Can GCS employ this tactic to destroy an ISD ?

[Sarevok]

Though the ISD outguns the GCS by orders of magnitudes there may be a way a GCS can destroy an ISD.

According to the main site a GCS carries 480 tons of anti-matter. That is more than enough to overcome a Star Destroyers shields and destroy the ship. All the GCS has to do is to seperate the saucer and ram the star drive section into the ISD at warp speed.

Similar tactics could be employed by the Prometheus class which with it's MVAM might be able to take out two Star Destroyers.

This is an unproven theory and I am not sure if it is correct. So please feel free to rebute it and correct me if I am wrong.

[Mr Bean]

According to the main site a GCS carries 480 tons of anti-matter. That is more than enough to overcome a Star Destroyers shields and destroy the ship. All the GCS has to do is to seperate the saucer and ram the star drive section into the ISD at warp speed.

The problem with this is that ISD's posses six diffrent shielding sections

A long time ago(About a year and a half now) I ran the numbers for the ISD's shield strength based on a few cannocal examples of ISD's suriving multiple broadsides aginst each other, Take the heavy cannons, assume they are just as strong as an Acclimators medium guns(Nevermind one is a Transport and one is a Crusier/Battleship), add up all the ones that can fire in a broadside, fire em, add up the total power slammed into those shields and you end up with as a minium a low teraton figure, Add in the Medium guns and your figure goes higher, Stop pretending that the SW equivlation of a 6inch is just as powerful as a 16inch and you go into the hundreds of Teratons to low exotons


And that is the problem even though GCS's carry all that Anti-matter to much of it is lost in the fact it won't be a focus explosion, meaning your loosing between 20-60% of your expolsive force due to this

Second it simply is not ENOUGH, for even with that heavy of an explosion(What is the exact Mega-Giga-Tetra-tonage of destrutive power are you talking about?)
Even assuming it was powerful enough to take down the shield, it still won't not destroy the ship, due to the exposlion effectly being spent away from the ships hull and over a KM away in space, sure your going to get some damage,



Final Note
Ramming at Warp is acutal Counterproductive, When one goes to Warp due to the funny physics of Subspace, going to Warp LOWERS your total Mass decreaseing the power of your exposion by reducing the total physical "smack" your getting agianst the shield via the GCS hull

Much better to Warp in hit it at a high fraction of C by dewarping a few hundred feet from the shield

[Ted C]

First, coordinating such an attack would be problematic. The GCS has to be in the right place at the right time to hit the ISD. Furthermore, they have to have time to separate the saucer prior to the attack, and they need a suicide crew for the drive section (unless the computer can be relied upon to do the deed).

Even then, it's a losing proposition. Even if you could take out one ISD for every GCS using this tactic, you'd still lose the war because the Empire can afford to lose a couple thousand ISDs (which is more ships than the Feds have GCSs, anyway) while the Federation can't afford to lose a couple of thousand ships (their whole fleet, including non-GCS designs).

Whether it would be tactically successful or not, it's strategically pointless.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Though the ISD outguns the GCS by orders of magnitudes there may be a way a GCS can destroy an ISD.

OK.

According to the main site a GCS carries 480 tons of anti-matter. That is more than enough to overcome a Star Destroyers shields and destroy the ship. All the GCS has to do is to seperate the saucer and ram the star drive section into the ISD at warp speed.

That's only 960 tons of matter annihilation (480 matter and 480 anti.) That would BARELY exceed the dissipation of an Acclamator's shielding system as a whole.

You could contend that the ISD has at least six major shield facings, so the total shield dissipation rating number should be divided by six. But the ISD's also something like 10 times in volume and a dedicated warship. And you assumed a DIRECTED explosion (which won't be the case) and perfect efficiency (when a photorp can only hack 74%.) The two go a long way to make up that difference.

What would most likely happen is that the thing would hit and the shield would glow briefly while the energy is dissipated. Then we'd be back where we were, perhaps with a blown generator or two.

Not to mention this whole scenario is ultimately based off the TM (so is the 74% photorp efficiency figure, but that just goes to show you must take the lumps with the good.)

If you could do it and the ISD actually goes down, it'd be strategically advantageous. A problem with the ISD is that it has 37000 crewers, so you could argue you are winning with anything less than about a 50:1 ratio in terms of manpower losses. You still won't save yourself if the Empire is going all out, but if they are losing hundreds of destroyers, I doubt they won't stop. After all, the Federation is a mere shitbox worth a few Imperial sectors even if you don't count the overall tech disparity. Lose 500 Star Destroyers for that? Hmm...

