1189 replies to this topic

[Polymorphyne]

I just got to wonder...... how far ahead is the federation really if it can't fix Kirks speech impediment?

[Ilithi Dragon]

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

It always makes me laugh when Trekkies claim Star Trek is "scientific" and then spout this nonsense that anyone with a year of college chemistry and more brains than the Scarecrow can show is absurd.

I'm not sure where this is coming from... Neither Catamount nor I have claimed that Trek is hyper-realistic (nobody has ever claimed that Trek is hard science fiction - it's usually high-brow science fiction, but not hard sci-fi). Star Trek does base a lot of its technology, or the concepts behind them, on what we know or speculate about, and it at least tries to come up with a plausible-sounding explanation for most of its tech, but nobody has ever claimed it to be hard sci-fi. Trek also tends to be more internally scientific - the conflicts are often caused by and resolved by advanced technology and various phenomena that are explored through scientific methodologies (with the caveat again that it's not hard sci-fi), and the champions tend to be the ones who favor truth and facts over mysticism, and that nature of the Federation is very relevant to other areas of this debate, but not this portion.

I never understand why people always jump on this and cry, "Aha! I have you know!" It's not hard to understand. Trek is science fiction. It IS more science-based than many popular sci-fi franchises like Star Wars or 40K, because both of those franchises are just fantasy stories with a sci-fi setting (Wars is a classic Campbellian fantasy tale complete with wizards and knights and princesses dark lords, and 40K is a space-ified version of the Warhammer fantasy universe), but nobody has ever claimed that Trek is hard science fiction. To try and shoot down Trek in this manner is just to create a strawman.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

1. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. So when you "disrupt the inter-atomic bonds" where are the dissociated atoms? Why isn't there a rapidly expanding cloud of O2, H2 and other gasses along with a pile of Carbons and other solids that make up the body?

2. The amount of energy it takes to break every single atomic bond in a body is so great that you'd likely see random compounds forming, such as ash, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, just to name a couple of possibilities. So why don't we see piles of ash and clouds of noxious fumes when someone gets phasered?

3. No phaser has ever "vaporized" a rock in any episode of Star Trek. They have made rocks magically disappear but never vaporized them. To vaporize something means to turn it into vapor, vapor is a cloud of gas that occupies more volume than the solid version of that substance. The process of turning a solid into a vapor(gas) without going through the liquid stage is called sublimation. A good example of sublimation is detonating an explosive charge. When a solid charge, C-4 for example, is detonated it sublimates and turns into a cloud of gas (vapor). The energy released in sublimation and the fact that the vapor by its nature has to expand is what gives you the blast and shockwave effects of explosives. If phasers were actually vaporizing their targets it would cause very large explosions as the target sublimated and there would be blast shockwaves that would radiate out from the target.

The fact that phasers do not have any of the effects of vaporization, rules out the fact they actually vaporize the target. The fact that phasers do not leave behind any physical remains means, they do not disassociate the atomic bonds in the target. So no they don't do what you claim they do. A more valid theory based on what we see is that phasers are transporters that beam their targets directly to Hell. This helps explain why when phasers are fired at enemy ships they always cause consoles to explode, even when the armor and shields are intact. The Hell energy in the Hell Teleporters(phasers) is attenuated by the shields and the armor, so it only has enough energy to cause the consoles to explode in a shower of Hell Sparks which send the victims soul directly to the plains of Hell. This explains why other crew members can jump on the console and start using it again right away, it didn't actually explode it just acted as a conduit for Hell Energy.

This is a large part of why I said you should have read the post I made before you, as it contains a description of how phasers operate. Instead of repeating myself, I'll just quote my post:

ilithi dragon, on 22 February 2012 - 09:30 AM, said:

The thing about phasers, as Catamount noted, is that they are much more than just DET weapons. Phasers employ something that is called a rapid nadion effect to create a beam of charged particles/nadions (NADIons, or Non-Anastropic Decay Ions) that induces a disruption of the Strong and Weak nuclear forces that bond atoms and protons and neutrons together. Below a certain threshold, they act as regular DET weapons (and pretty potent ones, at that), but above that threshold, phaser beams basically induce the equivalent of a matter/anti-matter reaction in the target material. Now, this isn't as devastating in some was as it could be because one of the other exotic effects that Catamount mentioned is the phase shifting of the target material by the phaser or disruptor beam (disruptors being essentially the same thing, created by different means), so much of the energy of this atomic and sub-atomic annihilation is released out of phase-sync with the rest of the universe. The way in which it is even more devastating in many ways is that this Nuclear Disruption Force or NDF effect also appears to cause the release of a number of nadions, which enhance the NDF effect by inducing a chain reaction. It's not unlike the chain reaction in a fission reaction: a neutron hits a Uranium-235 atom, briefly turning it into an unstable U-236 atom that then splits into one Kr-92, one Ba-141, three neutrons and a number of gamma-ray photons. The three neutrons then shoot off and hit other U-235 atoms and cause them to split and release three more neutrons.

Now, there are materials that are resistent to the NDF effect, which are naturally alloyed into armors, and as Catamount noted, the armor, hulls, and spaceframes of 24th Century starships are reinforced by a Structural Integrity Field (SIF) that consists of forcefields and focused inertial damping fields that greatly increase the effective material strength of the ship's hull and spaceframe, making it much more resistant to shear, tension and compression stress, and also significantly increasing its resistance to the NDF effect of phasers and disruptors (usually - phasers can sometimes be much less hindered by the SIF field, such as we saw with the Cardassian weapons platforms at Chin'Toka, that used Dominion-upgraded phaser cannons and were extremely effective against the Romulans, who had seen little if any combat with the Cardassians prior, and so didn't have defenses well-adapted to the particulars of Cardassian weaponry). This is why phasers used against Trek ships rarely disintegrate the entire ship, though we do see it on occasion, most notably in the First Battle of Chin'Toka when a handful of phaser beams and plasma torpedoes disintegrated two big chunks out of a D'Deridex, both of which were the size of an Ambassador class or bigger, and also in the Enterprise-D's first contact with the Borg, when the E-D's opening phaser blasts carved enormous holes into the hull of the Borg Cube (which is known for its high density and for being comprised of larger percentages of stronger, more resillient materials like tritanium than the norm). The Borg Cube example from "Q Who?" is actually superb, because we see three very powerful shots from the E-D's main arrays, all among the most powerful shots observed from the E-D, and all roughly comparable in energy yield, but the size of the holes they blow into the Cube diminish dramatically with each successive hit.

We can also get an idea of what kind of yield modifier the NDF effect has on Trek weapons from that scene. I've linked to the calculations of that a couple times already in this thread, so I won't bother doing so again unless asked, but the modifier in that scene, based on the volume apparently vaporized by the beam itself vs the total volume vaporized by the chain reaction, was 1,315 times. The total volume vaporized by the NDF of the opening shot is 1,315 times greater than the volume vaporized by just the beam. Now, the Borg ship quickly adapted, and most powers the Federation engages are also pretty well-adapted to resist the NDF effect, so the modifier of the NDF effect against contemporary Trek ships is generally around an order of magnitude or so. However, the Borg weren't completely UNadapted to phaser NDF effects, because most of the local powers in their home region of the Delta Quadrant use phasers or disruptors themselves, some of them having fairly advanced weaponry even by the Federation's standards, and the hull composition of the Borg Cube undoubtedly includes materials that are naturally resistant to the NDF effect, so even in our "Q Who?" example we are not seeing the full effect of the NDF against non-resistant target materials.

For that, we go to DS9 "The Die is Cast", when a fleet of 20 Romulan and Cardassian ships attacked what they thought was the Founder homeworld. Their plan had them blasting an ~Earth-sized planet down to its nickel-iron core in about five hours, and their opening salvo produced compound fireballs the size of Western Europe and reportedly destroyed a full thirty percent of the planet's crust. Against target materials completely non-resistant to the NDF effect, the chain reaction modifier is easily on the order of 6+ orders of magnitude.

Technically, phasers don't 'vaporize' things, they annihilate and phase-shift them, it's just that the term 'vaporize' has come into common usage when referring to what they do, and they appear to 'vaporize' things from the layman's perspective.

But the technically incorrect terminology is irrelevant, it doesn't change what phasers do - they make large chunks of matter go away. Whether they do this by vaporizing the material, annihilating it, phase-shifting it, or making it disappear with magic pixie dust is irrelevant.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

How is the Trekkies philosophy? Because from what I understand beings of the Warp are less influenced by technology than by beliefs. A person with weak beliefs can be consumed and form a conduit/vessel for a warp Daemon, while a person with strong convictions would be safe. I've also heard that this can even happen inside gellar fields though I don't know of this for sure. Personally if the Trekkies can make shields against thoughts and beliefs I'd say they were the most powerful beings ever.

