Macross versus Star Wars

[Ryoga]

This is something that I've been pondering over for a while, ever since I started the 'SDF-1 vs. GCS' thread a while back. Since Robotech: Battlecry came out for Xbox today, I thought it was appropriate.

Bo'Dolza's grand fleet of 4 million+ ships has departed for Earth, intent on turning it into space dust and obliterating Breetai's fleet in a display of overwhelming force. However, in a strange twist of fate, the space-fold goes awry...and the Zentradi find themselves in "a galaxy far, far away".

What happens?

For the record, I think it'll be a very impressive battle, with massive Imperial casualties, eventually resulting in the Zentradi losing. While their ships are quite impressive, they just can't repair battle damage or get new recruits. However, I could be wrong.

[greenmm]

Sizewise, the Zent ships and mecha don't really have any edge over the Imperial Fleet. Nor is the firepower terribly impressive -- secondary batteries fire 0.24 ton shots, with primaries firing in the range of 600 tons, and only a select few ships having the "Reflex Cannons" with 20-50MT yields. This fits in with the requirement for about 4 million Zent ships to devastate the surface of the Earth, and still having insufficient firepower to duplicate the Empire's BDZ option (which results in the surface being completely wiped out and wiped clean).

Another strike against the Zentraedi is their primitive stardrives. A slower FTL drive (apparantly equivelent to about 6-7 LY/hr, or at least 300 times as slow as a SW hyperdrive, more likely 1000 times as slow) combines with a more primitive sublight drive (appears to be an advanced rocket-style drive, as opposed to the more common ion drives of SW) to give the Empire a tactical advantage as well.

However, there are a few things in the favor of the Zentraedi:

-- different FTL method of travel. While the Empire could probably detect the gravitational disturbances caused by Zent fold drives, they don't work off of the same principles... and apparantly don't require that the ship be pointed towards its destination to use. This would make it difficult for Imperial sensors to track or estimate Zent ship movements until they actually reappear from foldspace...especially since fold drives don't seem to have to worry about intervening gravitational sources while in foldspace (unlike SW hyperdrives).
-- large fighter complements. For their size, Zentraedi ships rely on large numbers of fighters and mecha as part of their offensive armament. It would be difficult to quantify how they stack up individually compared to the SW fighters, but in some cases we're talking about a numerical advantage that can range anywhere from x5 to nearly x100 in terms of numbers, meaning that each TIE has to take on multiple opponents.
-- range of weapons. I know the Empire has demonstrated turbolaser ranges in the area of several hundred kilometers. However, I'm not sure what their supposed maximum range is... and given the subluminal speed of their turbolaser blasts, the longer the range, the greater the delay between firing and hitting the target. In contrast, Zent ships have light-speed energy weapons and an effective range of 1 light-second (about 300,000 km), potentially giving the Zents a reach potentially up to 100 times that of the Imperials (subject to modification depending on actual ship speed, of course).
-- use of missiles in capital ship battles. Zentraedi ships are designed to use nuclear-tipped heavy missiles as well as their energy weapons -- not to say that ISD's don't mount missile/torpedo launchers, but apparantly they don't use them in ship-to-ship combat. It also seems like the Empire doesn't try to shoot down missiles and torpedoes too often, either. Granted, their proton torpedoes outclass the nuclear missiles the Zents use (limited to about 300 kT yield), but given enough missiles and the Imperial shields will be taking a beating. Plus, given their speeds, they may mistake them for fighters, drawing off more TIEs to investigate them initially.
-- sheer ship numbers. At a conservative estimate, there were nearly 5 million Zent ships that attacked Earth. That gives them a 200-to-1 advantage over the ISD's available to the Empire... but, the Imperial Navy has more than just ISD's available. They have VSD's, Nebulon-B frigates, and other smaller ships available. But still, you'd have to have nearly 200 other ships for every ISD/VSD/SSD to equal the entire Zent fleet. And you still have the problem that the Zents are all in one place, and the Imperial fleet is scattered across the galaxy. Granted, they could probably get all their ships in to battle within a week or 2, but only by stripping the mobile defenses of every planet in the Empire, leaving them open to attacks from pirates, Rim groups, or even the Rebels.

