Tie Defenders vs a borg tactical cube

[seanrobertson]

What?

Lions are feebe because Tigers can kill them?

Heh, no, no...I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we have a pretty
good idea of fighter-level laser firepower, usually somewhere around
a kiloton per shot. TIEs probably have better firepower than, say,
Kenobi's fighter in AOTC, but by how much? It couldn't be a whole lot,
like orders of magnitude.

Vader managed to shoot down Y-Wings pretty quickly, with a couple of barrages. If his TIE had powered up his shots to 2 kT apiece and he
killed a Y with about 10 direct hits, the Y's shields could withstand, obviously, 20 kT.

The Y-Wing is 16m long, slightly over twice the length of a Defender
,6.97m according to the TIE Fighter page at SWTC. Given the Y's
relative sluggishness next to other fighters, it supposedly relies
heavily on shields to protect it in combat. The size disparity
suggests that it'd difficult to put far stronger shields in the
Defender chassis, though the Defender is newer, developed
shortly after the Battle of Hoth. (The Y-Wings might've been
around in AOTC or even earlier, but since we see them for the
first time in ANH, we can really only say that the Defender is
about 10 years or so more "current." I'd guess that the Ys are
actually more like 30 years older than Defenders but I have no proof;
it's just an off-the-cuff guess.)

Size isn't everything in designing a well-protected starship, but it seems that when one gets down to a TIE-sized craft, it's very, very hard to power
shield generators capable of fending off other fighter's attacks--if, that is, they have enough room for shield generators whatsoever.

The Defender has ion cannons, multiple laser cannons, missile launchers, and three ion engines to power along with those shields. To guess that its shields are several times that of a Y-Wing or X-Wing, especially the former,
might be reasonable given *extreme* technological advancement, but
where is the evidence for that?

For the sake of argument, we could say that each Defender can withstand
100 kilotons. I think that's pretty out of whack for the reasons noted
above...and even supposing a breakthrough in shield miniaturization came along in time for the D's development, one has to wonder why these craft
weren't deployed at Endor. If they're so far and beyond your ordinary TIE
or Interceptor, the Imperials would be *fools* to not use them.

With 12 Defenders, the Borg cube could win if it delivered 1.2 megatons
of energy to them before the fighters got into firing range. It needn't
score direct hits to do that. A spread of 5 photonic missiles each yielding
a megaton could potentially destroy the squadron or much of it, depending on how close the Borg could detonate said missiles to the fighters.

At maximum acceleration, assuming the Defenders are capable of
around 50,000 gees (ten times that of Kenobi's fighter) or 500 km/sec.,
it'd still take the fighters quite some time to get into range (observed,
several hundred to a few thousand kilometers, though I could be wrong
here), around 3 minutes. That's a LOT of time for the cube to fire
torpedos.

It's not impossible for them to pull off a win, but this would
depend heavily on the Borg missing them by hundreds of meters
again and again.

[seanrobertson]

there is also the quote "reroute all pwer to FRONT deflector screens, reroute all power to FRONT deflector screens" They did that because of the TURBOLASERS that where firing at them from that direction. Hell I would rather be hit by a blaster bolt to the engines and have a chane at survival than having a turbolaser cut through my shiields like butter and vaporize my cockpit. At least with the shields all forward they would have a chance if a TL got a glancing hit.

They may have stabilized thier rear deflectors but that doesnt mean the rerouted power to them. Simply put enough power into them to stop indirect blaster hits from destroying thier ships.

That's a good point, but by the time Vader and his men were firing
on them, the turbolasers had stopped firing. ("They've...stopped?!")
They knew the TIEs were coming in for the kill, so they'd have to
be stupid to not see what was going on.

The visuals also require that some form of shielding dispersed Vader's
shots because we didn't see anywhere near kiloton-level explosions.
Instead, the Ys and Xs broke apart, some debris remaining intact
enough to explode on the DS's surface.

You make another good point in noting the difference between stabilizing
deflectors and powering the rear shields up, but in fairness, how large
of a difference does this make? I think it counts for a good bit, as
evident in the fact that the Falcon could take a direct hit from
a turbolaser yet could also be threatened by TIE attacks on multiple
vectors.

However, the fighters might not want to angle their deflectors when
facing a cube's long-range attacks, like torpedos. Given their extremely
high acceleration, they could easily power up the fwd. deflectors in
anticipation of a torpedo explosion, effectively fly right PAST the torpedo, and not have time to soil their suits as the torpedo blows up behind them,
striking the underpowered aft screens. After all, if there is a serious
distinction between powering up the screens and stabilizing them as
you're suggesting, it'd take the pilots time to change their shield
configurations. That's not time they really have, since I'm still of
the perhaps outdated understanding that fighters have never engaged
an enemy outside of a few thousand kilometers or thereabouts.