Well, the scientists of the 40K universe were able to do so at the very beginning of the golden age of the universe, what the Imperium of Man calls the "Dark Age of Technology" (which is especially amusing since in historical terminology, a Dark Age is an era in which the majority of people lack literacy). The Gellar Field is a tool produced by science to protect people from the effects of the Warp. It's hardly inconceivable for Trek scientists to be able to come up with it on their own, from scratch, let alone if they had captured IoM tech to work with, and given the renown prowess of Federation scientists and engineers, it's hardly inconceivable that they would be able to notably improve upon the designs used by the Imperium of Man.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

Tactical Cube? Sure looks like they slapped armor on those puppies. Besides what happens to your fancy SIF when your reactor starts to overload or cascade or whatever it is they do so often and you have to eject it? No power, no SIF, no SIF, no real hull strength, no hull strength, easy kill. Also Borg are not immune to Photon torpedoes. The very first time the Enterprise encounters the Borg, they fire a photon torpedo that destroys a large chunk of the Cube chasing them, and then the Cube "adapts" and becomes almost immune.

Actually, the warp reactors have been at risk of overloading only on rare occasions, either after the ship has suffered catastrophic damage, or from flukes like the virus that destroyed the Yamato. And even if main power goes down, Trek ships have a number of auxiliary fusion reactors that power the impulse engines, and the larger ships have a few additional fusion reactors that just serve as a tertiary power generator. And if even THOSE go down, Trek ships are packed with energy reserves. And if the ship is so damaged that all its power generators are offline and its energy reserves are depleted or destroyed, then the lack of an active SIF is going to be the least of its concerns.

Also, just because Trek ships reinforce their spaceframes with SIFs does not mean that they have no hull strength without them. They're greatly weakened without them, but they're still sturdily built out of advanced materials. They're not made of tissue paper.


As for the Tactical Borg Cube, sure it's got plenty of armor. There are a number of ships that have lots of armor, Klingon ships being particularly notorious for that. That is irrelevant to Catamount's point, however. Unlike 40K, Trek ships don't just slap a bunch of armor on the ship and call it a day. All modern Trek ships have shields, including the Borg. Their shield is different than conventional Trek shields, but they are shielded, nonetheless. The Tactical Cube having extra armor doesn't impact that one bit.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

In your video the dialog says "we can't penetrate their shields" but in the next video posted we see torps and phasers striking the hull and get a report that "the borg cube has sustained significant damage to its outer hull and reading powerfluctions". There is no evidence that the Borg shields work any different than the Federation shields.

I saw plenty of torp and phaser fire striking the hull and causing explosions. I suggest you rewatch the video.

The first video was when the Cube was first engaged by the Federation fleet and defense stations. The second video was after a three-day running battle all the way back to Earth's doorstep. The Cube had sustained heavy damage after being pounded on by a Federation fleet for three days.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

Star Trek uses fusion, its what the impulse engines are powered by IIRC. And why is fusion so much weaker? Your own example of the Tsar Bomba vs a photon torpedo shows that 60's technology fusion bombs are on par with Star Trek torpedos. We don't even have true fusion yet and the capabilities of Trek ships don't reflect a significant advantage of M/AM over fusion.

Okay, I seriously mean no offense, but it's statements like this that really demonstrate how little you know or understand of the subject matter you are talking about. The difference between a matter/anti-matter reaction and a fusion reaction is very basic and easy to understand, and very easy to look up. The fact that you don't know this, yet you come in here acting like you're an expert on this sort of thing, is both very pretentious, and rather offensive to those of us who ARE intimately familiar with all of this. Catamount is a Conservation Biology major, and he's got a very working knowledge of fusion vs fission vs M/AM, etc., and I am a physics major. Just please take a step back and consider that for a moment, and how you are coming across to us.


All of that being said, I'm going for a teaching degree for a reason. I love to inform, instruct and generally tech and expand people's knowledge, and you've given me an excuse to have some fun going on about fusion vs M/AM, etc. } : = 8 )

A fusion reaction is the fusing of two light element atoms together, like hydrogen and hydrogen to form helium (with the energy produced by the left-over particle and radiation bits that are released), and it is what powers the stars and forms heavier elements. It gives diminishing returns with heavier elements, up to Iron, after which it actually costs more energy to fuse elements than is released by the fusion. Elements heavier than iron are formed when big stars go supernova. Fission is the splitting of unstable atoms heavier than iron, breaking them apart into smaller elements and releasing energy in the form of the extra bits of sub-atomic particles and radiation left over.

Fission reactions are easier to cause outside of stars because a number of elements, particularly those heavier than iron, are inherently unstable, making them easier to split, but they release less energy than fusion reactions per unit of fuel mass consumed (plus other drawbacks in waste, etc., but that's irrelevant to this discussion). The mass-to-energy conversion is about 0.1% for fission reactions, or about 0.1% of the mass of the fuel is converted into energy (E=mc^2). The rest is waste products.

Fusion reactions release about an order of magnitude, or ten times more energy per unit of mass of fuel consumed, than fission reactions. About 1% of the fuel mass consumed is converted into energy, the rest being waste products.

Matter/Anti-Matter (M/AM) reactions, however, are a different story. An anti-matter particle, or anti-particle, is a 'normal' particle of matter with an exactly opposite electric charge and magnetic moment. So the anti-particle for the electron, which has a negative electric charge, is the positron, which has a positive electric charge. When a particle and its anti-particle collide, they cancel each other out and annihilate each other, converting the total sum of both particles' mass into energy. A M/AM reaction converts 100% of the fuel mass consumed into energy. That makes it 100 times more potent per unit of fuel consumed than fusion.

So if we had two ships of equal size, mass, tech, etc. paired against each other, with one ship having a fusion reactor that consumed 1 gram of fuel per second, and the other ship having a M/AM reactor of the same size that consumed 1 gram of fuel per second, the M/AM ship would be able to produce about 100 times more energy than the fusion ship, and so would have 100 times the energy available for engines, sensors, defenses and weapons.


This is significant for our purposes here because 40K ships are powered by fusion reactors, where as Trek ships are powered by M/AM reactors. Now, Trek ships do have fusion reactors powering their sublight engines and that serve as auxiliary power generators (and fusion makes a good back-up for M/AM power, because while anti-matter has to be manufactured, or possibly harvested from the upper atmospheres of gas giants, where their electromagnetic field interacts with the upper atmosphere and the solar wind, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe), however, the primary power generation method on Trek ships is a matter/anti-matter reactor. The fusion reactors only serve as back-ups. This means that pound-for-pound, a Trek ship is going to be equivalent to a 40K ship 100 times its size, even if everything else were exactly equal.


As for the Tsar Bomba, the Tsar Bomba was a giant, experimental device that was 8 meters long, 2.1 meters in diameter, and weighed in at 27 metric tons. The actual fuel of the device used in the test-fire weighed around 300 kilograms (an estimate - it may have weighed a bit more than 300kg). Only one was built, and it was so large and heavy that it was not a practical, deployable weapon in any respect. It would not fit on an ICBM, and the Russians' largest bomber had to be specially modified to carry it (and just that one bomb).


A Trek photon torpedo achieves a comparable yield with a device about 2 meters by 1 meter by 0.5 meter, with a reactant mass of 2 - 3 kilograms for the standard yield (depending on which model - the standard torpedo was upgraded in the late 2360s, with an increase in the standard yield from ~42 megatons to ~64 megatons). Trek also throws these things around like candy, frequently shrugging off salvoes of multiple such warheads at a time, and the largest/most torpedo-heavy Trek ships are capable of maximum salvoes of 30-60 torpedoes.

Yes, the Soviets were able to build a weapon with comparable yield in the 1960s, but it was many times larger, many many times heavier, and was a very significant investment and expenditure to build ONE test device. The Federation has effectively unlimited supplies of photon torpedoes, that probably cost less far less to build relative to the Federation's economy than it costs us to build an AGM-65 Maverick.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Having the same tech doesn't really mean anything. Sure you could have replicators on every planet in the UFP, but on newer colonies they're going to have less development than older colonies. The worth of a planet is not dependent on its technological advancement. Agri-worlds that are almost exclusively used for farming don't need the same level of industrialization/technological abundance as a factory world, or world that blends large populations and industry. Yet despite the fact that the Agri-world is going to have much less technology on it doesn't make it any less valuable than a world packed full of technology. After all your soldiers and sailors, scientist and engineers and your civilian workers and population all need food.

Even planets that are "useless" because they don't contribute any kind of war materials to the nation isn't actually useless. Empty or near empty planets that use horses for transportation can be perfect staging grounds for an armada. Or training grounds, or weapons test sites, or even just buffers. A planets value is not based on the technological advancement of its population, but rather on what its function is.

Of course, the Federaiton has its industrial centers and its agricultural centers, just as any nation, and of course a new colony is not going to be able to match the industrial capacity of the Utopia Planetia Fleet Yards, but the point is that all but the newest, just-recently-settled colonies are going to be able to make a notable industrial contribution to the war effort, and the capability for the Federation to rapidly scale up its industrial capacity cannot be overstated.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

This isn't quite true, otherwise why did Picard have to go to the Holo-deck to get a Tommy Gun? Why couldn't he just have pulled the specs from the computer and fed it into the replicator and turned out Thompsons for his entire crew?

That's because a replicated Tommy Gun, or any real weapon would not have worked. The Tommy Gun Picard used only worked because it wasn't firing real bullets, it was firing holographic bullets. Those weren't lead slugs that ripped through those drones, they forcefields with photons projected onto them. It was a weapon the Borg had probably never encountered before (unlike ballilstic projectiles), so their defenses weren't adapted against it.