Final Note
Ramming at Warp is acutal Counterproductive, When one goes to Warp due to the funny physics of Subspace, going to Warp LOWERS your total Mass decreaseing the power of your exposion by reducing the total physical "smack" your getting agianst the shield via the GCS hull

Much better to Warp in hit it at a high fraction of C by dewarping a few hundred feet from the shield

Dewarping still means you are on AMRE-boosted impulse power. To get all your mass back, you would have to turn off the AMRE systems. But because most of a GCS' velocity is "fake," when you turn off the AMRE, you would return to your true velocity - which is mostly likely the speed of a beached whale.

In any case, this entire idea is just a play on huge M/AM missiles similar in style to the Cardassian Dreadnought missile. Except this time, we are doing kamikazes rather than proper cruise missiles.

Forgot to add: Because the true velocity of the ship is low, when the impact occurs, the KE would probably be the real (un-warped, un-AMRE) velocity. To that, you could add the energy caught in the subspace field that's providing the "fake" velocity. But that's pretty hard to quantify. The main energy would really be your M/AM blowing up.

[HRogge]

Though the ISD outguns the GCS by orders of magnitudes there may be a way a GCS can destroy an ISD.

According to the main site a GCS carries 480 tons of anti-matter. That is more than enough to overcome a Star Destroyers shields and destroy the ship.

480 tons of antimatter.
A photon torp has 1.5 kg of antimatter and has a maximum theoretical yield of 64 megatons.

So you get 480000/1.5*64 = 20 TT ( 20000 gigatons )

you loose at least half of it ( maybe even ) because the energy is channeled into the wrong direction... there is not enough left to kill an Acclamator, or even an ISD.

[Darth Wong]

In addition to the problems cited by others such as Mr. Bean and Kaz, another problem is the fact that you're not likely to get efficient M/AM conversion by simply crashing the ship into something. Too much of it will probably be hurled into space without reacting with anything.

And even if this super-kamikaze tactic were effective a few times, the Empire would simply start using more interdictors to eliminate the possibility and force incoming warpships to drop to sublight at range, where they can be picked off. The Federation would surrender before resorting to such desperation moves.

[The Kernel]

And even if this super-kamikaze tactic were effective a few times, the Empire would simply start using more interdictors to eliminate the possibility and force incoming warpships to drop to sublight at range, where they can be picked off. The Federation would surrender before resorting to such desperation moves.

Side question: would Federation warp drives have problems with the Interdictor fields? I'm not sure we have much evidence for the inability to engage warp in gravity wells except for that incident in TMP where Kirk was reluctant to test out an unproven engine inside the Sol system.

[Ted C]

Side question: would Federation warp drives have problems with the Interdictor fields? I'm not sure we have much evidence for the inability to engage warp in gravity wells except for that incident in TMP where Kirk was reluctant to test out an unproven engine inside the Sol system.

I believe it was in "Relics" that the E-D was forced out of warp by the gravity well of the Dyson sphere before their sensors even detected it. Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Ender]

I'd like to point out what an utterly horrible idea it would be for them to take out an ISD through an act like this. Seriously, if your fleet can stand up to theirs and defeat them with a nice ratio, you are ok. But an attack like this would be comparable to the USS Cole. And based off some of the things I've heard from people about that, I'd say that in response a few captains would "accidently" order a full scale orbital bombardment at the next overrun planet.

[Worlds Spanner]

The Federation would surrender before resorting to such desperation moves.

Yes, yes it would. Remember that there are people here, and some of them are wimps and the rest are incompetant, if not both.

[Rye]

Final Note
Ramming at Warp is acutal Counterproductive, When one goes to Warp due to the funny physics of Subspace, going to Warp LOWERS your total Mass decreaseing the power of your exposion by reducing the total physical "smack" your getting agianst the shield via the GCS hull

Much better to Warp in hit it at a high fraction of C by dewarping a few hundred feet from the shield

Are you sure about that? As i seem to recall in BoBW, riker was going to warp-ram the borg cube as a last ditch effort to kill it.

[YT300000]

Final Note
Ramming at Warp is acutal Counterproductive, When one goes to Warp due to the funny physics of Subspace, going to Warp LOWERS your total Mass decreaseing the power of your exposion by reducing the total physical "smack" your getting agianst the shield via the GCS hull

Much better to Warp in hit it at a high fraction of C by dewarping a few hundred feet from the shield

Are you sure about that? As i seem to recall in BoBW, riker was going to warp-ram the borg cube as a last ditch effort to kill it.