[Nathan F]

oh, but you forget! the borg can adapt to laser blasts, and probably have a much greater range than a tie defender. Dude, one borg cube took out an ENTIRE federation squadron! Sigh, another example of the pointlessness of arguing trek versus wars, as their similarities end in the fact that they are sci-fi.

[seanrobertson]

A note about the ships at Wolf 359 vs. 12 TIE Defenders...

I have a hard time really drawing a conclusion because of the ongoing
controversy concerning the yields of photon torpedos. That has a direct
bearing on everything else pertaining to a Federation starship: its
phasers, shields, the works.

If, for the purposes of this thread, we could agree on the oppositions'
stats, I think this could actually be quite interesting, a dramatic fight. I've already had a blast and learned something from this discussion.

[HemlockGrey]

oh, but you forget! the borg can adapt to laser blasts, and probably have a much greater range than a tie defender. Dude, one borg cube took out an ENTIRE federation squadron!

If that was not a joke, I will kill you with my own hands.

[seanrobertson]

oh, but you forget! the borg can adapt to laser blasts, and probably have a much greater range than a tie defender. Dude, one borg cube took out an ENTIRE federation squadron! Sigh, another example of the pointlessness of arguing trek versus wars, as their similarities end in the fact that they are sci-fi.

That's why I like these discussions, because they're pointless
Hehe...

And who's forgetting about the Borg cube's range advantage, me?
The reason I'm favoring the cube is largely dependent on a significant
range advantage. Besides, I don't think the Defenders' blasters are
any threat whatsoever. Their missile inventory is what concerns me.

[HemlockGrey]

That's a good point, but by the time Vader and his men were firing
on them, the turbolasers had stopped firing. ("They've...stopped?!")
They knew the TIEs were coming in for the kill, so they'd have to
be stupid to not see what was going on.

By that times, they were all damaged and their shields were running low.

The visuals also require that some form of shielding dispersed Vader's shots because we didn't see anywhere near kiloton-level explosions.
Instead, the Ys and Xs broke apart, some debris remaining intact
enough to explode on the DS's surface.

That could have been some property of the hull which dispersed the explosion. Or maybe explosions aren't as big in the vacuum of space.

More likely, tho, was that they still had some basic shielding but nothing that could withstand more than a few shots.

You make another good point in noting the difference between stabilizing deflectors and powering the rear shields up, but in fairness, how large of a difference does this make? I think it counts for a good bit, as
evident in the fact that the Falcon could take a direct hit from
a turbolaser yet could also be threatened by TIE attacks on multiple
vectors.

From a light turbolaser not set to full power. By the way, why do you think they were threatened by TIE attacks?

Oh, right, they had been hit by turbolasers.

However, the fighters might not want to angle their deflectors when
facing a cube's long-range attacks, like torpedos. Given their extremely
high acceleration, they could easily power up the fwd. deflectors in
anticipation of a torpedo explosion, effectively fly right PAST the torpedo, and not have time to soil their suits as the torpedo blows up behind them,
striking the underpowered aft screens. After all, if there is a serious
distinction between powering up the screens and stabilizing them as
you're suggesting, it'd take the pilots time to change their shield
configurations. That's not time they really have, since I'm still of
the perhaps outdated understanding that fighters have never engaged
an enemy outside of a few thousand kilometers or thereabouts.

Or they could easily accelerate, catch up to the cube, and just dance around the cube's return fire.

[Alyrium Denryle]

You also must remember that even if they did power up thier aft shields they may have been hit more than we see onsreeen.

When they where not being fired on thier flight was smooth and clean. once vader and co showed up they began to jostle(sp) in thier seats. It may be possible that they where bein hit more than we see, and the shots that kil them are the steriotypical "glory" shots when vader decides to hold down the fire button.

This would also be consistent with AOTC during the chase scere, kenobi's fighter seems to jostle around when hit. and also with the battle scene at the end, the gunships flight became more turbulent when hit with laser canons.