Please give the Starfleet guys SOME credit here. If all they had to do to defeat the Borg was to replicate a few old weapon designs (or replicate a few TR-16 rifles, a projectile weapon Starfleet designed for use in areas where phasers might be ineffective or undesirable), they would have. We can reasonably assume that, because Starfleet doesn't replicate M16s to fend off Borg drones, they're not actually effective against Borg Drones.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Why don't they just build giant replicators that spit out perfect ships, instead of assembling them from pieces that may or may not have been replicated? And they don't just need power, they need the raw materials, the "replicator stock" if you will. Stock that at the very least has to contain every known element so that every possible pure substance, alloy and compound can be replicated. To get that stock you still have to have some sort of mining equipment (we know they have mines) to get the resources out of the ground, you have to have some sort of refinery to seperate the unwanted material from the desired material, etc. ect. The idea that the UFP can just wave their magic replicator wands and get whatever they want is fallacious, there is still an infrastructure and industrial complex supporting the communist utopia of Star Trek.

They don't replicate entire ships at a time because replicators of that scale are not practical, and there are many components that can't be replicated. Trek CAN replicate material components from base matter, even assembling the elements from sub-atomic particles, but it's less energy-intensive if they have the base elements, and the more dense a material, the more mass required, and the more energy-intensive the operation.

Replicators do have their limits, their biggest drawback being their heavy power-draw (they've always been recognized as an energy-intensive tech), but this usually isn't a problem for the Federation, which basically has energy in effectively unlimited abundance. They still mine resources because it can cost less energy, and some things can't be replicated or are more difficult to replicate (like high-density materials like duranium and tritanium), and especially when in an all-out war economy they're going to pull in whatever resources they can, but even with its limitations, the capability that industrial replicators afford cannot be understated.


Also, a nit-pick, but the Federation isn't actually a Communist utopia, it isn't actually Communist anything. In fact, the Federation is, in many respects, a Libertarian utopia. It's a post-scarcity economy (energy and production capabilities are so plentiful and cheap that they're effectively free, people can afford a comfortable life without having to work 40-90 hours a week just to make ends meat), with the government covering the nominal cost of giving everyone a minimum standard of living and education, etc., but it's largely a free enterprise economy - we do see plenty of private businesses, after all. It's just that most of them are hobbies people do for fun (see Sisko's dad's restaurant), which is what people would do if they didn't have to work for a basic living. Money as we know it today doesn't exist, because the need for it as we understand it doesn't exist in a post-scarcity economy with the Federation's level of automation and production capabilities, though there are still forms of currency, just not in the conventional form of money as we understand it today.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

There is always wastage, in fact you're advocating wastage. On worlds where the primary product is grains and other food stuffs, why do you need copious amounts of advanced technology? If you're herding meat animals why not use a horse or horse analog as your ride? It can keep up with the herd, it doesn't need advanced parts, doesn't need advanced fuel, it just eats the same things the herd animals do, sleeps when they do and needs to be brushed, shod and watered. Using anything more advanced would be a waste.
As for the replicators, like I said earlier the UFP doesn't and can't just wave the magic replicator wand and get something for nothing. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. This means that raw resources have to be gathered, refined and transported to every single replicator in the Federation. On top of that many large and complex items like warships aren't simply replicated, but rather assembled from parts by people working in a shipyard. Nor does the Federation simply replicate more phasers when they need them, nor even arguably simpler (and more effective) weapons like modern rifles and machine guns.

As previously noted, the Federation does have its industrial centers and its agrarian centers, etc. But they are also much more distributed, and every Federation world has high levels of advanced technology. A given colony might only have a couple industrial replicators, and be nowhere near the industrial capability of the Utopia Planetia Fleet Yards or the Antares Fleet Yards, but they still have significant industrial capacity with equipment that can provide a notable contribution to the total war effort, and that can be scaled up rapidly if needed.

Not everything can be replicated, and the Federation doesn't replicate whole ships - some assembly is required. However, whole components can be replicated, and we've seen replicators create fairly sophisticated pieces of equipment. This is not to be underestimated. Yes, some assembly is still required, but do you know how many steps that saves? How much time that saves? To go from even just raw slag materials to fully-formed machine parts? I used to work for a company that made power steering gears for big trucks and heavy equipment, they have their own cast-iron foundry and machining plants. It generally took a week to turn a pile of pig iron and a few rods of forged steel into an assembled gear box. Just casting the cast-iron housing took a couple days, because after being poured into the mold, the iron had to cool off, and that usually took an entire day. Then it had to be cleaned and blasted, then machined. Then the parts going in that housing had to be machined, and the whole thing assembled. An industrial replicator would be able to create the entire thing, fully assembled with precisely shaped components, in a matter of seconds. A large replicator could probably pump out an entire batch of them all at once.

There are limits to the capabilities of that, but the benefits to industrial capacity in manufacturing time, and cost in man-hours, even in a highly-automated industrial society, cannot be understated.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Supporting firepower calculations? Simply saying "lolz we haz Antimatter weapons and phasers, you use gunz" doesn't prove firepower levels. Federation torpedoes are on par with 1960's nukes and from what I've read and seen WH40K weapons and tech are significantly more powerful than modern nukes. Personally I'd put WH40K and ST on par for firepower at a minimum, with WH40K being the more likely of the two to have superior firepower.

The standard Starfleet photon torpedo has a standard warhead yield of 1.5 kg of matter and 1.5 kg of anti-matter. The annihilation of that gives a detonation yield of ~64 megatons, per the DS9 Technical Manual (the TNG:TM lists the standard yield of 1kg of matter and anti-matter, with a maximum yield of 1.5 kg of each, though it notes in-progress development of the warheads, and the DS9:TM notes the upgrade, making the 1.5 kg payload the new standard yield with theoretical maximum yields ranging up to about 500 megatons). 40K warheads may well achieve higher detonation yields per weapon, but Trek warheads achieve it in much smaller, much faster and much more maneuverable packages that they can fire in greater numbers with greater frequency. The standard photon torpedo isn't an experimental super-doomsday weaponn in Trek, it's a standard weapon that they toss out like candy. I've linked to this thread a number of times in the past, detailing some of the calculations for Trek phaser yields.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Also remember that Starfleet is a bunch of pacifist weenies who balk at the idea of doing anything military and even object to calling their ships warships. They don't have the stomach or the stones for warfare on the level that the Imperium does. Not to mention that the Imperium is going to view it as a holy war to exterminate the aliens and the heretic humans who've allied with them, making them even more fanatical.

Seriously? Starfleet a bunch of pacifist weenies? Just because Starfleet and the Federation prefer to avoid hostilites and war if they can help it does NOT in any way make them pacifists who are afraid to fight. The Federation was founded by a war. The Federation was born out of the alliance of the United Earth, Alpha Centauri, the Andorian Empire and the Tellar Confederation to oppose the Romulan Star Empire during the Earth-Romulan War, and out of Earth's existing long-term alliance with Vulcan (the Vulcans remained neutral during the E-R War).

Captain Kirk himself said he was a solider, not a politician. Captain Picard stood the E-D off against Romulan warbirds on a number of occasions, even when it meant war, and made it very clear that the Federation was willing to recognize hostile actions as acts of war and respond accordingly. Between 2347 and 2375, the Federation engaged in a geurilla style war with the Talarians, a significant war with the Tzenkethi, another significant war with the Tholian Assembly (a power not far behind the Klingons or Romulans), engaged in a twenty-year-long war with the Cardassian Union, and engaged in a total war with the Dominion, a war that was kicked-off by the Federation's pre-emptive mining of the Bajoran wormhole and the simultaneous pre-emptive strike against the Dominion's primary industrial center with every available ship in the fleet. The Federation will avoid war whenever possible, it is an action of last resort for them, but they will not hesitate to engage in all-out war if diplomacy is not an option. If you think otherwise, then you are drastically under-estimating the Federation.

No, they don't call their starships warships, but that's because they aren't dedicated warship. The only dedicated warship in the entire Federation fleet is the Defiant class Corvette. Every other ship in the fleet is a multi-role starship. They can fill the roles of warships when needed, and they can usually do it quite well, but they are much more than just warships, and their primary role is that of exploration. Defense is a critical but secondary role. Federation ships are no slouches in a fight, but that is not the only thing that they do.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

On top of the fact that phasers have proven again and again to be fairly worthless against any sort of armor... and refuse to wear any sort of real protection themselves.

Eh... We've rarely seen Trek infantry weapons used against armor. Sure, on the rare occasion we've seen Trek infantry armor, they've been effective at at least resisting Trek weapons, but that's to be expected. And we have seen Trek infantry wear armor, just on rare occasions. We have rarely seen Trek security personnel operate outside of a Military Police role, and a number of the few occasions we have seen them do such they were in situations where they were poorly equipped or under-supplied. On Ajilon Prime, we see a Federation trooper equipped with some sort of light body armor that proved effective at resisting Klingon disruptor weapons - we don't know what he was hit with, nor how often, but the surface damage to the armor was extensive. The man eventually succumbed to his wounds, but only because he was not able to get access to significant medical attention. In STV: The Final Frontier, we see Starfleet troopers gearing up for an assault to retake a compound on a three-way neutral planet whose local population had revolted and taken the Romulan and Klingon and Federation ambassadors on the planet hostage, using home-made guns (weapons having been banned on the planet). They wear body armor, and sport ballistics shields that can be collapsed and rolled into a tube not unlike those snap bracelets we all played with as little kids. When unrolled, they form large ballistics shields that proved quite effective at providing cover from the locals' bullets, despite being remarkably thin and light. there was no visible denting or dinging of the shields, despite taking numerous hits.