Remember, he's the same one who never ever fired torps at anything, phasers only.

[Lord Pounder]

More to the point whats to stop the ISD destroying the Star Drive section while it's coming in to ram it?

[Ender]

Final Note
Ramming at Warp is acutal Counterproductive, When one goes to Warp due to the funny physics of Subspace, going to Warp LOWERS your total Mass decreaseing the power of your exposion by reducing the total physical "smack" your getting agianst the shield via the GCS hull

Much better to Warp in hit it at a high fraction of C by dewarping a few hundred feet from the shield

Are you sure about that? As i seem to recall in BoBW, riker was going to warp-ram the borg cube as a last ditch effort to kill it.

Riker (and the writers) are idiots. Plug in a speed faster then C into the relativistic KE equation. You get interesting results.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Do you need an antimatter-bomb or any other payload if you use weapons with speeds close to c?

[HRogge]

Do you need an antimatter-bomb or any other payload if you use weapons with speeds close to c?

If you are cheating to achive this speed ( like nearly everyone is doing in ST ) you need...

[Luzifer's right hand]

Do you need an antimatter-bomb or any other payload if you use weapons with speeds close to c?

If you are cheating to achive this speed ( like nearly everyone is doing in ST ) you need...

I thought on SF in general.


Impulse is pretty slow for SF-standards 1/4 c afaik, and the ISD would destroy the approaching ship before it could ram. Mabye a few tousend ships for one ISD

[Ender]

Do you need an antimatter-bomb or any other payload if you use weapons with speeds close to c?

If you are cheating to achive this speed ( like nearly everyone is doing in ST ) you need...

I thought on SF in general.


Impulse is pretty slow for SF-standards 1/4 c afaik, and the ISD would destroy the approaching ship before it could ram. Mabye a few tousend ships for one ISD

Impulse is much slower then .25 C

[Luzifer's right hand]

Impulse is much slower then .25 C

do you know how slow? 0.1 c?

[Ender]

Impulse is much slower then .25 C

do you know how slow? 0.1 c?

It's acceleration, not velocity. And the TM put it at 1000Gs, there is some episode you can derive it from, but I'm not sure the name, sean knows it.

[Luzifer's right hand]

It's acceleration, not velocity. And the TM put it at 1000Gs, there is some episode you can derive it from, but I'm not sure the name, sean knows it.

Makes much more sense, because you could deactivate the engine at maximum impulse otherwise.

It seems star trek ships avoid relativistic speeds in general, but that would limit the damage by ramming immense.
The ram speed in nemesis was pretty slow and the ram speed of the dominion ships in DS too.

[HRogge]

It seems star trek ships avoid relativistic speeds in general, but that would limit the damage by ramming immense.
The ram speed in nemesis was pretty slow and the ram speed of the dominion ships in DS too.

And because of the subspace "mass reduction" fields the kinetic energy would even be lower than this...

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

do you know how slow? 0.1 c?

It's acceleration, not velocity. And the TM put it at 1000Gs, there is some episode you can derive it from, but I'm not sure the name, sean knows it.[/quote]

There are LOTS of accels you could derive from various episodes. Near the upper end is simply the measurement of how fast the ship goes from a near-standing start to high relativistic and beyond by seeing the ship's distortion.

There are a few exotic episodes that also suggest high accel, such as something called VOY:The Swarm (IIRC) which suggests 4000km/s/s class (according to Trekkies.) But why point out exotics when you can point to every jump to warp.

But that's AMRE boosted. Without the AMRE boost, we have an episode in Voyager where they can't warp, and it was 1.9km/s/s.

[Lancer]

Final Note
Ramming at Warp is acutal Counterproductive, When one goes to Warp due to the funny physics of Subspace, going to Warp LOWERS your total Mass decreaseing the power of your exposion by reducing the total physical "smack" your getting agianst the shield via the GCS hull

Much better to Warp in hit it at a high fraction of C by dewarping a few hundred feet from the shield

Are you sure about that? As i seem to recall in BoBW, riker was going to warp-ram the borg cube as a last ditch effort to kill it.

Riker (and the writers) are idiots. Plug in a speed faster then C into the relativistic KE equation. You get interesting results.

The relativity equations in general give "interesting results" for FTL. Does this mean that anybody who entertains the notion of FTL at all are idiots as well?

[Howedar]

Anyone who seriously considers realspace FTL to be possible is a fool.