[Isolder74]

Of course you are assuming that the defenders will be flying only in straight lines. Those things can weave and bob like nothing the Borg have never seen. They should be able to avoid the Borgs torpedos completely. once they get close enough they'll fire their torpedos and the Tac Cube is dead

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Defenders. They could rapidly close the distance between them and the cube. Cubes have HORRIBLE accuracy (BOBW) and only fire once at a time. Even if the Defenders only have missles a bit more powerful the Slave 1's, 12 with 96 200 megaton missles is 19.2 gigatons of pain. If they carried 1 gigaton missles, that's almost a hundread gigatons...

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Of course you are assuming that the defenders will be flying only in straight lines. Those things can weave and bob like nothing the Borg have never seen. They should be able to avoid the Borgs torpedos completely. once they get close enough they'll fire their torpedos and the Tac Cube is dead

Hey Isolder. Rename that tripod image from .jpg to .txt then it'll appear.

[seanrobertson]

By that times, they were all damaged and their shields were running low.

With respects, Cyril, how do we know this? My understanding of Wars
shields was that they were completely threshold devices: hit them
with anything below their peak dissipation rate, and you don't do
any damage. If they *had* been damaged, it had been from combat
with other TIEs, indicating that the order of magnitude I suggested
is still sufficient to do damage/deplete the shield. Remember,
an Imperial officer told Vader that their turbolasers couldn't track the
fighters.

That could have been some property of the hull which dispersed the explosion. Or maybe explosions aren't as big in the vacuum of space.

More likely, tho, was that they still had some basic shielding but nothing that could withstand more than a few shots.

So, how depleted was it? Orders of magnitude? We can only run with
what we know for sure; otherwise, I could easily contend that Tactical
Cube One Three Eight was operating poorly because it'd sustained
heavy damage in a fight immediately prior to VGR arriving on the
scene in "Unimatrix Zero." (Note: There's no real evidence for this, though
the cube had been engaged with an alien that'd sent out a general
distress signal (which VGR picked up).)

Also, explosions in space will be big. Patrick Degan discusses this in
the thread, "ST Photorps: Not as powerful as they're cracked up to
be?"

From a light turbolaser not set to full power. By the way, why do you think they were threatened by TIE attacks?

Oh, right, they had been hit by turbolasers.

They hadn't been in ANH, at least to my knowledge. When they
escaped, the only effort the Imperials made to stop them was
to send a few TIEs after them.

Or they could easily accelerate, catch up to the cube, and just dance around the cube's return fire.

I was talking about their acceleration a few minutes ago. We have
an official source, _SW Ep. 2 ICS_, that pegs the Kenobi fighter's
acceleration at 5,000 gees. That's 50 kilometers per second, per second.
I estimated that the TIE Defender had an acceleration *ten times* that,
or 500 km/s/s. It'd still need three *minutes* to close to a range
at which it could use its weapons (so far as I know).

[Isolder74]

Defenders. They could rapidly close the distance between them and the cube. Cubes have HORRIBLE accuracy (BOBW) and only fire once at a time. Even if the Defenders only have missles a bit more powerful the Slave 1's, 12 with 96 200 megaton missles is 19.2 gigatons of pain. If they carried 1 gigaton missles, that's almost a hundread gigatons...

Exactally my last point

[Isolder74]

Of course you are assuming that the defenders will be flying only in straight lines. Those things can weave and bob like nothing the Borg have never seen. They should be able to avoid the Borgs torpedos completely. once they get close enough they'll fire their torpedos and the Tac Cube is dead

Hey Isolder. Rename that tripod image from .jpg to .txt then it'll appear.

found a better picture and just gave up on the lycos one

[seanrobertson]

You also must remember that even if they did power up thier aft shields they may have been hit more than we see onsreeen.

Perhaps, but I don't remember many--if any--scene breaks between
the time Vader's entourage shows up and the time that the Ys are
blown away. Granted, it's been awhile since I've seen ANH, since
my LD player is broken.

When they where not being fired on thier flight was smooth and clean. once vader and co showed up they began to jostle(sp) in thier seats. It may be possible that they where bein hit more than we see, and the shots that kil them are the steriotypical "glory" shots when vader decides to hold down the fire button.

This would also be consistent with AOTC during the chase scere, kenobi's fighter seems to jostle around when hit. and also with the battle scene at the end, the gunships flight became more turbulent when hit with laser canons.

Oh, I quite agree: when shaking around, it's entirely possible, even
probable, that the ship is taking hits. But it's equally likely they're just
maneuvering rapidly to dodge incoming fire.

