Does Star Trek Have Any Chance AT ALL?!

[Stark]

Should we point out these planets getting hit by asteroids will be full of Federation citizens? Why would you want to kill them, and how is this supposed to stop the Imperial blitz?

[tempest]

Should we point out these planets getting hit by asteroids will be full of Federation citizens? Why would you want to kill them, and how is this supposed to stop the Imperial blitz?

Federation citizens on imperial planets, what are the odds? Your really stretching there.

It wont stop the blitz, never designed to, did you read the post?

[Ghost Rider]

Should we point out these planets getting hit by asteroids will be full of Federation citizens? Why would you want to kill them, and how is this supposed to stop the Imperial blitz?

Federation citizens on imperial planets, what are the odds? Your really stretching there.

It wont stop the blitz, never designed to, did you read the post?

So let's get this straight.

The Federation is going to expend a Phase Cloak AND a Warp Drive AND all the computer resources for this little show of "Stick it to the Empire!!!!"

So in the next day they watch as the are obliterated from the entirity of the Alpha Quadrant and hunted into extinction for causing this sort of action?

Yeah, brilliant thinking to insure the death of one's particular side.

[Noble Ire]

The Federation is going to expend a Phase Cloak AND a Warp Drive AND all the computer resources for this little show of "Stick it to the Empire!!!!"

How they would even get to an Imperial-held world of any consequence is beyond me.

[18-Till-I-Die]

We already kind of addressed this. There was another thread about those psionic aliens from the original TOS episode, and that no ship can come within so many light-years without being taken over so a cordon is erected. Someone suggested this EXACT same tactic.

For all the reasons here, plus the fact the aliens are psionics with lightyear ranges, the argument was pummpled into oblivion.

[Ghost Rider]

The Federation is going to expend a Phase Cloak AND a Warp Drive AND all the computer resources for this little show of "Stick it to the Empire!!!!"

How they would even get to an Imperial-held world of any consequence is beyond me.

Sadly it's not

or as he put it

make sure that the planet involved doesnt have adequate shields to repel said attack.

So something on the level of Outer rim shithole.

Great propaganda for the Empire to obliterate the Federation though.

[tempest]

The Federation is going to expend a Phase Cloak AND a Warp Drive AND all the computer resources for this little show of "Stick it to the Empire!!!!"

How they would even get to an Imperial-held world of any consequence is beyond me.

I kinda assumed that there was some happy cluster of wormholes thing going on so that the galaxies-timeframes could interact to begin with. Otherwise the whole thread gets a bit dumb, as neither side sees the other. Of course if you have a way to do this without interaction that would be amusing.

[Noble Ire]

The Federation is going to expend a Phase Cloak AND a Warp Drive AND all the computer resources for this little show of "Stick it to the Empire!!!!"

How they would even get to an Imperial-held world of any consequence is beyond me.

I kinda assumed that there was some happy cluster of wormholes thing going on so that the galaxies-timeframes could interact to begin with. Otherwise the whole thread gets a bit dumb, as neither side sees the other. Of course if you have a way to do this without interaction that would be amusing.

Obviously. I'm just noting that, aside from whatever planets may be near the wormhole opening, the Feds probably wouldn't be able to reach any signifcant worlds for months or years, due to the spread out nature of the Empire due to hyperdrive.

[tempest]

Obviously. I'm just noting that, aside from whatever planets may be near the wormhole opening, the Feds probably wouldn't be able to reach any signifcant worlds for months or years, due to the spread out nature of the Empire due to hyperdrive.

They do have millions of inhabited worlds, the signifigant worlds like alderaan have shields that could deflect a small moon. So you kinda stuck with some going after little wal-mart sheilded worlds.

So those should be closer than months apart even for AQ ships.

[Noble Ire]

They do have millions of inhabited worlds, the signifigant worlds like alderaan have shields that could deflect a small moon. So you kinda stuck with some going after little wal-mart sheilded worlds.

So those should be closer than months apart even for AQ ships.

What would the point be? It would be the equivelent of a nation attacking an overseas McDonalds in retaliation for a US invasion .

[Surlethe]

They do have millions of inhabited worlds, the signifigant worlds like alderaan have shields that could deflect a small moon. So you kinda stuck with some going after little wal-mart sheilded worlds.

So those should be closer than months apart even for AQ ships.

