability of the Base to blow up star systems from umpty thousand light years away. I would then thank the deity of my choice that circumstances have placed me within firing range of it, an opportunity I doubt will ever be repeated, and lob enough hypermissiles to be sure of fully neutralizing its weapons and drive.

If there's anything left afterwards I will of course adopt NecronLord's approach and board the place; the stormtroopers aren't capable of offering meaningful resistance to Fourth Empire troops.

Really it depends if I know it's got that ability and if I know how it works (vaguely) if I know it can shoot a interstellar beam I probably tell them to fire everything, especially if I think it's about to fire on an inhabited planet. If I believe it's not ready to fire (eg the star it orbits is still there and the mass readings aren't unusual) then I'll disable it with minimum force.

If I don't know how its magic death beam works, but do know that it can kill planets from far away, I'll just shoot it.

If I don't know how it's armed at all, I'll just fly up from the side opposite the thing and attack it from behind.

Starkiller can't rotate rapidly; large areas don't seem to have gravity plating; if it rotated at even 0.5 RPM so all the unsecured equipment on its surface would be shot upward at 0.6 Gs (1.6 gravities from centrifugal force, less 1 for its own mass) and the atmospheric pressure would drop massively. It must be very, very slow. Oh, and it would fuck the base up, because all that rock, including bits in which the base was built, would also be accelerating at .6 gs upward while it turns, and then not, which should be the mother of all earthquakes.

An image of one of the areas demonstrating that there are areas where bare rock is used in the base construction

So yeah, as long as the planetary hyperdrive can be identified and destroyed, it can't actually turn around to bring its gun to bear on attacker behind it; it's game over at that point, though a 4th Empire commander wouldn't let it fire on any other planet either if he was aware that it could.

[Simon_Jester]

I would hesitate to assume that just because parts of the base's facilities appear to be hewn out of bare rock, that they don't have artificial gravity in the base itself and stabilizing the surrounding area.

However, it does seem rather unlikely that they would have fitted the whole planet with gravity generators, especially since the main reason to do so is "so we can turn fast" and this thing is a strategic weapon designed to not be in the same star system as its targets.

One wonders what the logistical challenge of fitting a planet-sized object with hyperdrive and shields is, compared to the challenges of fitting it with gravity generators, inertial compensators, or other "force field effect" technologies Star Wars routinely uses to make their maneuvers and operations survivable.

[Q99]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

Don't know about 4th Imperium, but the Berserkers and the anti-Berserkers of the Red Race(from the Bserserker series, originally by Fred Saberhagen) did fight at FTL speeds on occasion.

[NecronLord]

Does that series share a universe with the Fourth Imperium, or are you just trying to show off some other books you like that are irrelevant to the topic?

[Black Admiral]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

Not that I can recall; they can use the Enchanach (? I can't remember the spelling) Drive for tactical manoeuvres, but I can't recall any specific examples of 4th Imperium or 4th Empire actually fighting while at FTL.