Also, though I'm emphasizing Y-Wings, we could just as easily
talk about any other conflict between Rebel and Imperial fighters,
Naboo and Trade Federation fighters, or whatever. I seem to remember
supposedly well-shielded craft like X-Wings dying shortly after the
pilot in ROTJ says, "There's...too many of them!" Did hundreds, dozens,
or even several TIEs target just him that we could tell? Nah. He was
hit by the fire from maybe one or two other fighters, and died almost
instantly. To justify the whole "fighters have megaton-class shields"
spiel we'd have to ignore quite a lot.

[Connor MacLeod]

Lets clear some things up...

1.) acceleration wise, I'd put the TIE Defender at least capable of pulling 7500 gees absolute minimum, with 25,000 gee's probably around the highest known upper limit ATM.. average, I believe 10,000-12,000 gee's is probably accurate, since its meant to be one of the most advanced and most powerful fighters out there.

2.) It mounts hyperdrive. Depending on the "battlefield" and the degree of gravity wells present, microjumping can be used to execute strafing attacks with missile loads (or to at least rapidly cover the distances.)

3.) lasers - forget that MT range laser crap, I find it hard to believe that between AOTC and the "modern" classic Trilogy they made an orders of magnitude improvement in fighter weaponry. Just because the acclamator's guns are 6 MT does not mean that fighter scale lasers will be (remember that there are CAPITAL scale lasers as well as starfighter scale.. just as there are starfighter scale TLs and starfighter scale lasers). Perhaps starfighter scale turbolasers could be MT range, but then they would also probably obey other TL rules (slower rate of fire, etc.) In any case, I doubt the TIE defender moutns a starfighter-scale turbolaser anyhow.

As for the shielding estimates, I consdier Sean's to be rather reasonable. AT MOST maybe a megaton of shielding at full output. I suspect its less shields and more EW that will help the defender in this instance.

4.) Concussion missiles. Forget the ones that Slave-1 mounts. They're far too large to be mounted on the TIE defender (for one thing, they're a meter long.. I don't recall anyplace where they could mount those.) They'd have to be externally racked to be carried.

Odds are, I'd bet on using proton torpedoes more. Fighter-scale protorps have about the same damage potential as the missiles the slave-1 mounts (if we assuem they're comparable to the Falcon, which is not unreasonable since they are of similar size and shaping). While its true the torpedoes are a lot slower acceleration wise, they still pack megaton-range firepower (191 megatons, in this case).

Now, range is the kicker. Now, its quite possible the TIE Defenders could launch missiles from beyond weapons range - at the minimum they must have accelerative capabilities that match the defender (or the Defender would overshoot its own ordnance) and its probably safe to say they'd be at least 25-50% faster, if not more. Mike Wong has estimated around 70,000 gee accelerations for protorps, which is quite good. Regardless, we get an accel rate of tens of thousands of gees in most parts.

If we use the low end (12,500 gees based on my above assumptions), the missile should be capable of accelerating at 122.5 km/s^2. Most protorps have an "active flight time" of around 30-60 seconds (while this may seem strange, it should be noted that SOME SW missiles have active flight times of up to ten minutes, and are the same size as the meter long Slave-1 missiles!) We'll stick with 30 seconds.

If the missile accelerates for say, five seconds, leaving 25 seconds worth of flight time for manuvers, its traveling at over 612 Km/s.. if it does this for say, the full 25 seconds, we're talking around 15,000 km for the missile (minus the distance it covered while accelerating. Of coures, the range can increase the faster the missile goes, but this not onyl decreases the time the missile has for manuvers, it makes it much harder to manuver (inertia).
And of course, lower speeds and longer ranges/times give the Borg greater chance to evade/intercept the missile, but we're talking about a projectile about the size of a human head at most, and if its not actively emitting (IE accelerating) it might be hard to track them. I don't know about Borg point defense capabilities, either.

The real problem of course is how far away the TIE needs to be. going by novels alone, the range probably varies from 6 to 25 kilometers for acquiring targets. This however, is against Imperial opponents whose technological level (including targeting and EW) are roughly comparable (less than an order of magnitude difference.), and I don't know how Borg EW capabilities would stack up. Ideally, the Defenders should be able to acquire them out as far astheir sensors reach (SWE ref indicates targeting computers use a ship's sensor arrays to acquire and lock onto targets) which is easily light-seconds.

Hell, even in ANH the rebels were able to acquire the exhaust port many tens of km out, under heavy jamming from the Death Star - and their equipment is LESS effective than the Empire's - but not significantly so.