So the Federation does have significant armor and shielding for their troops, it's just that we rarely see them in situations that would call for full battle gear, and a number of the situations we have seen the troopers in question were specifically noted as being under-equipped and under-supplied.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Why didn't we see it every time? Why isn't every starfleeter equipped with body armor and or shields to protect them from phaser/disrupter/energy weapon fire? Even if they are is it going to do any good against bolters and projectile weapons when Borg personal shields can't defend them from "primitive" chemical propellant guns?

Why don't Army or Marine MPs wear full combat gear when carrying out their duties? Why don't military personnel wear full body armor while standing watch? We rarely see Trek personnel going into combat zones, and we rarely see full-fledged infantry/Marines going into combat zones. Most of the combat we've seen has been undertaken by Starfleet Security, the Trek equivalent of Military Police. Most times, that's enough to get the job done, and the nature of Star Trek is such that we rarely see the times where Starfleet sends in more than just the security watch.


As for the ballistics weapons of 40K... That's iffy. Obviously, a big enough gun is going to penetrate anything, no matter how well-shielded and well-armored, but a properly-equipped Trek soldier is geared to take hits from Trek phaser rifles and pistols, and it takes a 40K tank gun to compare to the upper outputs of even a hand phaser. The energy that a 40K bullet can impart is only going to be so high. More than likely, a Trek trooper equipped with a personal shield will be effectively invulnerable to anything any 40K soldier can throw at her. She could probably take a couple hits from a 40K tank and survive. Without shields, Trek infantry armor will probably stop any bullet 40K fires, though explosive rounds might be a bit more effective, but mostly through splash damage rather than direct penetration.

As already noted above, the Borg in First Contact were not gunned down by a conventional Tommy Gun, they were gunned down by a holographic weapon firing forcefield bullets, and the trick would probably not have worked a second time.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Proof that Imperium tanks don't have significant levels of firepower? Proof that phasers aren't actually soul sucking Hell Transporters? Proof that phasers, which don't vaporize targets, don't dissasociate the atomic bonds, don't do anything plausibly within the realms of science, are going to even have an effect on Imperium equipment?

The Leman Russ lasgun is stated as having a yield in the "triple-digit megajoules."

The TNG: Technical Manual describes the operations of phasers, which I have already described above. Phasers DO disrupt the Strong and Weak nuclear forces bonding atoms and sub-atomic particles together. That is canon. Much of that energy is converted into a chain reaction, the rest is shifted out of sync.

I do not have to prove that phasers aren't actually soul-sucking Hell Transporters, I have already provided an explanation for the operation of phasers, that is supported by the canon lore. It is YOU who are making the claim that they are soul-sucking Hell Transporters, and so the onus is on YOU to prove that they are.

Now please stop behaving like a petulant child and try to act like a mature adult. We are trying to have a civilized debate and discussion.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Also if I recall correctly, meltabombs are some sort of nuclear shaped charge. If so that'd kinda make your assertion false.

Melta weapons are something that could potentially damage Trek infantry protected by shields and the like, as they are a miniature fusion reaction, basically inducing a miniscule fusion reaction to generate plasma, and either using that as a directional weapon (meltaguns), or as a grenade-like bomb (melta bombs). The problem is that they are not conventional infantry weapons. The Wiki specifically notes that they are anti-vehicles weapons, used by anti-tank squads to burn through the armor of heavy vehicles. So a 40K anti-vehicle weapon could potentially threaten Trek infantry. If they can get close enough, because the meltagun is specifically noted as being a short-ranged weapon.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Once again if its good against magic-phasers whats to say its going to have an effect against projectile weapons? Especially since the Borg shields don't stop bullets.

Well, first of all, Worf's jury-rigged communicator-and-hairpin personal shield DID deflect a few bullets. Second of all, you're being petulant again.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

First you're assuming that Starfleet can KO Imperium vessels, but you still haven't offered any proof. Secondly the Imperium is far more capable and prepared to conduct orbital bombardments and defend against them than the Federation. The level of destruction that would result from an orbital bombardment sufficient to wipe out Imperium defenders would be abhorrent to the Federation. They wouldn't have the stomach to slag a planet, unleash fire storms and seismic activity sufficient to decimate entire continents.

We have already presented the evidence and calculations, multiple times in this thread already (as I noted before, this is the third or fourth time we're going through the whole 40K vs Star Trek argument since the thread began). I'll dig up the calculations we posted a while back tomorrow after work (if Catamount doesn't beat me to it).

As for orbital bombardment, planetary shields are considered standard defenses by the 24th Century, and planetary defenses are usually not insignificant. If a 40K fleet can even reach a Federation planet in the first place, they're going to get a face full trying to bombard it.

The Federation would not be likely to blast a planet to smithereens, no, but they would not have any problem making precision strikes against military targets from orbit, and we've already seen them demonstrate the ability to use ship phasers to stun large areas groundside (TOS "A Piece of the Action").

Besides, the Federation wouldn't need to slag the entire planet. Once they've knocked out the ships, any ability to get into orbit from the planet, and any major defenses or military concentrations, they can just leave the population there, if they're not wlling to be liberated. As Catamount noted, even the Tau are able to tempt Imperium worlds away from the Empire to join the Tau, because they do the same thing the Federation does: they share their technology with everyone and strive to maximize the potential of everyone in their population, and maximize their ability to reach their full potential. Standards of living under the Tau are much higher than under the oppressive Imperium, and the Federation is even better.

And if the population won't accept liberation and/or the local garrison force is too strong to be worth attacking, all the Federation has to do is kill the planetary defenses, wipe out any major military installation, kill any significant means into planetary orbit, and kill any industrial capacity to make any significant means into orbit, and they can just leave the place alone. If they can't make it into orbit and they don't have any planetary defenses, they're no threat.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

When? When and where does this happen? Sources you got this information from.

They're called the Gue'vesa by the Tau. In the future you can spend the two minutes it takes to pull up the Tau on the wiki and read the begining overview of their page to get that link.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Phasers don't vaporize people, can we please get away from that idiotic notion?

Already covered this, but it's part of the Trek lore that it's called 'vaporization', whether the term is technically accurate or not. Either way, though, the technicallity of the term is irrelevant.

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Second you still haven't proven that the Federation's equipment is going to be superior, or even effective. Any planet that leaves the Emperor and the Imperium is going to become prime targets for Chaos. Heck the Feds are going to be prime targets for Chaos. Their inquisitive, questioning minds are perfect gardens for the seeds of Chaos to grow. You thought Troi's mind rape in Star Trek: Nemisis was bad? Wait until Khorne or one of the others finds her open and sensitive mind. Arguably the Imperium is actually the UFP's best hope to not be consumed by the forces of Chaos. So it's give up a crappy life in an oppresive regime, or join an open free thinking nation that is perfect food for Chaos. Yeah I think I'll stay with the Imperium, I don't like the idea of getting possesed by some horrific monster that exists because of thoughts and emotions.
Furthermore if you're refering to the Species 8472, those are nothing like the Chaos Daemons. Those things are biological entities, beings bounded by physics even if they're from another dimension. Chaos Daemons are beings that exist because of thoughts, beliefs and emotions. They didn't evolve, they aren't based in physics, these are beings created of philosophy, beings that gain power through worship. Creatures that can be summoned by doubt or sacrfices. They can enter "real space" simply by finding a seed of doubt, or arrogance, or hatred. They are unlike anything Star Trek has ever seen.

Well, they're not unlike the Q, but that's neither here nor there. We've long ago established that this thread isn't about who's demigod super-beings could beat whose demigod super-beings, it's about the capabilities of the main franchise star powers.

Besides, the Tau seem to be getting along fine without many problems from the Warp. Yes, the Warp is chaos and crazy, but it's not crazier or more chaotic than quantum indeterminancy (for example, it literally is possible for Jupiter to turn into a giant orange juice monster and come down to Earth to eat our brains, and it's literally possible for the Empire State Building to spontaneously turn into a giant strawberry icecream cone, it's just that both events are so ridiculously improbable that the universe would have to run for an effectively infinite amount of time), or some philosophical concepts.

And humanity before the Age of Strife were able to develop technologies to protect themselves from the Warp well enough. The problem is that the warp has gone all crazy because the collapse of the Eldar civilization spawned the creation of a new Chaos god, and things have been extra-crazy because of it. Ironically enough, the brutal, oppressive and horrible regime of the Imperium of Man is actually probably contributing to the continued nastiness of the Warp (which was fairly stable and safe with the Gellar Field prior to the collapse of the Eldar civiliation), because of all the death and strife and horror perpetuated by the Imperium...