What would the point be? It would be the equivelent of a nation attacking an overseas McDonalds in retaliation for a US invasion .

To draw a slightly more specific analogy, it would be like a Palestinian terrorist organization attacking an Israeli nightclub in retribution for Israel's occupation of the West Bank: not good for much more than a psychological nosebleed, and an excellent excuse for retribution an order of magnitude larger.

[Darth Wong]

Gotta love Trekkies with their idiot thinking. I'd love to see this mentality applied to Iraq against the United States: "well, the Iraqis could load up a hundred suicide bomb trucks and ram them into the White House!"

Get it through your head, moron: they have no means of traversing the necessary distances. Even if, by some miracle, they had a wormhole which just happened to exit near an Imperial world, there would be no other Imperial worlds within range because the inhabited planets in the Empire are spread all over the entire galaxy; it would take years to get to the next planet. And that's not even including the difficulty of re-developing the phase-wank technology, distributing it, and deploying it in the field.

In the meantime, the Empire could flatten all of the Federation's 150 worlds in a day.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Also seeing as the rebels could pilfer a large defense cannon rather easily for their Hoth instilation, i dont see what defense lasers wouldnt be present to blast these things out of the sky. They're just asteroids, surely as widespread as the Empire is they encounter falling asteroids all the time they must have some defense, even for boarder worlds.

[Noble Ire]

Also seeing as the rebels could pilfer a large defense cannon rather easily for their Hoth instilation, i dont see what defense lasers wouldnt be present to blast these things out of the sky. They're just asteroids, surely as widespread as the Empire is they encounter falling asteroids all the time they must have some defense, even for boarder worlds.

Indeed, even the credit-strapped and relatively un-militaristic NR was able to supply 300 of its worlds with state of the art networks of planet-based turbolasers, hundreds of emplacements, each with enough firepower to destroy an ISD with concentrated bombardment. I would imagine the Empire outfitted even more worlds, and even those that didn't have such a defense might have shields, lower power installations, orbital mine shells, or defense satellites. You'd have to go after a world with a single garrison or less of Imperial troops to find an undefended planet (like Tatooine) and attacking such a world wouldn't do you any good. The sector Moff might not even hear about it.

[tempest]

Gotta love Trekkies with their idiot thinking. I'd love to see this mentality applied to Iraq against the United States: "well, the Iraqis could load up a hundred suicide bomb trucks and ram them into the White House!"

Get it through your head, moron: they have no means of traversing the necessary distances. Even if, by some miracle, they had a wormhole which just happened to exit near an Imperial world, there would be no other Imperial worlds within range because the inhabited planets in the Empire are spread all over the entire galaxy; it would take years to get to the next planet. And that's not even including the difficulty of re-developing the phase-wank technology, distributing it, and deploying it in the field.

In the meantime, the Empire could flatten all of the Federation's 150 worlds in a day.

hmmmm.. I must have mis-calculated... I assumed that AQ ships could cross a galaxy in approx 80 years.. I assumed that millions of worlds meant at least one million, and that the galaxy was mostly planar. So with some back of the envelope calculations, you would could fly by 1000 systems in those 80 years (geometrically). So the distance between systems on a flat distribution would be roughly one per month.

So at the maximum possible damage infliction you MIGHT be able to wax some backwater planet with an asteroid. Not that it's right or justified, but if you had the bloodlust to get it done that would be the way to do it.

But going after a real planet like Coruscant, get real, Alderaan was able to stop the death star beam for a truly remarkable amount of time (deciseconds), that gives it the shielding ability to stop a crazy sized rock.
Coruscant might be able to repel a plenetary colission.

I could be wrong for quite a few reasons: if the galaxy is way larger, or the AQ ships are way slower, or millions of worlds actually means millions of rocks with some people living on them. Since you claim that my estimation is off by a full order of magnitude, and you have a solid grasp of math, and Star-wars I'd like to know where my mistake is (rather than just being dismissed as a moron).

And the Phase Wank technology was a given so I dont even want to justify it.

[tempest]

Also seeing as the rebels could pilfer a large defense cannon rather easily for their Hoth instilation, i dont see what defense lasers wouldnt be present to blast these things out of the sky. They're just asteroids, surely as widespread as the Empire is they encounter falling asteroids all the time they must have some defense, even for boarder worlds.

