Planetoids attack the Empire ...

[Captain Cyran]

True, but I can imagine that it would take at least 3 or 4 to make a star actually go nova.

[HRogge]

Some facts about Iapetus crashing through the improvised planetary shield of Earth...

Iapetus weight: 1.6 × 10^21 kg ( from the Nasa webpage )
Iapetus speed: > 500 km/s

Kinetic energe: ( e = 1/2 * m * v^2 )

1.6 * 10^21 * 500000^2 = 4 * 10^32 Joule

This is more than enough to shatter an Earth like planet, much more than the gravitational binding forces and it's all kinetic energy ! And Earth's shield was only an improvised defense, build by some resources of a single planetoid !

I don't think there would be ANY kind of planetary shield in the Empire stopping this kind of projectile.

[Stormbringer]

True, but I can imagine that it would take at least 3 or 4 to make a star actually go nova.

Just send one of the latest generation of hypermissle with the new Uber-gravitonic warhead into the star. It causes a blackhole 400,000 Km. That'll kill it really quick.

[Ubiquitous]

By starting the planetoids off throughout the Empire ALI_G has negated just about everything the Empire could do to even the odds, especially combined with the bizarre inability of the Empire's sensors to detect planetoids in FTL inherent in the scenario given.
I apologise for misreading the start of the thread, and assuming that any sort of level playing field was intended.

If you would like me to make those Planetoids into one big fleet, then thats fine. Would you have complained if I would have had 2000 Planetoids in one super fleet, hum? I would imagine so. Do not use red herrings - the Empire has a massive FTL advantage, use it to their advantage.

[His Divine Shadow]

If the Empire can track their progress and keep their hyperdrive from them, maybe some implementation of the GG missile or Centerpoint station would do.

[Captain Cyran]

Just alittle info for those who think the GE could win this one....or even get close.

An Asgard class planetoid in Armaggedon Inheritance took "twelves of twelves of twelves" of missles. These were 60+km long ships that were firing these missiles so I believe that the 10 gigaton warhead figure is at best conservative. But either way, using the 10 gigaton figure as well as the direct quote which a friend and I figured out to be a total of twelve cubed as one wave we got power estimates of at the least 17,280 gigatons at the VERY least, with 29,859,840 gigatons at the MOST, so the real number is probably 14,938,560 gigatons (averaged) The Asgard took at least 3 waves which brings that power rating up to 51,840 gigatons at the most conservative and 89,579,520 gigatons at the most and finally an average of 44,815,680 gigatons. This was just to take out the shields, let alone the actual ship behind it.


Millions of these missiles were directed at the planetoids in a different battle. There were about 3/4 million Aku'Ultan ships, assume 10 missiles per ship every salvo, that is 7.5 million missiles, there were 54 planetoids which comes out to 138,888 missiles per ship. About 1.4 million gigatons against each planetoid, this figure is REDICULOUSLY conservative as these Aku'Ultan ships ranged from 20 to 60 kilometers long and could no doubt fire more than 10 missiles per salvo. They took this kind of punishment for quite a period of time.

Later in that same battle when the master computer figured out Dahak was controlling the other 53 planetoids it ordered all ships to fire at Dahak. By that time no more than 1/4 million or less ships were still around and if all fired 10 missiles per salvo and also assuming only 10% actually hit Dahak that is stil 2.5 million gigatons per salvo....against an Utu class planetoid, Dahak, like the other ships had taken a bit of fire already and took this sustained bombardment for alittle while.

Note....we have never seen planetoid shields fail due to actual attack, sheilds have always so far failed due to hypermissiles taking out generators or projectors.

STILL wanna argue that the Galactic Empire can get close to winning this fight?

[His Divine Shadow]

"Note....we have never seen planetoid shields fail due to actual attack, sheilds have always so far failed due to hypermissiles taking out generators or projectors."

Note, do not post misleading comments to people who have not seen them, shield generators are clearly said to be strained at several times or near breaking point in engagements.

Even if you took 24 million gigatons it wouldn't matter if they can't catch them, if the Empire just clears the areas they will be heading to, most likely by doing it like the germans did in WW2 when retreating, the chances of them finding any usefull tech is shot to hell, and if they are near the fringes, they can be travelling for months without planets near them.