That all being said... the Zents will probably lose eventually. Unless the Imperials can bring together a significant force fairly early on (figure at least 10-25% of the entire fleet), the Zents will beat off or destroy the force. However, they will take moderate casualties, especially among their pilots to do so. More importantly, their lack of repair capability (without a Factory, they can't even do routine maintenance on their ships, let alone reloading) means that each battle leaves each ship progressively weaker. Combined with their slow speed of advance (takes the Zents 1 week to travel as far as an ISD can go in about 11-12 minutes) and the Empire's manufacturing base, the Imperial Navy can fight a holding action against the Zents while rebuilding their ships and replacing their losses.

[Mr Bean]

However, I'm not sure what their supposed maximum range is... and given the subluminal speed of their turbolaser blasts, the longer the range

... Hello? They are LS! THe subluminal part of a Turbolasers is the TRACER to help the gunner fire, there are around six diffrent cases of Things being damaged before the *Tracer arrived inculded three diffrent parts of ROTJ Space Battle, NTM the hand Blasters are also LS as if you check Wongs Page his hand was burned BEFORE the visable bolt got there


However on the damage edge the Macross forces are so baddly outmatched its not even funny

MINIUM shielding figures give us ISD MK II shields are rougly 30,000Giga-tons or 30Tera-tons of damage, I know Macross has the super *amine missile storm of Death but at those low yields its going to take nearly forever to do any damage

The typical battle would be ISD wading in, firing fast as it can as even common LTLs are at least 100 Mega-tons in power

VS plants... The Plantary shield gens would let any world with one simply go turtle as those shields are designed to take hundreds of Yotta-tons of damage and not flinch,
Oh and for info
Kiloton-Megaton-Gigaton-Teraton-Petaton-exatons-ebiatons-zettatons-yottatons

[Kuja]

The Empire would win after a lot of HEAVY fighting.

[greenmm]

However, I'm not sure what their supposed maximum range is... and given the subluminal speed of their turbolaser blasts, the longer the range

... Hello? They are LS! THe subluminal part of a Turbolasers is the TRACER to help the gunner fire, there are around six diffrent cases of Things being damaged before the *Tracer arrived inculded three diffrent parts of ROTJ Space Battle, NTM the hand Blasters are also LS as if you check Wongs Page his hand was burned BEFORE the visable bolt got there

???

I could have sworn Mike's site said that even the invisible part is only slightly faster than the visible portion of the bolt...

However on the damage edge the Macross forces are so baddly outmatched its not even funny

MINIUM shielding figures give us ISD MK II shields are rougly 30,000Giga-tons or 30Tera-tons of damage, I know Macross has the super *amine missile storm of Death but at those low yields its going to take nearly forever to do any damage

Actually, Robotech/Macross never did. They were heavy in the size of their volleys, but the missiles weren't overly powerful.

The typical battle would be ISD wading in, firing fast as it can as even common LTLs are at least 100 Mega-tons in power

VS plants... The Plantary shield gens would let any world with one simply go turtle as those shields are designed to take hundreds of Yotta-tons of damage and not flinch,
Oh and for info
Kiloton-Megaton-Gigaton-Teraton-Petaton-exatons-ebiatons-zettatons-yottatons

I agree, if the Zents disperse their fleet, or the Imps group themselves together into a large force, then it's going to be a turkey shoot for the Imps. But if the Imp force is small enough, then even their huge firepower/shield advantage is going to be overwhelmed by the numerous Zent ships around them.

[Mr Bean]

I agree, if the Zents disperse their fleet, or the Imps group themselves together into a large force, then it's going to be a turkey shoot for the Imps. But if the Imp force is small enough, then even their huge firepower/shield advantage is going to be overwhelmed by the numerous Zent ships around them.

Mid Level ISD MK II Figures lets say to be fair they are all shooting 50 Mega-ton weaponry(though they are not though but hey lets get an avarge)

27 Peta tons translated into tons
27,596,250,000 Megatons/50 Mega-tons= 55,192,500 missles.. Himm 55 Million+ missles to take down one of any of the four sections of an ISD's shields(Which can be distrubited any which way so its 4-0-0-0 or 3-1-0-0 or 1-1-1-1

Anyway so 55 million missles alright

Lets assume each ISD gets 100k ships to themselves right? 100,000 Ships... lets say 20 per second sounds like a fair firing rate eh? or 2,000,000 Missles a second