Um because theyre phase-wank cloaked, so you can build up a bunch of energy via impulse over the course of a month or so as you push them is from way out. And you de-phase right at impact to catch the cannons off guard.

Plus there is so much kinetic energy that if you vaporize it, it's going to be hot plasma and dust hitting the shields with a little bit of the asteroid getting knocked back. Re-directing the whole asteroid without notice might be tricky.

Of course I am totally up for having someome throw some math in my face to show me that the cannons can both vaporize a large asteroid, and blast a signifigant amount of the rock debris in a different direction.

[Lord Revan]

Gotta love Trekkies with their idiot thinking. I'd love to see this mentality applied to Iraq against the United States: "well, the Iraqis could load up a hundred suicide bomb trucks and ram them into the White House!"

Get it through your head, moron: they have no means of traversing the necessary distances. Even if, by some miracle, they had a wormhole which just happened to exit near an Imperial world, there would be no other Imperial worlds within range because the inhabited planets in the Empire are spread all over the entire galaxy; it would take years to get to the next planet. And that's not even including the difficulty of re-developing the phase-wank technology, distributing it, and deploying it in the field.

In the meantime, the Empire could flatten all of the Federation's 150 worlds in a day.

hmmmm.. I must have mis-calculated... I assumed that AQ ships could cross a galaxy in approx 80 years.. I assumed that millions of worlds meant at least one million, and that the galaxy was mostly planar. So with some back of the envelope calculations, you would could fly by 1000 systems in those 80 years (geometrically). So the distance between systems on a flat distribution would be roughly one per month.

So at the maximum possible damage infliction you MIGHT be able to wax some backwater planet with an asteroid. Not that it's right or justified, but if you had the bloodlust to get it done that would be the way to do it.

But going after a real planet like Coruscant, get real, Alderaan was able to stop the death star beam for a truly remarkable amount of time (deciseconds), that gives it the shielding ability to stop a crazy sized rock.
Coruscant might be able to repel a plenetary colission.

I could be wrong for quite a few reasons: if the galaxy is way larger, or the AQ ships are way slower, or millions of worlds actually means millions of rocks with some people living on them. Since you claim that my estimation is off by a full order of magnitude, and you have a solid grasp of math, and Star-wars I'd like to know where my mistake is (rather than just being dismissed as a moron).

And the Phase Wank technology was a given so I dont even want to justify it.

the Empire has about million "member" systems (probably those with senators), but millions if not billions of colonies of various sizes.

[tempest]

the Empire has about million "member" systems (probably those with senators), but millions if not billions of colonies of various sizes.

Thanks, on point confirmed...

[Surlethe]

Of course I am totally up for having someome throw some math in my face to show me that the cannons can both vaporize a large asteroid, and blast a signifigant amount of the rock debris in a different direction.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Sci ... roids.html

Let's assume the asteroid is a kilometer in diameter. Then the vaporization energy for a nickel-granite asteroid is 7.5 gigatons, and the cratering energy is a measly 4.7 megatons.

If we increase the diameter by an order of magnitude, the vaporization energy increases to 7.49e3 gigatons, but the cratering energy is 4.7 gigatons.

Just for shits and giggles, let's look at a 100 km diameter asteroid. The cratering energy is about 4.72e3 gigatons.

According to the AotC:ICS, the output of one Acclamator heavy turret is 200 = 2e2 gigatons. This means several troop transports together possess enough firepower to blast a 100 km diameter asteroid to pieces. Keep in mind rock debris showers pose very little threat to a planet; this is why the Earth survives multiple meteor showers every year without noticing, whereas an actual large asteroid hit would probably be a minor extinction event.

[tempest]

Of course I am totally up for having someome throw some math in my face to show me that the cannons can both vaporize a large asteroid, and blast a signifigant amount of the rock debris in a different direction.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Sci ... roids.html

Let's assume the asteroid is a kilometer in diameter. Then the vaporization energy for a nickel-granite asteroid is 7.5 gigatons, and the cratering energy is a measly 4.7 megatons.

If we increase the diameter by an order of magnitude, the vaporization energy increases to 7.49e3 gigatons, but the cratering energy is 4.7 gigatons.

Just for shits and giggles, let's look at a 100 km diameter asteroid. The cratering energy is about 4.72e3 gigatons.