Which is time the Empire can use to get the few actual superweapons that can work into actual usage, like Centrepoint station or the Galaxygun(whose missiles should be able to approach close enough before dropping out of hyperspace to hit an unsuspecting planetoid)

[Captain Cyran]

"Note....we have never seen planetoid shields fail due to actual attack, sheilds have always so far failed due to hypermissiles taking out generators or projectors."

Note, do not post misleading comments to people who have not seen them, shield generators are clearly said to be strained at several times or near breaking point in engagements.

Never said that the shields weren't strained I know they are on MANY MANY occasions. I was mistaken and shields have been lowered, I believe it was the Imperial Birhat when it was struck by thousands of disruptors. But that is the only scenario that I can remember/have seen that Planetoid shields have failed due to hypermissles appearing inside the planetoids shields and taking out the generators.


As for Death Star and other super-weapons. Death Star MIGHT get a shot off before it is turned to dust. The Galaxy Gun missile would most likely not get to go off before it too was shot to ribbons though it does have a chance. Center Point station might also have a chance. The problem for both comes with the planetoids eachenech (I know it's spelled wrong) drive the planetoid could most likely move out of the way before the wave or missile got there. Can Centerpoint's weapon be detected at all?

[His Divine Shadow]

As for Death Star and other super-weapons. Death Star MIGHT get a shot off before it is turned to dust. The Galaxy Gun missile would most likely not get to go off before it too was shot to ribbons though it does have a chance.

I would never send a death star, that would be death... for the death star.
The GG missile is only limited by gravity, the gravity generated by a planetoid is small but prolly enough to jack the missile out of hyperspace at point blank range where it would strike within less than a second or so.

Center Point station might also have a chance. The problem for both comes with the planetoids eachenech (I know it's spelled wrong) drive the planetoid could most likely move out of the way before the wave or missile got there. Can Centerpoint's weapon be detected at all?

Not that I know, plus that repulsor wave thingy emerges at point blank range too, it can work in any number of ways, it could even fling a planet at them if it wanted too or blow up the star they are in, and interdict them the whole time(centrepoint once interdicted the whole star system).

As for echanach drive, these are ambush weapons, the empires tactics will be to commence scorched earth tactics on their own nearby worlds in atleast a months traveltime in every direction, I'm assuming they begin at the edge of the galaxy.
Anyway then they'll put sensor stations in those systems, when they arrive, they'll begin transfer telemitry and before you know it, either the planetoids go in further into the system examening the horrible devastation done, and then the star explodes and a system wide interdiction field is up and they cant escape.

That might work once.

[Captain Cyran]

As for Death Star and other super-weapons. Death Star MIGHT get a shot off before it is turned to dust. The Galaxy Gun missile would most likely not get to go off before it too was shot to ribbons though it does have a chance.

I would never send a death star, that would be death... for the death star.
The GG missile is only limited by gravity, the gravity generated by a planetoid is small but prolly enough to jack the missile out of hyperspace at point blank range where it would strike within less than a second or so.

Center Point station might also have a chance. The problem for both comes with the planetoids eachenech (I know it's spelled wrong) drive the planetoid could most likely move out of the way before the wave or missile got there. Can Centerpoint's weapon be detected at all?

Not that I know, plus that repulsor wave thingy emerges at point blank range too, it can work in any number of ways, it could even fling a planet at them if it wanted too or blow up the star they are in, and interdict them the whole time(centrepoint once interdicted the whole star system).

As for echanach drive, these are ambush weapons, the empires tactics will be to commence scorched earth tactics on their own nearby worlds in atleast a months traveltime in every direction, I'm assuming they begin at the edge of the galaxy.
Anyway then they'll put sensor stations in those systems, when they arrive, they'll begin transfer telemitry and before you know it, either the planetoids go in further into the system examening the horrible devastation done, and then the star explodes and a system wide interdiction field is up and they cant escape.

That might work once.

The planetoids probably would go further in system and get wiped out as you said. But it would also as you said....only work once. The only thing the Empire really has going for it is it's speed, it's a very nice thign to have. As has been shown. But I doubt that this would save the Empire except for but alittle while. The main thing they've got is probably the Galaxy Gun, but it won't take too long for the planetoids to get past that threat, just stay in FTL. It will work partially. I don't think that the Empire can do a perfect scorched earth policy and the Planetoids would eventually find the info they needed. Unlike the Empire they only need to send but one planetoid to a system, allowing them to spread out a lot more.

