1189 replies to this topic

[Catamount]

guardiandashi, on 23 February 2012 - 10:45 AM, said:

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

Yeah, in the DS9 episode I mention, Quark things he's given a bunch of gold pressed latinum, but the latinum has been drained, leaving nothing but a bunch of "worthless gold" (Quark's own words). In the 2360s, my guess is that either the Ferengi couldn't replicate gold, or considered the natural substance to have value, the way we do a natural diamond, as opposed to an artificial one.

Whatever the reason, the stuff is typically clearly pretty worthless to the Federation and comparable powers.

Anyways, more later.

[GDL Rahsan]

Catamount, on 23 February 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

Yeah, in the DS9 episode I mention, Quark things he's given a bunch of gold pressed latinum, but the latinum has been drained, leaving nothing but a bunch of "worthless gold" (Quark's own words). In the 2360s, my guess is that either the Ferengi couldn't replicate gold, or considered the natural substance to have value, the way we do a natural diamond, as opposed to an artificial one.

Whatever the reason, the stuff is typically clearly pretty worthless to the Federation and comparable powers.

Anyways, more later.

I think I remember this episode it was "Who Mourns of Morn?" right?

And the exchange if I remeber went like this:

Quark: Someone's extracted all the latinum ! There's nothing here but worthless gold!
Odo: And it's all yours.
Quark: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This is the right episode am I right?

[Strum Wealh]

GDL Rahsan, on 23 February 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

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.

I did not so much "forget to mention" this "Graviton Gun" as not mention it because it was not included in the general article concerning starship weaponry.

Looking into it a bit more, it turns out that the Graviton Gun is typically mounted on mecha like the "Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought".
Both the general article on Dreadnoughts and the specific article on the Contemptor refer to such things as "an ancient Graviton Gun" and "Gravity Flux Weapons like the Graviton Gun whose secrets were ultimately lost during the civil war between the sects of the Adeptus Mechanicus known as the Schism of Mars at the outset of the Horus Heresy".
That statement would seem to imply that Graviton Guns (and other Gravity Flux Weapons like the presumably-similar-but-larger "Grviton Pulsars" seen on starships) are effectively LosTech - the surviving examples are ancient (~10,000 years old) and rare, and that the Imperium lacks the ability (specifically, the technical know-how) to create new ones.

As far as starship weapons being more powerful: where does it say that? On what page(s) of which book(s)?

We know that, in terms of energy generation by matter/antimatter reactions, "the energy per unit mass (9×10^16 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than typical chemical energies, and about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the nuclear potential energy that can be liberated, today, using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per atomic nucleus that undergoes nuclear fission, or 8×10^13 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible results expected from fusion (about 6.3×10^14 J/kg for the proton-proton chain)." and "the reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula, E = m*c^2), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated".

In the case of the above, even if the reaction itself is 100% efficient (or close enough to be so, for all practical purposes), any machine built to harness that energy and turn it into something useful will not be 100% efficient (losses due to electrical and mechanical inefficiencies, losses from heat, and so on).

Given that the Imperium's ships use "a fusion-based Plasma Drive" (basically, a fusion rocket) for propulsion and related "plasma reactors" (which is likely some form of fusion reactor) for power generation we know a couple of things:
The best possible fuel efficiency for a fusion reaction is approximately 6.3×10^14 joules (0.63 petajoules) per kilogram of fuel consumed by the reactor.
Assuming an efficiency of 80% in converting the raw energy into usable electricity (see here), we're looking at an upper limit of 5.04x10^14 joules (0.504 petajoules) for a fusion power system.

A "20 or more digit number" would represent hundreds of exajoules (10^18 joules), or even the low zettajoule (10^21 joules) range.
For comparison:
210 PJ is equivalent to about 50 megatons of TNT; this is the amount of energy released by the Tsar Bomba, the largest man-made nuclear explosion ever.
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan had 1.41 EJ of energy according to its 9.0 on the moment magnitude scale.
Energy in the United States used per year is roughly 94 EJ.
The annual global energy consumption is approximately 0.5 ZJ.

With power systems that are, at best, in the low-petajoule range, I highly doubt that the Imperium's point-defense turrets and common battery weapons - or even their heavier lance weapons - are individually in the high exajoule (exajoule = 1000x petajoules) or low zettajoule (zettajoule = 1000000x petajoules) range, as each individual weapon would then require several thousands of the best physically possible reactors (and the attendant cooling systems, fuel systems, and so on) to power it.

As such, I maintain that, in the absence of explicit and canon statements to the contrary, 40K's point-defense and common battery weapons are likely in the megajoule to low-gigajoule range, with common lance weapons being in the high-gigajoule to high-terajoule (or even low-petajoule) range.