According to the AotC:ICS, the output of one Acclamator heavy turret is 200 = 2e2 gigatons. This means several troop transports together possess enough firepower to blast a 100 km diameter asteroid to pieces. Keep in mind rock debris showers pose very little threat to a planet; this is why the Earth survives multiple meteor showers every year without noticing, whereas an actual large asteroid hit would probably be a minor extinction event.

That is a sweet applett. I am just having a tough time resolving it with the firepower level seen at the battle of Hoth. Clearly the rebels had some serious firepower at their disposal, but they are making small craters in the ICE. If their ground based cannons are running at remotly that kind of power your looking at blasting an 80 km crater in the ice... I know they werent shooting at the ICE, but anywhere near that firepower and they would have been knocking the AT-AT's all over the place just by missing. The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.
Hoth also had star-ships with reasonable firepower, and it can be assumed that they could have fired a reasonable blast on the AT-AT's in that amount of time, if as you claim the ships in the SW universe can target and fire at split second warning.

So I completely agree that 200 GT guns would be sufficient to blow the hell out of any pushable asteroid,

However the movies dont show ground defenses as being in that class. And I dont see some reason why the rebels would refrain from using a strong enough gun to do the job if one was available.

[Noble Ire]

That is a sweet applett. I am just having a tough time resolving it with the firepower level seen at the battle of Hoth. Clearly the rebels had some serious firepower at their disposal, but they are making small craters in the ICE. If their ground based cannons are running at remotly that kind of power your looking at blasting an 80 km crater in the ice... I know they werent shooting at the ICE, but anywhere near that firepower and they would have been knocking the AT-AT's all over the place just by missing. The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.
Hoth also had star-ships with reasonable firepower, and it can be assumed that they could have fired a reasonable blast on the AT-AT's in that amount of time, if as you claim the ships in the SW universe can target and fire at split second warning.

So I completely agree that 200 GT guns would be sufficient to blow the hell out of any pushable asteroid,

However the movies dont show ground defenses as being in that class. And I dont see some reason why the rebels would refrain from using a strong enough gun to do the job if one was available.

Because, IIRC, part of Echo base was under the AT-ATs attack path. If they had used fighter-grade firepower, or anything on the level of heavy Imperial armor, they could have risked collapsing part of the base, onto some of their transports.

But this is irrelevant here. Why on Earth would you equaite ground firepower with anti-ship weaponry? That's like saying RPG launchers must be able to knock down skyscrapers because our nuclear missiles can devestate countries.

The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.

Note that none of the AT-STs actually make it to the base. It is assumed most are destroyed by the trench-line cannon fire.

[tempest]

That is a sweet applett. I am just having a tough time resolving it with the firepower level seen at the battle of Hoth. Clearly the rebels had some serious firepower at their disposal, but they are making small craters in the ICE. If their ground based cannons are running at remotly that kind of power your looking at blasting an 80 km crater in the ice... I know they werent shooting at the ICE, but anywhere near that firepower and they would have been knocking the AT-AT's all over the place just by missing. The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.
Hoth also had star-ships with reasonable firepower, and it can be assumed that they could have fired a reasonable blast on the AT-AT's in that amount of time, if as you claim the ships in the SW universe can target and fire at split second warning.

So I completely agree that 200 GT guns would be sufficient to blow the hell out of any pushable asteroid,

However the movies dont show ground defenses as being in that class. And I dont see some reason why the rebels would refrain from using a strong enough gun to do the job if one was available.

Because, IIRC, part of Echo base was under the AT-ATs attack path. If they had used fighter-grade firepower, or anything on the level of heavy Imperial armor, they could have risked collapsing part of the base, onto some of their transports.

But this is irrelevant here. Why on Earth would you equaite ground firepower with anti-ship weaponry? That's like saying RPG launchers must be able to knock down skyscrapers because our nuclear missiles can devestate countries.

The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.

Note that none of the AT-STs actually make it to the base. It is assumed most are destroyed by the trench-line cannon fire.

The reason is that those are the size of ground guns I'd expect to be able to train and fire in under 1 second.

The Rebels had real weapons, and the enemy was miles away. And they were prepared to handle an assault. They had the BIG ole Turrent guns that could have put AT-AT's into a crater at a mere kiloton range yeild.