55,192,500/2,000,000 a second=27.596 Seconds

Ok! so each ISD can last nearly half a mintue aginst 100k Ships!
Considering there will never be 100k Ships in one place at any one time that says somthing

Lets say all 4 million ships take on a planet with Platary shielding

Thats

200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Mega-tons/50= 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 missles! wow
Many millions of trillions of missles to take down a Plantary shield, ouchy

[Darth_Shinji]

Sizewise, the Zent ships and mecha don't really have any edge over the Imperial Fleet. Nor is the firepower terribly impressive -- secondary batteries fire 0.24 ton shots, with primaries firing in the range of 600 tons, and only a select few ships having the "Reflex Cannons" with 20-50MT yields. This fits in with the requirement for about 4 million Zent ships to devastate the surface of the Earth, and still having insufficient firepower to duplicate the Empire's BDZ option (which results in the surface being completely wiped out and wiped clean).

The technical files are quite wrong in weapon calcs. They're for a fan-fiction, most people miss that. In the series the zentradi bdz a world in 27 shots. and destroy another one (though prob smaller than earth) in 2 vollies. Reflex cannons are more like in the gigaton-tetraton range. They are alot of explanations on the dbz of earth and why it doesn't add up with the other two bdz's. There weapons are greater than sw's.

Having said that, I belive that the zent would lose. Not enought of them. However all of the macross zentradi would win. That fleet with boldoza is a standard fleet and they have a thousand of them.

[Shaka[Zulu]]

I really dont think there is a way to give a reliable estimate on exactly how much firepower the average Zent capship can put out. Note that when the BoDolza fleet jumped to earth, encircling it in a sphere... well, to put it simply, if that fleet was exactly 4 million strong, with every ship armed with reflex cannons (the main cannon... I am assuming that for fleet size estimation, only ships with these cannons count toward the total), that means that each ship would only have had to destroy a 510km^2 area in a single shot. that is a circular area of approximately 25km/16miles in diameter -- they each really didnt need to deliver more than 1MT in yield to target, especially since the total DBZ op entailed 27 volleys!. I hate to say it, but unless the zent ships were being extremely conservative -- need I add incomprehensibly extraordinarily so -- in their power/main gun shot on purpose (perhaps to minimize charge times and thus maintain combat effectiveness if attacked... or perhaps as some form of psychological tactic... forcing the enemy to 'smell the stink' so to speak for purposes of demoralization -- I know when I first saw that DBZ op in Robotech while I was in high school, I cried), they are gonna get utterly smited by even a small fleet of ISD's, considering that merely ONE typical ISD can do the same job vs an unshielded planet in a single DAY!

small craft vs scenarios are another story for another thread, as is ground ops.[/u][/i]

[omegaLancer]

On top of that the max range of Imperial turbolasers are in the light minutes not the Light seconds like the zent energy weapons, and can even hit stationary targets at dozens of A.U... Combine with the Imperial FTL sensors, they would devastate the Zen Armada before it can come into weapons ranges...

But I would love to see how the varies Ties perform against the Zent fighters...

[consequences]

Dolza's command fortress would definitely be a credible threat to imperial capital ships, going by the asteroid calculator, and assuming 600km and no benefit from armor it was able to put out some where between 20,000 and 60,000,000 gigatons in a single shot from its main cannon in "Clash of the Bionoids"

[KhyronTheBackstabber]

You Micronians don't stand a chance against the might of the Zentraedi!

[Mr Bean]

You Micronians don't stand a chance against the might of the Zentraedi!

Foool! That is the old foolish ways of the Old Republic, HA

NOW YOU WILL WITNESS THE FULL STRENGTH OF THE EMPIRE!

[Darth_Shinji]

I really dont think there is a way to give a reliable estimate on exactly how much firepower the average Zent capship can put out. Note that when the BoDolza fleet jumped to earth, encircling it in a sphere... well, to put it simply, if that fleet was exactly 4 million strong, with every ship armed with reflex cannons (the main cannon... I am assuming that for fleet size estimation, only ships with these cannons count toward the total), that means that each ship would only have had to destroy a 510km^2 area in a single shot. that is a circular area of approximately 25km/16miles in diameter -- they each really didnt need to deliver more than 1MT in yield to target, especially since the total DBZ op entailed 27 volleys!. I hate to say it, but unless the zent ships were being extremely conservative -- need I add incomprehensibly extraordinarily so -- in their power/main gun shot on purpose (perhaps to minimize charge times and thus maintain combat effectiveness if attacked... or perhaps as some form of psychological tactic... forcing the enemy to 'smell the stink' so to speak for purposes of demoralization -- I know when I first saw that DBZ op in Robotech while I was in high school, I cried), they are gonna get utterly smited by even a small fleet of ISD's, considering that merely ONE typical ISD can do the same job vs an unshielded planet in a single DAY!