Finally: the wiki article on Void Shields references Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse, as well as the novels Titanicus (by Dan Abnett) and Throne of Lies (by Aaron Dembski-Bowden), and is quite clear on how Void Shields are effective against energy weapons (until they overload and shut down) and other EM effects, but useless against "close combat assaults or other vehicles moving through them to then attack the shielded vehicle or vessel", which would be why they need the point-defense turrets to deal with fighters and torpedoes (as stated in the general article about the Imperial Navy).

Do you have any canon statements/sources or real-world science that explicitly contradicts anything in this post, or the previous one (which I've since edited to include more links and additional information from the wiki)?

Edited by Strum Wealh, 23 February 2012 - 12:38 PM.

[Jack Gammel]

I'm not going to waste the space and quote Strum's last couple of posts. Just wanted to thank him for taking the trouble of collecting and posting his research. I sure as heck wasn't going to do it. Don't have the time, even for 40k.

Gotta go write more term papers...they never end.

Edited by Jack Gammel, 23 February 2012 - 12:46 PM.

[Catamount]

Strum Wealh, later on, perhaps one of us could take the time to figure out how large a fusion reaction it would take to generate "20 digit" energy. Ilithi and I went over that once before in regards to Halo (showing that Cairo station couldn't fire S-MAC rounds at the energies claimed by some sources).

GDL Rahsan, on 23 February 2012 - 12:06 PM, said:

I think I remember this episode it was "Who Mourns of Morn?" right?

And the exchange if I remeber went like this:

Quark: Someone's extracted all the latinum ! There's nothing here but worthless gold!
Odo: And it's all yours.
Quark: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This is the right episode am I right?

Oh yes

That episode was just great. Morn had actually eaten all the latinum; he figured it was the only safe place to store it

GDL Rahsan, on 23 February 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

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.

You don't have to guess, Ili and I already did the legwork there very early in the thread, by actually figuring out the rough volume of a Leman Russ and a large Imperium warship, and then just "scaling up" the Leman Russ gun.

We got figures more or less in line with what Strum Wealh is estimating.

Let me go back and see if I can pull up the calculation.

Edited by Catamount, 23 February 2012 - 02:24 PM.

[Catamount]

AHA, here it is:

Catamount, on 21 December 2011 - 04:59 PM, said:

Except that a single photon torpedo WOULD CRACK A BATTLESHIP IN HALF. I'm sorry for the caps, but it's hard to overemphasize this.


Let me run through how Ilithi and I figured that, It's not that hard to roughly determine.

The Leman Russ is the only thing I'm aware of which has an actual energy output given, so it's usually the basis for comparison I start with.


Lasguns/lascannons are considered fairly advanced weapons in the Imperium, so you have a large, tank-mounted advanced weapon, and its output is "triple-digit megajoules", according to the 40k wiki (which cites numerous "Imperial Armour" works). Now that could technically mean 100-999MJ, but they didn't say "hundreds", they said "triple digit", as if it was notable that it was actually getting up into that range, so it sounds like low hundreds, which would also keep it from having absurdly long recharges being powered only by an internal combustion engine (an M1 Abrams engine is only capable of 1120kw, and its sizable).


So let's assume 200MJ. Now, that lascannon isn't the primary armament, but it's at least as big, relative to the tank (and probably a good deal bigger, if you consider internals) than the reall big externally mounted guns on the Retribution Class Battleship are relative to that whole vessel.


so if we just get a rough size comparison of the tank to the battleship, we can get an idea of how powerful a scaled-up lascannon would be. The Lehman Russ is apparently 7.08m long by 4.86m wide, by 4.42m tall. The Retribution Class is harder to precisely determine, because a lot of small structures jet off very far from the main hull to make it appear much taller/wider than it really is. However, some rough estimates can be made without using a model and ray-tracing software (or buying a model and submerging it in water... "Eureka!" ).

The Length is pretty solidly 4750m (http://4.bp.blogspot...ShipClasses.jpg), and using that and other pictures, we got figures of 700m tall for most of the slender main hull, but up to ~2200m including the small bridge section and ventral protrusions. As most of the ship consists of the former, small figure, we subjectively decided on 900m tall, overall. Using a similar subjective process for width, we examined how much of the ship consisted of the narrow, ~500m main hull, and the 1500m wide small protrusions, and decided on a width of 700m.



So, a Retribution class is very roughly ~670 times longer, ~200 times taller, and ~150 times wider. So if we take our 200MJ figure, and multiply it by (670*200*150), then that lascannon scaled up by the tank-battleship size difference you'd get a weapon with an output of... *drumroll*... 4.02 Petajoules.

Yes, anti-climactic, isn't it?


For comparison, a standard photon torpedo is 64 megatons, or a bit larger than the Tsar Bomba. How much energy is 64Mt TNT equivalence? Just a hair shy of 270PJ.