And the concept was that old BFE planets would have the weapons that would track and destroy asteroids in short order.

Where as the Heavy ground guns arent even in that range.

And they dont have ships around that fire into space to clear debris.

[Surlethe]

That is a sweet applett. I am just having a tough time resolving it with the firepower level seen at the battle of Hoth. Clearly the rebels had some serious firepower at their disposal, but they are making small craters in the ICE. If their ground based cannons are running at remotly that kind of power your looking at blasting an 80 km crater in the ice... I know they werent shooting at the ICE, but anywhere near that firepower and they would have been knocking the AT-AT's all over the place just by missing. The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.
Hoth also had star-ships with reasonable firepower, and it can be assumed that they could have fired a reasonable blast on the AT-AT's in that amount of time, if as you claim the ships in the SW universe can target and fire at split second warning.

So I completely agree that 200 GT guns would be sufficient to blow the hell out of any pushable asteroid,

However the movies dont show ground defenses as being in that class. And I dont see some reason why the rebels would refrain from using a strong enough gun to do the job if one was available.

Oh, for fuck's sake; you're talking about small-arms used by infantry, and that's a fucking red herring. What makes you think the kind of planet which would be worth asteroiding wouldn't have dedicated ground-space guns for repelling assaults?

[tempest]

That is a sweet applett. I am just having a tough time resolving it with the firepower level seen at the battle of Hoth. Clearly the rebels had some serious firepower at their disposal, but they are making small craters in the ICE. If their ground based cannons are running at remotly that kind of power your looking at blasting an 80 km crater in the ice... I know they werent shooting at the ICE, but anywhere near that firepower and they would have been knocking the AT-AT's all over the place just by missing. The AT-ST's are shown to be less than durable in ROTJ but they have survived just fine.
Hoth also had star-ships with reasonable firepower, and it can be assumed that they could have fired a reasonable blast on the AT-AT's in that amount of time, if as you claim the ships in the SW universe can target and fire at split second warning.

So I completely agree that 200 GT guns would be sufficient to blow the hell out of any pushable asteroid,

However the movies dont show ground defenses as being in that class. And I dont see some reason why the rebels would refrain from using a strong enough gun to do the job if one was available.

Oh, for fuck's sake; you're talking about small-arms used by infantry, and that's a fucking red herring. What makes you think the kind of planet which would be worth asteroiding wouldn't have dedicated ground-space guns for repelling assaults?

I'm figuring quite a few wouldnt bother, if Echo base is any indication the money is better spent on shielding. Besides who really wants to have some imperial gunners not blasting an escape pod with no life forms on board. They don't do the whole automatic gunning thing, so most of the time the gunner is kicking back with coffee waiting to hear a beep, check the beep, realize that it's the 5000th beep that meant nothing and continue drinking coffee.

Besdes the big point was that they seem to REALLY undereqip ground forces anyway.. Think about it, In order not to create monster craters you need to be in the sub-kiloton range of damage, that puts you in the 1/billion disadvantage to troop transport. For a single gun on a snowspeeder, or their big ol' turrets, that seem really big but dont do a whole lot.

The only ground space gun they had was an Ion Cannon (sensible choice) which would be useless vs a rock. Nobody is expecting an asteroid drop, so nobody would bother preparing for it. they just clean out the dangerous ones in system, probably a low paying job in the SW universe.

So the point is that if their shield isnt going to handle it, they're not going to spend the credits setting up a guns all over, and manning them.

[Noble Ire]

The only ground space gun they had was an Ion Cannon (sensible choice) which would be useless vs a rock. Nobody is expecting an asteroid drop, so nobody would bother preparing for it. they just clean out the dangerous ones in system, probably a low paying job in the SW universe.

So the point is that if their shield isnt going to handle it, they're not going to spend the credits setting up a guns all over, and manning them.

So did you completely ignore my post? There are numerous methods to destroy incoming asteriods (ground turbolasers, armed satellites, mines) and most systems of any significance would have something along those lines, with or without shields.

As to your "it wouldn't normally happen, so they don't bother with manned defense" arguement, do I even have to point out how stupid that is? Why did midevil castles have arrow slots and murder holes? missile ships AA-guns? Presidents secret service escort? Even if a defense is likely never to be needed, it will often still exist, becuase if it doesn't, your screwed. Its called foresight.