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

Apparently you can only have so many quotes in a single post, so here's the last bit I couldn't fit in the previous post:

Yeah, I know, I've found that to be rather annoying... } : = 8 /

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

I'll take that bet and double or nothing a week after the Federation appears it has been consumed by Chaos Daemons or gone over to the Imperium for survival.
Further who cares about a Galaxy class starship? Give me a lance battery and I'll give you Federation wreckage.

Well, maybe if you can actually hit the Federation ship. The Battlefleet Gothic lists 40K ship ranges on the order of 70,000 kilometers (with some going out to 90,000 kilometers, iirc, though none go over 100,000km). That's fairly respectable for most popular science fiction franchises, and even in real-world terms, being able to point a gun at a target 70,000 kilometers away and having a reasonable chance of hitting it is pretty damned impressive.

That said, Trek phaser and disruptor ranges extend out to 150,000 - 200,000 kilometers (and iirc, the TNG:TM implies that they can go out to a full light second against relatively stationary targets), roughly twice the range of 40K weapons, and Trek torpedoes have ranges in the millions of kilometers. Trek ships are also faster and more maneuverable than 40K ships at sublight, considerably so, and would be able to keep 40K ships at range, staying out of their effective range while staying well within their own effective range. And that's if the Trek ships engage at sublight. They can also engage at warp speed, allowing them to hit 40K ships with impunity.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 07:10 PM, said:

I'm familiar with SDN and their calculations and as I recall the vaporization side effects are part of their calculations. The sublimation of asteroids when hit by turbolaser fire being a prime example. Or the fist sized holes blown in the docking bay wall on Tatooine when Han is shooting stormtroopers. Energy is imparted, materials are sublimated and the resulting craters from the explosion as well as the expanding cloud of vapor is readily visible.

Also I was just re-reading the SDN examination of Phasers and the NDF principle of how they work. Their take on the NDF principle seems to make a lot of sense when compared to what we see in Trek. It also implies that heavy armor like the Imperium employs could be more effective than shields. As materials with higher atomic numbers are much more resistant to the NDF effects of phasers.

As I kept reading through the site I found out that the stated amount of Anti-matter in a photon is only enough to create a 64 megaton explosion assuming 100% efficiency. Only half of the energy would be directed at the target resulting in at most 32 megatons. On top of that in one episode the calculated energy released by a photon torpedo maxes out at 3 megatons.

/shrug so the more I read the more I think Star Trek's overwhelming superiority in technology is suspect.

I would be very careful about the SDN site. Catamount referenced it because of its problems with impartiality and its problems with getting applications of basic scientific principles right (they even get their own math wrong on more than one occasion on their superlaser page), and they have a strong tendency to high-ball Wars estimates while low-balling Trek estimates (and they will viciously attack anyone who even tries to disagree with their established viewpoint, berrating with insults and derogatory comments from childish name-calling all the way up to harassing with emailed death threats).


Obviously, more dense materials are going to be more resistant to the NDF effect than less dense materials, just as more dense materials are going to be more resistant to being melted by a heat laser - there's more matter there to work through and absorb the energy, so it takes more energy to get rid of the same volume of stuff. I highly doubt that high-density armor would be more effective than shields, however. Remember TNG "Q Who?", when the E-D's phasers blew huge chunks out of the Borg Cube (the scene also demonstrates the NDF effect, as the holes continue to expand and vaporize well after the beam has passed through and stopped firing, an effect we see on a number of other occasions, such as when the Reliant's captain vaporized himself in STII: The Wrath of Khan). Borg ships are primarily comprised of tritanium and duranium alloys, both of which are super-dense elements heavier than anything currently on the periodic table (and for the record, scientists have projected that there are 'islands of stability' further down the periodic table with clusters of super-heavy elements that are actually stable and don't instantly decay), yet they proved to be of no use in resisting the NDF effect before the Borg's adaptive shielding kicked in.


As for the standard yield of a photon torpedo, Catamount and I have stated that on a number of occasions. The standard yield of a photon torpedo, circa the 2370s, is 64 megatons, and the warhead has a theoretical maximum yield of some 500 megatons. Now, most of that energy actually is directed at the target because the torpedo's shields 'shape' the charge and focus most of the energy in a single direction, but the total yield is 'only' about 64 megatons. But the standard photon torpedo isn't a one-hit-kill doomsday weapon, as I've said many times now in this post and throughout the thread, Trek throws photon torpedoes out like candy. In an out-and-out fight, Trek ships throw out several of them at a time in rapid succession. Usually photorps are fired in bursts or salvoes of three or four at a time, with larger capital ships and torp-heavy ships being capable of firing more. The newer Quantum torpedoes have a yield roughly three times the standard photorp yield, and they're a bit more potent weapoon, but even those are typically fired in salvoes.

Strum Wealh, on 22 February 2012 - 07:22 PM, said:

Admittedly, I think Kartr raises an important point, as this "NDF effect" seems to be one of the key components of most arguments concerning the effectiveness of the Federation's weaponry.

In fact, I asked a similar question during the "Federation vs High Guard" debate:


I feel that Kartr may, in part, be asking fundamentally similar questions:
How canonically-valid is this "NDF effect"? What canon sources** explicitly support its existence/inclusion?
What specific materials (please list) are resistant to it? What specific qualities of said materials (please list) make them resistant?

** "Canon sources" being "explicit mention in any televised episodes or movies (please include video clip and/or episode citation), explicit mention in any canon print media (novels, technical readouts, etc), explicit mention/support by "Word of God" (interviews with showrunners and other staff), and explicit mention in other canon-recognized media (for example, release-state video games (fan-mods don't count))". Additionally, known and verifiable real-world science (e.g. the real-world physics and efficiency of M/AM reactions vs other power generation methods) counts.

It can either be backed by canon sources and/or real scientific principles, or it can't, right?
If it can, what are those sources/principles?
If it can't, what other explanations may work to do so?

That being said... we know that ST canon includes a set of weapons known as "disruptors".
Of particular interest are the "subatomic disruptors" of ST's 29th century and the disruptors used by the Romulans in the TNG era (one Subcommander N'Vek was apparently vaporized/disintegrated by such a weapon in Face of the Enemy).
How, specifically, do these weapons work? What are their limitations - that is, why use phasers at all when one can use disruptors?

The NDF Effect is described in the TNG: Technical Manual (this I have said many times, throughout this thread). The visual effects of phasers on-screen match with the described operations of phasers, both in the shipboard phaser array section and the hand phaser section. When targets are 'vaporized' by phasers, we typically see a glow effect expanding away from the point of impact, well after the beam has stopped firing. We see this in STII: The Wrath of Khan when the Reliant's captain vaporizes himself. We see it in STVI: The Undiscovered Country with Lt. Savek vaporizes a cooking pot. We see it in TNG "Q Who?" when the E-D blows big chunks out of the Borg Cube. We see it in DS9 "What You Leave Behind" when the Cardassian phaser platforms blow big chunks out of a D'Deridex when they first come online, when they blow a hole in the USS Galaxy's ventral hull, when they eat away at an Akira class hammered by multiple platforms, and when we see a Vor'Cha class getting eaten away and broken in half by an NDF effect induced by phasers it was hit with before the camera pans to let us see it. Time and again we see this effect, and other related effects that coincide with the TNG:TM's description of phaser operations, which is hardly any surprise given that the people who wrote the TNG:TM also largely determined the specifics of the visual effects we saw on the show.

[Strum Wealh]

So...

We do know how big, in terms of volume, the Imperium is as a function of the size of the galaxy and the range of the Astronomican.

The Astronomican - essentially a psychic hyperspace beacon and "north star" analog - has a range of 70,000 light-years (ly) from Terra (Earth).


From the real-life chart above, we know that the Imperium's territory is an ovoid that should cover most of the Milky Way (which has an average thickness of "only" 1,000 ly).

Here is what appears to be the canon 40K star map:


So, we know that the Imperium's territory does, in fact, cover most of the Milky Way.

Furthermore, said territory is divided into five major segments called "Segmentae Majoris": the Segmentums Solar, Obscurus, Pacificus, Tempestus, and Ultima.

Each "Segmentum" is then divided into "Sectors" - volumes of space that apparently typically encompass ~7-8 million cubic ly.

So, if we model the coreward half of the Imperium's territory as half of a circular cylinder with a of radius 70,000 ly and a height of 1,000 ly and the rimward half as half of an elliptical cylinder with a minor radius of 35,000 ly and a major radius of 70,000 ly and a height of 1,000 ly, the approximate volume of the Imperium's territory comes to about 1.15454x10^13 (11.54 trillion) cubic ly.

Given the volume of a typical Sector (~7-8 million cubic ly), the Imperium's territory would consist of approximately 1.44x10^6 to 1.65x10^6 (1.44 to 1.65 million) such Sectors.

The starships of each Segmentum are divided amongst the Sectors into groups called Battlefleets.
Each Sector Battlefleet is assigned a number of Cruisers and Battleships, usually between 50 and 75 vessels. The Battlefleets are also assigned multiple squadrons of Escort starships, and is also in command of a large number of transports, messenger craft, orbital defences, space platforms and system patrol vessels.
As an example, "Battlefleet Armageddon is assigned solely to the Armageddon Sub-sector, and, prior to the Third War for Armageddon, was made up of 4 Battleships, 27 Cruisers and 36 squadrons of Escorts."
Escort squadrons typically consist of 2-6 individual ships.