small craft vs scenarios are another story for another thread, as is ground ops.[/u][/i]

Not 27 volleys.... Shots. 27 indivaul beams hit the planet and actaully did worse than an imp dbz. The seas were evoparated, the crust mealted, and huge craters were left. The attack on earth has been explained in serval ways. And while I don't think were should explain everthing away in a show or cartoon, we have two examples of extreme power here. 2>1, so earth was the fluke. And when you think of this this show did not want to get the earth blown up, so know we must explain the difference in firepower.

[greenmm]

Hmm, a number of things to respond to...

First of all, not every Zent ship has a Reflex Cannon. In fact, there's some debate over whether any ship besides the Monitor even mounts them -- and onlya small portion of the fleet was composed of Monitors.

Secondly, I have no problem if people want to scale up Robotech/Macross firepower levels within reason, as long as they can apply the same logic and rules that's been applied by Mike Wong to SW and ST. However, there's still the problem that the Zents will take too long to travel to be that effective on the attack. Just to travel straight-line 50,000 LY (conservative estimate of the distance from the Rim to Coruscant) would take them about 45 weeks... during which time Coruscant's position would shift as it rotates around the galactic center, so it would probably be at least a year. Imagine how much preparation and crash ship-building programs could be initiated by the Imps in 1 year, especially since the Zents probably wouldn't travel directly to Coruscant without stopping off along the way, and the Imps would put up some bloody fights in the meantime by using A-Wing-style attacks against the Zent fleet.

[VF5SS]

http://macross.anime.net/mecha/index.html

and

mahq.net

for true Macross info. These might help you a bit.

[greenmm]

http://macross.anime.net/mecha/index.html

and

mahq.net

for true Macross info. These might help you a bit.

2nd one is actually http://www.mahq.net

and it doesn't have any info on the ships.

1st one I've seen before, but it doesn't have any info on how powerful the weapons are. Although, those 178cm railguns on the SDF-1 have got to be nasty (assuming a 100-ton round and a 2000 m/sec speed [rather slow for a railgun, but probably 2-3 times as fast as a standard 16" battleship gun, which fires a shell probably 1/84th to 1/100th the weight of this railgun's round], that works out to a 48 ton yield per round; increase the speed to 0.001c [possible, given the length of the barrels], and you get a kinetic energy yield of 1.08 MT per round)...

[Darth_Shinji]

Hmm, a number of things to respond to...

First of all, not every Zent ship has a Reflex Cannon. In fact, there's some debate over whether any ship besides the Monitor even mounts them -- and onlya small portion of the fleet was composed of Monitors.

Yeah, that why only one reflex hit was shown to hit the earth, and that destroied a landmass of unknown size... could of been an island or a contient for all we know.


But just for the record, the blasts that were used on palmer and the other planet were not reflex cannons. Zentradi weapons are often disgunized by thier coloration and apperance, these were blue blasts, and more ships apperently have them, hell of a recharge time too.

[spongyblue]

The Imps don't have Minmei so they might lose. And a couple of Zentraedi could come aboard and step on a bunch of people

[VF5SS]

Actually, any form of soft soothing usic could stop a charging Zentradi in its tracks.

[Darik Sdair]

Hmm, a number of things to respond to...

First of all, not every Zent ship has a Reflex Cannon. In fact, there's some debate over whether any ship besides the Monitor even mounts them -- and onlya small portion of the fleet was composed of Monitors.

Yeah, that why only one reflex hit was shown to hit the earth, and that destroied a landmass of unknown size... could of been an island or a contient for all we know.


But just for the record, the blasts that were used on palmer and the other planet were not reflex cannons. Zentradi weapons are often disgunized by thier coloration and apperance, these were blue blasts, and more ships apperently have them, hell of a recharge time too.