[His Divine Shadow]

Mining systems with DS level bombs could work, hide in the planets they are approaching and detonate once too near, possibly even disguise asteroids or use cloaks, do they have gravity sensors? If not it might be possible to cloak asteroids or bombs with DS level hypermatter bombs in them.

If the planetoids never drop out of echanach mode, they'll never engage any planets either.

[Stormbringer]

Mining systems with DS level bombs could work, hide in the planets they are approaching and detonate once too near, possibly even disguise asteroids or use cloaks, do they have gravity sensors? If not it might be possible to cloak asteroids or bombs with DS level hypermatter bombs in them.

If the planetoids never drop out of echanach mode, they'll never engage any planets either.

That might well work, if they can produce said hypermatter bombs and the Imperium forces are incredibly careless.

The thing is though, that planetoids tend to drop out of E-drive quite a distance from any planets. The drive tends to fuck up solar systems when used too close.

They will be able to see cloacked or hidden bombs. That's a lot of mass sitting in a place that shouldn't have it. And a planetoids primary sensor is a gravitational detector. They are going to know that something isn't right as soon as they see it.

And once they know a trap is there, they can avoid it.

[consequences]

Sorry abou the lengthy downtime, for whatever reason my computer refused to allow me to access the discussion boards last night.
The Empire really has no chance trying to fight a coventional style of war regardless, their methods of warfare will not bring sufficient accurate firepower to bear given the planetoids overpowering manueverability advantage.
The first thing I would try is to use my own home brewed hyper missiles: Take a hypercapable probe droid, fighter or shuttle, load it with as high yield explosives as you can afford for this kind of mass expendable wave attack, and have them hyper into the planetoids. If I get sufficiently desperate, I will use transports, and then capital ships the same way.
The next thing would be to take a planetary scale turbolaser, give it a shield and hyperdrive, and if possible a cloaking device, and either deploty them as pickets along the most likely axis of attack, or throw them directly into the fleet battles for added firepower.
I would avoid using the Death Star or any of my major capital ships in battle as soon as I understood the nature of Gravitonic warheads, probably after the first couple of times an undamaged ISD is ripped apart with no warning. Instead of sacrificing my major ships to no gain, I would use them to help quell the unrest that is inevitable in the face of such an attack.
I would order the construction of a series of droid ships, no larger than the Acclamator. Depending upon the exact interaction between planetoid energy weapons and my shields, they will either concentrate solely upon defense and weapons, or just weapons. Their purpose will be to jump into close proximity of a planetoid, and put out enough fire into the space around it to guarantee at least some hits.
Note that these countermeasures will only work at all if I have at least some warning, if planetoids erupt out of every corner of the Empire I will still try, but in all likelihood fail miserably to stop the onslaught.
I will also firmly encourage my scientists and engineers to scale up my gravitic technology to the point where it will be dangerous for an Enchanach equipped ship to operat under the effects.
We alredy know from the Grav-Shock devices detailed in the Imperial Sourcebook by WEG that the Empire has the ability to use gravity as a weapon, presuming that that is an allowable source. Curiously, WEG got the details scientifically correct, in that the gravitational disruption needed to severely affect a planet would be prohibitively power intensive, the energy required could usually be applied more efficiently through other methods.

[consequences]

If you would like me to make those Planetoids into one big fleet, then thats fine. Would you have complained if I would have had 2000 Planetoids in one super fleet, hum? I would imagine so. Do not use red herrings - the Empire has a massive FTL advantage, use it to their advantage.

Its not a complaint, its a stement of fact that the Empire has no chance if 2000 planetoids appear in the middle of the Empire spaced so that each of them can spiral outward, destroying everything in their paths. If they start inside the Empire's confines, they will be able to detect the light speed emissions of the Empire's inhabited systems, and target the most important systems based on that information. This means that we will be looking at a replay of the fanfic "Clash of the Titans" where Species 8472 was given complete strategic surprise, except the planetoids followthrough would be far more effective. A massive FTL advantage means NOTHING if there is no way to coordinate an effective counterattack. It is not the dispersal of the planetoids that irks me, but their unrealistic spacing throughout the Star Wars galaxy, especially considering planetoid travel times. Why the hell would I complain about 1 super fleet? At least that way the damage they can do is mathematically limited over any given time to what they can reach from their starting point.