So, if we assume that every Sector has a Battlefleet of 100-200 ships, the fighting force of the Imperial Navy is something on the order of 1.443x10^8 to 3.298x10^8 (144 to 329 million) combat ships, spread across the galaxy.
(The Space Marines apparently have their own ships, but there are so few of them - approximately one million - that it is unlikely that they have enough ships, on their own, to significantly affect the above figures.)

So, now we have some figures on how many ships the Imperium has, and we know that said ships tend to fall into three broad categories: battleship (6-8 km long), cruiser (5-6 km long), and escort (750 m to 3km long).

Their main weapons seem to consist of "Plasma Batteries, Laser Cannons, Rail Guns, and Missile Launchers" (and occasionally more exotic weapons like "Fusion Beamers" and "Graviton Pulsars") arranged into batteries, as well as "lances" (larger and more powerful versions of the normal battery weapons; Imperial lances seem to be large energy weapons), and torpedoes (large (lengths of ~60 feet for escorts/destroyers, ~200 feet for cruisers, and ~300 feet for battleships) anti-starship missiles with some form of plasma warhead), with some ships mounting a specialty weapon, like the "Nova Cannon" (50-meter-caliber gravimetrically-driven mass-driver with near-luminal muzzle velocity and a high-yeild explosive warhead (some form of fusion?)) or the "Bombardment Cannon".

We know that the larger ships also act as carriers, as "many Imperial Navy capital starships of Cruiser size and above are capable of carrying squadrons of Attack Craft like starfighters" and that "the largest battleships and heavy cruisers are known to have launch bay capacities of up to 2000 fighter craft, bombers and dropships."

We also know that Imperial starships are equipped with a seemingly-substantial number of defensive turrets "that fire kinetic projectiles or energy pulses that are designed specifically to destroy incoming bombers and torpedoes".

We know that the Leman Russ tank carries a "Conqueror cannon" that produces one-million newtons of recoil and a hull-mounted "lascanon" in the "triple-digit megajoule" range.
It seems reasonable, in the absence of contradicting canon specifications, to assume that the lighter starship weapons that make up the batteries fall into the same general range of firepower.

Defense-wise, the Imperium's ships rely on Void Shields - gravitic force fields that can be layered atop one another (to the point that many vehicles will carry "Void Shield banks"; while any one shield may be relatively weak, having multiples allows another shield to provide defense while those that have fallen can be recalibrated and, eventually, reactivated) to "prevent damage from energy weapons and prevent actual critical structural damage occurring on the ship" while also defending the ship from "radiation, interstellar dust, and particle showers".
Additionally, "Void Shields do not protect from close combat assaults or other vehicles moving through them to then attack the shielded vehicle or vessel" and "ordnance like torpedoes and fighters are not affected by the effects of shields and can do direct damage to the ship unless engaged by turrets".
(Also note that the Void Shields are separate and distinct from the "Gellar Fields" that "protect the starship and its occupants from the hostility of the psychically-reactive Warp itself as well as from the predation of Warp entities such as daemons.")

In terms of armor materials, the Imperium seems to use a combination of "Adamantium" (main hull material, noted for its high tensile strength), "Ceramite" (heat resistant), and "Plasteel". Thickness varies by ship size, with escorts having "a ribbed outer hull maybe a foot thick or less" to battleships having "three separate, heavily reinforced adamantium hull layers, with a total thickness of dozens of metres".
Ships of the Imperium are also equipped with an "armoured prow, which is massively reinforced and can be hundreds of metres thick on the largest ships as it is also used as a ram" and that said prow "is capable of deflecting all but the most powerful of strikes to a vessel's bow".

In terms of propulsion (and power-generation) systems:
"Every Imperial starship is equipped with a fusion-based Plasma Drive for normal propulsion through the depths of space. Running up to a third of the starship's length, the aft section is a mass of drive tubes, engine compartments and plasma reactors."
"Most Imperial Navy warships employ Warp-Drives to breach the barrier that separates realspace from the Immaterium and allow for interstellar travel. Implosion of these drives can lead to the creation of an unstable Warp rift, such as that which destroyed Hive Fleet Behemoth during the Battle of Macragge in the First Tyrannic War."

The reason for writing this: occasional frustration with the "we have no numbers and can thus be arbitrarily numerous and/or powerful" stance of 40K (and some of its proponents), which can be just as frustrating as the tendency of Trek (and some of its proponents) to occasionally try to nonsense-technobabble itself out of a some situations...

Your thoughts?

Edited by Strum Wealh, 06 March 2012 - 06:45 PM.

[pursang]

And ilithi dragon lays the smack down again!

[Strum Wealh]

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

The NDF Effect is described in the TNG: Technical Manual (this I have said many times, throughout this thread). The visual effects of phasers on-screen match with the described operations of phasers, both in the shipboard phaser array section and the hand phaser section. When targets are 'vaporized' by phasers, we typically see a glow effect expanding away from the point of impact, well after the beam has stopped firing. We see this in STII: The Wrath of Khan when the Reliant's captain vaporizes himself. We see it in STVI: The Undiscovered Country with Lt. Savek vaporizes a cooking pot. We see it in TNG "Q Who?" when the E-D blows big chunks out of the Borg Cube. We see it in DS9 "What You Leave Behind" when the Cardassian phaser platforms blow big chunks out of a D'Deridex when they first come online, when they blow a hole in the USS Galaxy's ventral hull, when they eat away at an Akira class hammered by multiple platforms, and when we see a Vor'Cha class getting eaten away and broken in half by an NDF effect induced by phasers it was hit with before the camera pans to let us see it. Time and again we see this effect, and other related effects that coincide with the TNG:TM's description of phaser operations, which is hardly any surprise given that the people who wrote the TNG:TM also largely determined the specifics of the visual effects we saw on the show.

So, I missed a few responses while typing up the above essay...

So, looking in the Technical Manual, I found the NDF reference. I guess that settles the " NDF canonicity" question.

Though, I have a new question:
A number of the settings give a ratio of "simple electromagnetic (SEM) effects" (I assume this refers to the "normal" effects of lasers and particle beam weapons) to NDF effects.
For several of the lower settings, the ratio is not applicable, while some of the highest settings have SEM:NDF ratios of 1:11 up to 1:40.

If that is the case, what is the difference between a disruptor (which seems like the point would be a weapon that focuses on NDF rather than SEM) and a phaser on a setting higher than 7? What is the point of the former when the latter will do the same job and more?

[Zakatak]

Do the creators of these series pay you guys to trash the others? Because I don't see how writing these essays (and the studies that go with it) and having a full-time job at the same time is scientifically possible.

Is Warhammer based in the far-future of our own reality? You know, as in, the Earth we know and every event that has happened on it? Just curious. I think you guys should compare Warhammer with Trek's mirror universe. The Terran Empire makes the Imperium like a big happy family! Vulcan ambassador arrives, shoot him with a shotgun, take his ship and study the technology, enslave the stars!

EDIT: if we are allowed to do obscure races that only appear for like 1 or 2 episodes, I'm going to say the Walkers from Babylon 5. Uses a civilian ship to destroy a 42km Vorlon planetkiller with its COMMUNICATION ARRAY. Who makes a 800 megaton communication array?!

EDIT x2 (i cant fall asleep): this is the prettiest artwork ever and seems appropriate at the time

Edited by Zakatak, 23 February 2012 - 02:21 AM.

[Polymorphyne]

The tau get along fine because they are on the psychic level, barely even there at all. They barely register in the warp at all, so daemons are not generally interested in them.

[pursang]

Zakatak, on 23 February 2012 - 02:00 AM, said:

-Snip-

For some reason, when I saw that picture, all I could think of was that line from Monty Python: "Run away, run away!"

[Catamount]

Strum Wealh, on 23 February 2012 - 01:52 AM, said:

So, I missed a few responses while typing up the above essay...

So, looking in the Technical Manual, I found the NDF reference. I guess that settles the " NDF canonicity" question.

Though, I have a new question:
A number of the settings give a ratio of "simple electromagnetic (SEM) effects" (I assume this refers to the "normal" effects of lasers and particle beam weapons) to NDF effects.
For several of the lower settings, the ratio is not applicable, while some of the highest settings have SEM:NDF ratios of 1:11 up to 1:40.

If that is the case, what is the difference between a disruptor (which seems like the point would be a weapon that focuses on NDF rather than SEM) and a phaser on a setting higher than 7? What is the point of the former when the latter will do the same job and more?

Disruptors and phasers are probably comparable in most respects, from power to manufacturing needs. That's the only way I can figure they'd both be in use.

Shipboard they both make sense because they both have different strengths. Klingons seem to use disruptors as very compact, absurdly powerful weapons, with small firing arcs. An arrayed phaser probably isn't anywhere near as good, pound for pound, but a Galaxy class, for instance, gets nearly 360 degree by 360 degree coverage with just two of them, so you can things with your have weapon in more directions.

It's reflective of their relative battle strategies. The Klingons, like the Romulans (who have an ABSURDLY powerful nose gun in their warbirds, the most powerful of all ship weapons among the conventional powers, afaik), tend to decloak and fire at things in front of them. The Federation doesn't possess notable cloaking technology because of some stupid treaty with the Romulans, and instead usually relies on hyper-acute sensors as a counter, and various tactics, not to mention omnidirectional big-weapons coverage (so a ship can't get the jump on one effectively that easily).