To be safe, I'd consider it not unreasonble for the Defenders to acquire missile lock around the thousands-tens of thousands km range.. with possibly hundreds of thousands if Borg EW capabilities are particularily bad/nonexistant. Sean, I'll have to rely on you to provide that info

The other relevant point as I mentioned, is Borg point defense. Do we know how well they'll handle 7 meter-long targets (much less the head-sized protorps) capable of tens of thousands of gees of acceleration? That if anything will probably determine the surviviability of the TIEs rather than shields. That and EW capabilities (more Stealth and masking than outright jamming, I think)

[Connor MacLeod]

I should note that if we ARE going to use concusion missiles, they will have around 30-33% of the yield of a fighter-scale proton torpedo. Around 50-60 megatons. Of course, they're also much faster than concussion missiles (nearly twice as fast IIRC) but they also have far less drive time (20-30 seconds, 30 being the only known upper limit I am aware of)

[seanrobertson]

Defenders. They could rapidly close the distance between them and the cube. Cubes have HORRIBLE accuracy (BOBW)

With respects, Herr Moderator, that was a tractor beam that had bad
accuracy. As I recall, Borg torpedos usually hit their mark.

Also, you'll note that I was emphasizing the use of proximity-detonated
photonic missile hits--NOT direct hits (which I think would be gross
overkill anyway).

and only fire once at a time. Even if the Defenders only have missles a bit more powerful the Slave 1's, 12 with 96 200 megaton missles is 19.2 gigatons of pain. If they carried 1 gigaton missles, that's almost a hundread gigatons...

Which is worthless if they can't close to range fast enough. I don't dispute that their missiles could be very potent, though why they'd always carry
ordinance more powerful than Jango Fetts' inventory itself begs a convincing argument (I believe it, but I'm an equal opportunity ball-buster: just because we know the Empire is superior doesn't mean I'm going to go off the deep end a'la Spacebattles.)

I've already twice mentioned a pretty generous estimate for the Defender's
maximum acceleration: 500 km/s/s. That's ten times the
acceleration rated for Kenobi's fighter by no less than Dr. Saxton himself.
And it still entails that the cube, horrible accuracy or not, has about
three minutes to fire at will before the fighters close to range.

Not to sound overly dramatic, but that's an awful long time.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The range you stated for SW fighters is also under heavy jamming, which the borg have never been stated to use.

[Connor MacLeod]

The range you stated for SW fighters is also under heavy jamming, which the borg have never been stated to use.

Its actually visual ranging, as far as I can tell. Star Wars fighter pilots favor visual-range engagements and targeting because the aformentioned sensor and EW parity makes effective targeting at long range difficult (This is also presumably why we see ranges "open up" in the NJO against the Yuuzhan Vong, whose technology is different from the Empire/Rebellion) This detail was explained in "Han Solo at STar's end". The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook details a few other reasons why visual ranges are primarily used and why longer-range engagements tend to be unusual (but not impossible.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Sean: do we know the range at which Borg weapons could target small craft (hopefully something as small as the Defender?) Do we have any ideas of approximate accuracy in this regard? Have they intercepted missiles/torpedoes or warhead-like projectiles before? (I also don't suppse we know can guess at the accelerations involved in all of the above... thats going to be important)

Additionally, do we have any knowledge of Borg EW capabilities, and how good they are relative to otehr combatants?

Also, don't forget the hyperdrive. The TIE-D's could microjump a few light minutes away then microjump back in close up (depending on how far away they are.. sensor ranges for the Millenium Falcon, and Jaina's fighter in Destiny's Way, are around 2 Light minutes and 8 light minutes respectively, and neither is neccesarily an upper limit)

[Nathan F]

oh, but you forget! the borg can adapt to laser blasts, and probably have a much greater range than a tie defender. Dude, one borg cube took out an ENTIRE federation squadron!

If that was not a joke, I will kill you with my own hands.

Hehe, actually, i dont think that the cube itself can, just the drones, but it would be able to reach out farther than the defender, and one cube did take out an entire fed. cap-ship squadron, watch best of both worlds one and two.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The fact that a cube can take out an entire fed battle group doesnt say much

That same TIE squadron could probably do it. The borg have never demonstrated an ability to target fighters as small as a TIE with any kind of accuracy. Hell they miss VOYAGER with regularity.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm asking Sean. I've trusted his opinion when it comes to ST technology - he's not given to rabid insanity or overblown claims. (I should know, he and I work together on the same project - babtech.)

Don't take it the wrong way, but I *don't* trust any of your opinions when it comes to trek. I don't bother analyzing it, so I rely on the opinions of those I trust, such as Sean.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I was responding to NF_Utvol not you, dont worry.