[Captain Cyran]

The first thing I would try is to use my own home brewed hyper missiles: Take a hypercapable probe droid, fighter or shuttle, load it with as high yield explosives as you can afford for this kind of mass expendable wave attack, and have them hyper into the planetoids. If I get sufficiently desperate, I will use transports, and then capital ships the same way.

What I believe has been a general consenses is that StarWars hyperdrive only operates on one of the bands of hyper, and could be blocked that way. If not then I still doubt you could throw enough explosives into a shuttle at a reasonable price to be able to destroy or for that matter do any more than annoy a planetoid. Plus there is the problem of knowing exactly where the planetoids are because It is safe to assume that most of the time they would be in either Hyper or E-drive so your time window would be very small to pull something like that off

The next thing would be to take a planetary scale turbolaser, give it a shield and hyperdrive, and if possible a cloaking device, and either deploty them as pickets along the most likely axis of attack, or throw them directly into the fleet battles for added firepower.

Cloaking device don't matter, it's got mass it is seen by the gravitational detectors. Again you run into the problem of being able to amass enough of these to do significant damage to a Planetoid to any heavy extent before they are all destroyed.

I would avoid using the Death Star or any of my major capital ships in battle as soon as I understood the nature of Gravitonic warheads, probably after the first couple of times an undamaged ISD is ripped apart with no warning. Instead of sacrificing my major ships to no gain, I would use them to help quell the unrest that is inevitable in the face of such an attack.

Sounds like a good idea, what might be better would be to amass your forces in a vital spot, do occasional guerilla runs against Planetoids considering you'd have lots of time to see them coming.

I would order the construction of a series of droid ships, no larger than the Acclamator. Depending upon the exact interaction between planetoid energy weapons and my shields, they will either concentrate solely upon defense and weapons, or just weapons. Their purpose will be to jump into close proximity of a planetoid, and put out enough fire into the space around it to guarantee at least some hits.

Planetoid sensors are pretty good, they'd see it coming, the shields go up and the droid ship gets fried as it comes out of hyper.

Note that these countermeasures will only work at all if I have at least some warning, if planetoids erupt out of every corner of the Empire I will still try, but in all likelihood fail miserably to stop the onslaught.
I will also firmly encourage my scientists and engineers to scale up my gravitic technology to the point where it will be dangerous for an Enchanach equipped ship to operat under the effects.

Good point, but I don't think they could do it fast enough before main worlds and important worlds either got slagged or taken.

We alredy know from the Grav-Shock devices detailed in the Imperial Sourcebook by WEG that the Empire has the ability to use gravity as a weapon, presuming that that is an allowable source. Curiously, WEG got the details scientifically correct, in that the gravitational disruption needed to severely affect a planet would be prohibitively power intensive, the energy required could usually be applied more efficiently through other methods.

The main problem most of your efforts, and those of others, will have is that the planetoids spend a lot of time in FTL meaning your time window is quite small.

[His Divine Shadow]

If one where to mask them as readily viewable objects like asteroids it might not attract attention.

Also:

Cloaking fields, as they are developing now, cannot protect against CGTs (crystal gravitational traps) since the mass of the protected vessel is not affected by the field. As most of these expensive sensors are Imperial property, the need for mass baffling seems unnecessary.

(ref: Imperial Sourcebook)

It seems it might be possible to incorporate technology to disguise mass.

[Stormbringer]

If one where to mask them as readily viewable objects like asteroids it might not attract attention.

But the crews Know what an asteroid's mass/size ratio should look like. They are very careful to note things like that as mass interferes with their hyper drive and the E-Drive can screw up pplanetary orbits. They'll be able to tell that a given asteroid is way to massive for it's volume.

]]It seems it might be possible to incorporate technology to disguise mass.

It may be possible but it seems to be something that they as yet have not done. Something they could look into if the need ever arose but not something currently in the works.

[His Divine Shadow]

But the crews Know what an asteroid's mass/size ratio should look like. They are very careful to note things like that as mass interferes with their hyper drive and the E-Drive can screw up pplanetary orbits. They'll be able to tell that a given asteroid is way to massive for it's volume.

It's an unknown I'd say how massive it would be, we know nothing of the hypermatter reactors fuel/energy ratio, though I suspect your right given the quote in the ICS which says that an Acclamators fuel silos outmass the rest of the ship by magnitudes.