There may be other advantages and disadvantages as well, at least hypothetically speaking, but they've never been mentioned.


It is worth noting, however, that only some powers have notable phaser technology. I'm sure the Romulans have some idea of how to build a phaser, but why bother when they're far more experienced with disruptors? The Klingons only started showing their usage after years of alliance with the Federation. The Negh'Var, for instance, has phaser arrays. They only seem to be ancillary weapons, however. We also see many other energy weapons. Phased polaron beams are used by the Dominion because they're capable of bypassing shields. It took Federation engineers a long time to negate that advantage. The Breen use an energy-dampening weapon of some kind that simply makes ships go offline, so they can be popped at one's leisure. The Borg's weaponry has never been mentioned in specifics, as far as I know, but considering they've assimilated "thousands of species across thousands of worlds", they can take their pick on what's the best.



Also, the canonicity of the TNG TM might be a bit ambiguous. It was always, at worst, non-canon backstage material that showed the intent of the writers, but recent comments by Viacom employees imply it has some canonicity. How much, however, is uncertain.

What is almost certain is that it's secondary to onscreen canon. In other words, it's "soft canon", if you will.

[Catamount]

Covering Kartr's comment that there's no reason to believe that Borg shields work any different from, say, Federation shields, this is simply not true, if one actually knows anything about the franchise.

In TNG Q Who, conventional weaponry, once set to the proper power, was easily able to blast straight through the edge of a Borg cube's hull, but if you notice the shots, each does progressively less damage.




This is how the Borg work; they take a shot, analyze it, and erect immunity to it.




If they were conventional shields, they'd just block the shots, all the shots, not just that one half-hearted shot (a Borg cube is much bigger and more advanced than a GCS; it could easily generate enough power to block shots from such a ship). Presumably, Borg shielding allows for more resistance for damage for a given power expenditure once immunity is achieve in exchange for that momentary damage, which the Borg aren't concerned with (they'll toss drones or entire ships away on a whim), especially since that data on negating a particular weapon would then be transferred to all ships. The Federation had a lot of trouble with this for a long time, until they finally discovered particular frequency ranges and ways of constantly shifting phaser frequency to at least allow limited effectiveness (TNG: Best of Both Worlds).


We also would have seen shield flares were they conventional Trek shields, which we do not, ever.


Furthermore, in Best of Both Worlds, a shuttlecraft flies straight inside a Borg shield.


Clearly their shields are not conventional Trek shields.


As for bullets penetrating them, even without safeties, Picard's Thompson should have worked more or less like a normal one, hence why Worf was able to block several such shots with a shield built using communicator components (and a hairpin ). However, nothing stopped Picard from absolutely ramping up the power of those shots when he disengaged the safety protocols, so the ship's system might simply have been used to generate more force than the Borg drones could stand up to.

If simple bullets were enough, they wouldn't have to replicate M16s as Ilithi suggested; the Federation has an ammo-based weapon, the TR-116. Ezri Dax used a modified version to snipe someone clear through Deep Space 9, a ~1km wide station (the bullet made use of a small transporter). Presumably, in a major engagement, however, one in which the troops are not savagely under-equipped, such a weapon would have a tough time penetrating either significant armor or personal shielding, so it's not necessarily something that's exactly ubiquitously used, or useful.

It's be a nasty weapon for criminals to pack through, facing off against normal police forces, especially with the microtransporter enhancement. You could shoot law enforcement straight through walls, until they caught on and used an easy counter (transport inhibitors that can block even powerful ship-based transporters, over considerable areas, are still man-portable; blocking a microtransporter would require an even less powerful device, presumably)

Edited by Catamount, 23 February 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Rockhound085]

As much as I would love to say that Battletech would win, the ships lack any protective shell outside of armor. I have never heard of even a deflector shield on any warship or jump ship. I suspect that Star Wars and Warhammer40k would do the best because they have fast moving fighters and sheilds. While the Covenent would also do very well I suspect that their reliance on tech which they don't fully understand would prove their down fall and the shear fire power of the battle barges in Warhammer.

As for Star Trek they have sheilds, phaser and torpedoes but no really good swift fighter. Battlestar Galactica is too low tech with Nukes being their main offesive weapon while I suspect they have the most manuverable fighters aided by the thrusters. The anime series are just too out there with massive weapons and not much else, hell I suspect that psy warfare would be the most effective against them.

I am way too nerdy for my own good, but there you have it, my opinions I feel like I need a flame shield but as we are mech warriors I just need my skill at the controls of whatever mech I take (at this point I would have to call a Hunchback since I have a lot of expirence in that).

After reading a few post here I no longer feel as nerdy.

Edited by Rockhound085, 23 February 2012 - 06:44 AM.

[GDL Rahsan]

Not really Catamount I usually drop my fanboyism outside the door when I enter " VS threads " and I am a HUGE fan for both Star Trek and WH40K. Actually I discovered the Star Trek universe 3 years before I knew anything about WH40K. And what I am trying to do here is making sure some of the wrong info get corrected I mean it's ok to start debating about if a universe will win on one but it is a big NO! to do it with inncorect or misunderstood info . So just think of me as the nuetral guy who wants both universes having a chance (( And since you are covering the Star Trek side greatly I don't see why should I ruin it for you =p))

Anyway back to the subject at hand, First for Dragon on why it's called the "Dark Age of Technology". You see while indeed the DAoT was an age of technological wonder that comparing it to the current Imperium will be like comparing the Eldar technology to the Orks, but our dear Church Militant Ecclesiarchy (( The Adeptus Ministorum is their official name)) considered that age to be a spiritual dark age for the Imperium I think it was hinted that they actually worshipped science back then ((ironic isn't it, but I don't blame them if what little info we have about it back then was true we know they could do anything with science)) so they called it The Dark Age of Technology an age where science made it possible to do anything but with no form or reiligion or anything, canon sources never stated if there was no type of religions back then thought.

As for the Imperium topredoes they are known to be thrown around like candy in ample supplies too. The dooms-day-torpedoes you might be talking about are actually special types of torpedoes that are used for the Exterminatus procedures those types of torpedoes usually focus more on damaging the surface more than penetrating it.(( soften the crust for the big hitter if you would)).

And again Dragon you seem to have made a small ops on the Tau Empire there. You see the Tau Empire are known to have a "Join Us or Die!" policy so even if some worlds fall for propaganda a lot of others just don't want to get eradicated. And I said propaganda since most of the time Tau "promises" will never happen or you never realize what they mean actually. You see Tau don't share their technology with their allies they would probably share the inferior designs or even help their allies in producing better equipment but they don't share and they usually try to study and understand any new technology they walk upon even for their allies before thinking about helping them in improving it, and usually after they reserve engineered anything that benefits them (( yes the tau sceintists are on par with Star Trek sceintists in this criteria, there is a reason the Eldar try to make sure none of their technology gets into Tau hands )). And back to what our dear Tau do to their allied humans. In military they usually serve as a secondary meat shield, after their dear chickens kroot allies, and it have been implied in canon many times already that Tau uses brainwashing,"reeducation" camps, sterlization camps for their human helpers and the human civilian in a tau planet is generally much worse than that of an average Tau or even kroot.

Hmmm, oh yes, About the Imperium using fusion reactors you see for the most part no proof have been used for how exactly the plasma generators work a friend of mine who owns the Battlefleet Gothic codex even told me he have never saw the word fusion in the book to describe the plasma generators. The most known sources to mention fusion reactors are or even some energy outputs for WH40K tend to be the Black Library books, which I think are more of writers using words that appear frequently in sci-fi like fusion, plasma, nova etc more than anything, which our dear Games Worshop only cared to give us a "shrug of god" on their canoncity not to mention how the Black Library books tend to some times contradict with the official canon sources of the WH40K universe, C.S. Goto books comes to mind, even the weapon outputs tend to be inconsistent in the books a good example will be a lance battery describes of having 112 TeraJoule (( I think )) and another book stating that the same lance battery having 60 Tera Joule, and it doesn not help that some extra info on the Warhammer 40k wiki tend to be coming from the BL books (( that's why I am skeptical about the Leman Russ Lascannon energy output)), not to mention that a lot of fans who read the BL novels tend to realize they either suck hard at math and science or they thought "hey it's sci-fi lets make up numbers and stuff".

And for Sturm Wealth, You forgot one of the most powerful weapons in a weapon battery the graviton gun, basically a gun that uses gravity to crush a building it was said that the hand held version of it can turn an imperial made building (( by the most resilent metals of course)) flat on the medium setting or was it high? not sure they didn't specify how many setting there is on it anyway, and for the Nova cannon being a fusion based gun it is just an educated guess by the 40K fans based on the name of the cannon but since WH40K universe work on the "rule of cool" there is a big chance that Games Workshop that went like " how about we make a big cool gun and name it something awesome like a Nova cannon?".Further more canon actually mentions that the Warships weapons are significantly more powerful than any of their ground counter part, maybe excluding titans and the Dark Age of technology tanks, so it is safe to say that if a Lascannon have a 3 digit MegaJoule number the battleship version will have it around 20 or more digit number, I am just guessing here since they didn't specify how much powerful they are. And the last note goes for the Void Shields, they aren ot weak alone actually they are considered very powerful even alone but it tends to be better to have 4 or 6 on to make sure no one slips an annoying energy beam towards your new Titan paint oh and it is incorrect that void shields can't stop torpedoes. Since according to the Apocalypse Expansion the void shields basically displace an incoming projectile into the warp or "teleport it to hell" if we take what's the warp into account but I think I read somewhere , a BL novel mind you, that slow torpedoes can possibly pass throught the shield without activating the teleportation mechanism.