Shinji, IIRC at the begining of New Generation (season 3 of Robotech, or MOSPEADA on the Japanese end), we see several clear shots of Earth from orbit. I don't remember seeing any major land-masses missing.

When I get the chance, I'll go and back-check the episode that shows those two planets being slagged, but I seem to recall that being a staged demonstration for the express purpose of intimidating the humans. The actual real battle over earth later on is, well, a REAL battle. Clearly, the "BDZ" ability of the Zentradi is better judged by the attack on earth. Or at least, that's how I've seen things so far. Like I said, I'll have to rewatch that earlier episode.

[KhyronTheBackstabber]

greenmm:

Just to travel straight-line 50,000 LY (conservative estimate of the distance from the Rim to Coruscant) would take them about 45 weeks

Just courious where you got this number. Are you talking about a Space fold? I always thought a Space Fold was the fastest form of travel.

[PROMETHEUS]

You Micronians don't stand a chance against the might of the Zentraedi!

Those ships doen't even have shields. Even Star wars lasers won't have any trouble blasting through them. Now, if it was Zentradei vs the Federation, I'd say that hte Federation would win by a mile.

Ha, never though i'd be defending Star Wars.

[Damaramu]

Hmm, a number of things to respond to...

First of all, not every Zent ship has a Reflex Cannon. In fact, there's some debate over whether any ship besides the Monitor even mounts them -- and onlya small portion of the fleet was composed of Monitors.

Yeah, that why only one reflex hit was shown to hit the earth, and that destroied a landmass of unknown size... could of been an island or a contient for all we know.


But just for the record, the blasts that were used on palmer and the other planet were not reflex cannons. Zentradi weapons are often disgunized by thier coloration and apperance, these were blue blasts, and more ships apperently have them, hell of a recharge time too.

Shinji, IIRC at the begining of New Generation (season 3 of Robotech, or MOSPEADA on the Japanese end), we see several clear shots of Earth from orbit. I don't remember seeing any major land-masses missing.

When I get the chance, I'll go and back-check the episode that shows those two planets being slagged, but I seem to recall that being a staged demonstration for the express purpose of intimidating the humans. The actual real battle over earth later on is, well, a REAL battle. Clearly, the "BDZ" ability of the Zentradi is better judged by the attack on earth. Or at least, that's how I've seen things so far. Like I said, I'll have to rewatch that earlier episode.

Don't use Mospeada to judge Zentraedi firepower as they're not in that series! (but you knew that already!)

[omegaLancer]

From the macross game supplement, it states that most zent capital ships were arm mostily with heavy laser batteries ( 100 to 1000's) and 100's of missiles batteries.. Each zent carried a single particle cannon, that could destroy a small asteriod ( or major city), but it required several minutes to fire.. The main advantage the earth forces had was the that the particle cannon technology they possessed was smaller, allowing multiple batteries to be mounted on single ship, and had a much faster fire rate...

So it may be that each zent ship had one cannon with the fire power of a single Tubro lasers, that required minutes to fire.

[KhyronTheBackstabber]

PROMETHEUS wrote:

Those ships doen't even have shields. Even Star wars lasers won't have any trouble blasting through them. Now, if it was Zentradei vs the Federation, I'd say that hte Federation would win by a mile.

Ha, never though i'd be defending Star Wars.

Ha,Ha,Ha. You Micronians make me laugh, especially the ones know as Trekies. I'll have to keep a few of you around for amusement after you've been smited from the universe. The Federation would win by a mile? Just like they would win against the Empire? Let's see how you feel after your lovely Earth, is nothing more than a baren chunck of rock, floating in space.

There was one point you had right, Zentraedi ships lack shilds, but the hull is self repairing.

So it may be that each zent ship had one cannon with the fire power of a single Tubro lasers, that required minutes to fire.

This is wrong. I need to look somethings up, but I know this is wrong. This game supplement of your seems to do the Zentraedi as much justice as WEG does for Star Wars.

I do know they have heavy charged partical cannons for ship to ship combat, torpedo for the same. Light partical, and laser cannons for light warship engagments, orbital fire suport, and anti mecha. They can fire salvos in seconds, not minuets. Also some ships are armed with a Reflex cannon, that can take out multiple ships with one shot, and damage ships near the beam. And some ships have a neutron cannon.

Well thats all for now untill I can look somethings up.