[consequences]

Any gravitational cloaking will likely be some sort of outgrowth of the inertial compensator technology already possessed, since this seems to be the most applicable technology to the problem at hand.
Depending upon your source, proton torpedos supposedly have yields of up to 30 gigatons. This, added to the signifigant kinetic energy of a projectile moving at at least .99c will at the very least be noticeable. The projectiles will be programmed to constantly make attack runs on the target, and given the speed of Imperial hyperdrive will likely arrive before effective countermeasures can be taken.
Where do we get the assumption of Imperial hyperdrive only occupying one of the planetoids bands of hyperspace? When did this consensus happen? What evidence is it based upon? We already know that Star Wars hyperdrive can have wildly varying performance characteristics. For all we know they use entirely different principles, and the sheer speed of Star Wars hyperdrive means that they are probably occupying a different area, for lack of a better word, of hyperspace.
If the Planetoids spend most of their time in ftl, especially their hyperspace, they won't be able to see shit either.
A cloaking device does matter if you seed something in an asteroid belt, or outside the confines of a system with orders to jump in upon receiving a signal. If the planetoids rely on Gravitational sensors, then the Grav Well generators on Interdictors should be useful as a form of broad band jamming.
Me seeing the planetoids coming is entirely dependent upon them not appearing with absolute surprise in the middle of the Empire. If they arrived completely undetected, they will be able to travel around completely undetected, and I can't see a way for the Empire to stop or even slow them down under those conditions.
I don't think my scientists would get any truly useful research accomplished either, but they might as well work on something while the galaxy is destroyed, and who knows? They may just get lucky.
The planetoids will at the very least have to spend some time in real space gathering raw materials if they want to replenish their ammunition.

[Stormbringer]

Where do we get the assumption of Imperial hyperdrive only occupying one of the planetoids bands of hyperspace? When did this consensus happen? What evidence is it based upon? We already know that Star Wars hyperdrive can have wildly varying performance characteristics. For all we know they use entirely different principles, and the sheer speed of Star Wars hyperdrive means that they are probably occupying a different area, for lack of a better word, of hyperspace.

We don't know anything for sure. But Star Wars hyperspace is never refered to as a banded phenomenon. That alone suggests that they use only a single band.

A cloaking device does matter if you seed something in an asteroid belt, or outside the confines of a system with orders to jump in upon receiving a signal. If the planetoids rely on Gravitational sensors, then the Grav Well generators on Interdictors should be useful as a form of broad band jamming.

They use gravitational sensors but not exculsively. They also use an FTL electromagnetic sensors, Fold-space sensors. All an Interdictor would due was draw fire right down on themselves. When a single missle is a fleet killer thats a bad idea.

[XaLEv]

A description of Dahakverse hyperspace, from page 86 of Heirs of Empire:

Yet "hyper-space" was more a convenient label for something no human could envision than an accurate description, for it consisted of many "bands - actually a whole series of entirely different spaces - whose seething tides of energy were lethal to any object outside a drive field. Even with Imperial technology, human eyes found h-space's gray, crawling nothingness... disturbing. Vertigo was almost instantaneous; longer sxposure led to more serious consequences, up to and including madness. Ships in normal space could detect ships in hyper; ships in hyper were blind. They could "see" neither into normal space nor through hyper-space, and so their displays were blank.

That hyperspace is described as being a number of different spaces would seem to suggest that SW hyper could be a single hyperspace band, yet the description of it's visual effects would seem to rule that out. Is there anything suggesting that SW hyper is similar?

[His Divine Shadow]

That hyperspace is described as being a number of different spaces would seem to suggest that SW hyper could be a single hyperspace band, yet the description of it's visual effects would seem to rule that out. Is there anything suggesting that SW hyper is similar?

The only similar thing is that they both need a drive field.
I believe they might be the same thing, but SW hyperspace one could say is in another part of hyperspace, where there aren't even any bands, and one can drop out of hyperspace before one reaches pre-set coordinates and one can have some contact with the outside universe.

[Ubiquitous]

Could the Empire sneak a team on board a Planetoid to do some technological espionarge? This could help them ...

[XaLEv]

Could the Empire sneak a team on board a Planetoid to do some technological espionarge? This could help them ...

Be more specific.

[Stormbringer]

Could the Empire sneak a team on board a Planetoid to do some technological espionarge? This could help them ...

Quite simply, no. The place is controlled by direct neural-interfaces. They couldn't even get in but if they did they'd simply be chopped to bits by the defense the second they went into restricted sectors.