PS: I can't seem to get multi quote to work so I am stuck with just referring to the issue and the poster , oh well enjoy your new bits of info.

Edited by GDL Rahsan, 23 February 2012 - 09:50 PM.

[Polymorphyne]

Heres a quick rundown of the Imperiums history with a focus on its ideological evolution:

Ancient Times- the Birth of the Emperor: Approximatly eight thousand years before the first millenium BC, ancient psykers- then known as shamans, all commit mass suicide to pool their psychic energy and minds into the warp, to combine into the birth of the Emperor to guide and protect humanity from the dangers of the warp. This immortal man mostly observed human history, occasionally influencing it as various influental figures in mans history, until the time of the great crusade.
The Dark Age of Technology- Humanity reaches its technological and Scientific peak, having incredible technology, races of artificially intelligent androids serve humanity. This technology causes the coming cataclysm to be incomphrehensibly destructive.
The Age of Strife- Psykers emerge en-mass in human populations, causing incredibly strife, as unchecked thousands of them are daemonically possessed, becoming gateways to allow hordes of daemons to overtake many worlds. Warp storms shut down interstellar travel leaving many worlds stranded and vulnerable to alien incursion. Civil war rages across the worlds of mankind.
The Great Crusade- the immortal emperor decides to take direct control of humanity, uniting various warring factions to bring an end to the age of strife, and goes on a great crusade to rebuild humanity. At this point he begins pushing the idealology of the Imperial Truth- the idea that superstition, religion and ignorance must be purged from humanity.
The Horus Heresy- The Warmaster Horus, foremost of the Emperors most trusted primarchs, turns traitor. This climaxes in a battle on Terra itself, in which Horus is slain but kills Sanguinus and mortally wounds the Emperor. The emperor is interred in the life supporting golden throne, enabling him to continue protecting humanity from the full effects of the warp and to serve as the guiding light of the astronomicum which makes space travel possible.
The Age of Imperium- The superstitious cults of emperor worship now dominate the imperium, which is now a superstitious and intolerant place- a cruel mockery of what the emperor intended.
The Time of Ending- This is the present part of the Age of Imperium. Aliens menace the Imperium, the Necrontyr and Ctan have awakened, the warp devours entire worlds and races, and a fault in the emperors golden throne has been found- it will only keep him alive for so long.
The End, or the Emperor Reborn- When the golden throne fails, there are two possibilities- the emperor will die, and the full force of the warp and chaos will pour into the material world, the astronomican will snuff out, stranding all spacecraft and worlds, meaning the death of the imperium. Or, the emperor will be reincarnated, and lead mankind into a golden age.

[guardiandashi]

Kartr, on 22 February 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

FTL stands for Faster than light, lasers are light, therefor you can't a laser (light) that travels faster than light. Your "explantion" is even more technobabble than NDF.


Gah vaporization and exploding. That's not what happens on screen, definitely no explosions when something is disappeared. Other than that its roughly what the more plausible theories propose.



They act like heat lamps, stunners, torture devices and they can make people disappear. Hardly a multipurpose tool, about the only tool like thing it does is heat rocks to keep people warm.


Actually try sub atomic vaporization causing a nuclear explosion. You break apart the subatomic bonds and you have a fission explosion, something which is definately not seen any time phasers disintigrated someone.



If Latinum can't be replicated (neither can gold btw) then obvioiusly they can't transmute atoms. However they do do it at the molecular level, which is why they have "food stock" which is basic molecules combined and re-arrainged to make any kind of food. Transporters are designed to destroy and rebuild on an even smaller, sub atomic scale. By the way "chasnium" which doesn't show up in a search of Memory Alpha.


Actually no because you don't have any of the elements you need. You're right "replicator mass" or "food stock" depending on the situation is a ratio of common elements and compounds. However you need the right atoms to utilize create your item. If transmutation was possible then there's no reason latinum or gold would be unreplicatable, nor would there be any real reason to carry any sort of stock. After all if anything is transmutable then just scoop up hydrogen as you need to replenish your depleted resivoir.


Nah there's no fee, because that would mean the UFP has money. Yes replicators work on a similar technology to transporters, but they don't work on the same level. Replicators manipulate molecules while transporters build on the quantom level to ensure that the copy of the destroyed person is identical down to the neurons firing in the synapses.


What evidence do you have to support this assumption?

actually trek reference materials specifically note that most atomic materials CAN be "transmuted" by the transporters/replicators its just that E-mc² bites you in the rear because you have to ballance the equation somehow.
IE I have a whole bunch of carbon as the available raw material and I want gold (which is in fact replicatable) I need to either disassemble enough carbon atoms and rebuild them as gold atoms (massively energy intensive, and takes a long time) or I can just make sure Ihave some gold in the "feedstock" or start with 1 carbon atom and "manufacture" enough protons, electrons, and neutrons, and stuff them into the atom, until it turns into a gold atom, even MORE energy required.

the "latinum" not being replicatable has more to do with the atomic/molucular structure and how the "real" latinum forms molecular bonds "different" than the replicated version, the cannonicity of this explanation may be questionable, because it was the major plot in a novel where westley created a "machine" that would change replicated latinum (aka chastinum) into "real latinum"

what I meant by the meal of "replicated food" being free, crafted materials such as a meal of food made by someone, vs a unique object like a work of art having actual cost, is that as was mendioned the federation is supposed to be "post shortages" as was mentioned by someone else. HOWEVER trek does reference that there is still compensation of people for services rendered.

example of how I see that working out.

you go to a "restaurant" if you serve yourself in the federation the meal is free or essentually so.
if you let/have a waiter waitress assist you, (bringing dishes, beverages, clean up after you, etc) then you give them a "tip" to compensate them for their time/labour.
if you wish something rare or unique you end up compensating (someone) for all that the object entails.

Replicator technology makes many things essentually free (or wholesale) because they are mass produced (on an as needed basis) "cheep" copies.

and even then you have comments that indicate that replicated things "aren't as good" as the crafted items, like riker obtaining, or replicating raw eggs and then cooking them himself because he didn't like how the replicated "cooked" eggs tasted

even then the use of certain things is limited or restricted even on federation "core worlds" ie people walk and drive places because transporters use enough resources that it is "too expensive" for everyday use for the average person, (plus there is the whole philosophical arguement of "is the you that appeared after the transport the same you that existed before the transport, or did you die and were 'reborn'. "

[Catamount]

The reason certain materials can't be replicated has nothing to do with replicators not being able to transmute atoms; again, Kartr shows that he hasn't really delved much into Trek canon. As per TNG Code of Honor, it's made clear that certain substances simply do not survive the replication process. They either destabilize and break down, or simply don't come out right, because the process is imperfect.

Now, I'm not clear on whether replicators transmute, or merely build from stocks of molecules, in theory they could do either, and either would be greatly valuable, and greatly improve manufacturing, but the latinum argument is definitely not a valid argument against any particular capability by replicators in any broad sense. The inability to replicate latinum is only evidence of the inability to replicate latinum.

The argument that gold can't be replicated on his part is just flat out wrong. It's never stated that gold can't be replicated. In fact, by TNG, gold was treated as a common construction material, used in things as mundane as communicator casings, not an internal electronic part that might require the substance; the golden part of the casing (TNG The Last Outpost, Time's Arrow). Only the Ferengi ever mentioned it as though it had any real world value, and by the 2370s, even they thought it was basically worthless (DS9 Who Mourns for Morn).

[guardiandashi]

Catamount, on 23 February 2012 - 10:27 AM, said:

The argument that gold can't be replicated on his part is just flat out wrong. It's never stated that gold can't be replicated. In fact, by TNG, gold was treated as a common construction material, used in things as mundane as communicator casings, not an internal electronic part that might require the substance; the golden part of the casing (TNG The Last Outpost, Time's Arrow). Only the Ferengi ever mentioned it as though it had any real world value, and by the 2370s, even they thought it was basically worthless (DS9 Who Mourns for Morn).

re the unreplicatable latinum I agree with you 100% catamount. Infact its the fact that latnium CANNOT be replicated that gives it its value
also I seem to remember an incident where picard (or someone ST TNG, ds9, or voyager where a ferrengi or some other mercantile race wanted a bunch of "money" and one of the items that they mentioned as having value to them was gold. and the federation person was like ok we can do gold ... how much do you want... pounds, kilos, or tons, with the impression that they could come up with tons of gold like it was no big deal.

for instance the gold pressed latnium the ferrengi always want to be paid in. the latinum is the valuable part the gold is mostly just a convenient "carrier" for the latinum

[Imagine Dragons]

Wow... this thread is awsome...