So a single photon torpedo would outstrip our hypothetical scaled-up lascannon by about sixty seven times, and again, Lascannons are supposed to be fairly advanced, high-yield pound-for-pound weapons for the Imperium of Man, so to even compete with a single photon torpedo, that battleship would need a weapon that's, pound for pound, two orders of magnitude better than one of the most sophisticated weapons fielded by the Imperium.

So, provided those huge externally mounted guns on the Retribution Class (which are far bigger in volume than the "main batteries" it looks like) could kill a Retribution Class, in less than 67 shots, well, in the words of William Riker, "One photon torpedo ought to do it".


In short, a Miranda class, long the running joke among Trek fans for pathetic ships (because they're ancient by Federation standards, really small, and constantly get mission killed by weak assaults), by the indication of the power output figure we have for Imperium weaponry, would be able to absolutely cream the premier ship of the line of the Imperium of Man, without breaking a sweat. It wouldn't even have to unload both forward torpedo tubes to do it!


By contrast, a Galaxy class is capable of unloading no less than 10 torpedoes per fore and aft tube simultaneously , with many more on hot standby (afaik, it fired 12-13 at the Husnock warship in TNG The Survivors in two bursts of 6 or 7, and nearly comparable numbers on other occasions), and it has absolutely massive phaser arrays that are clearly capable of outputting far more energy than a single photon torpedo, in rather rapid shots (hence why it's being matched up with a 10-shot torp launcher).


The UFP wouldn't even have to give the Imperium targets to fire back at; they could fight solely from FTL if they felt like it.



It's really hard to properly convey just how big the technological gap seems to be here. The former Imperium of Man might have presented a real threat to the UFP; they might have even been able to handily beat the UFP, but the 40k Imperium, and its absurd preoccupation with mystic voodoo nonsense, and rejection of scientific knowledge as "dangerous and abhorrent", is just no match for a science-based society, in a science fiction franchise.

So Strum Wealh figured in Imperium weapons capping out at low-petajoule outputs, and the number I get from scaling up the Leman Russ comes to exactly that (4.02PJ), using figuring that relies on entirely different assumptions, and mind you, that's for a gun as large relative to a battleship as the lascannon is relative to the Leman Russ, so we're talking about a huge ship-mounted weapon needed to achieve that.




The smaller normal batteries are probably therefore in the gigajoule or very low terrajoule range.


A lot of races in a lot of franchises are really powerful, but I'm just not seeing the Imperium of Man as being a top contender here, and you know what? We should be glad, because they're basically a petty, evil, willfully ignorant, backward society of xenophobic, oppressive, genocidal, theocratic thugs.


As Ilithi once said, not only would the Federation probably curb-stomp the Imperium, but we should cheer them on to do it. Actually, most of the most powerful races in science fiction are fairly decent, altruistic races. The Ancients in Stargate, for instance, spanned at least two galaxies (and the Asgard spanned at least three), and are pretty much as advanced as any other race ever mentioned here. At their peak, either would wipe, say, the Federation, clean off the map, yet both are generally altruistic good-guys. I just find that to be interesting, that the most powerful races are also generally the least petty... mostly (the Borg are a different matter entirely)

Edited by Catamount, 23 February 2012 - 02:43 PM.

[Kartr]

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

...

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.

The thing is I actually know how fusion, fission and M/AM reactions work and I have looked it up. Here's the rub, the way it works in real life only applies if it's backed up by what's seen on screen. The capabilities described and shown in any universe being discussed trumps what it "should" do. For example Turbolasers are not lasers because they do not behave like lasers. So its not as simple as saying "100 times more energy than a fusion powered ship" if the fusion powered ship is described or seen doing things that couldn't be done on fusion power, and/or are more powerful than M/AM powered ships, then the "fusion" powered vessels are more powerful regardless of what our knowledge of fusion and antimatter would predict.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

Here's the problem, if a fusion powered starship fires 80 megaton torpedoes and is capable of taking 10 hits from them before its shields collapse (40 megatons of "shield damage") then by your reasoning a Star Trek vessel of the same mass/volume should be able to absorb 4,000 megatons or 4 gigatons of shield damage. Which we know they can't.

Another interesting fact is that WH40K battleships are from 6-8km long (according to the wiki), being roughly rectangular with a height of 1/5th the length and a width of 1/10th (estimated from pictures) means they have a volume of anywhere from 4.3 cubic km to 10.2 cubic km while the Sovereign if it were rectangular would have a volume of 0.015 cubic km. Which means the smaller Imperium battleships have 287 times the volume of a rectangle with the Sovereign's dimensions. Even if we assume that "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," then an Imperium battleship should still be worth 3 Federation battleships.

This completely ignores the fact that the Nova Cannon fires a shell 50m in diameter that creates an explosion the size of a small planet (Mercury has a radius of just less than 2,500km) and capable of destroying a light cruiser (approximate volume of 0.02 cubic km) and crippling a battleship. Considering that an Imperium battleship is (by your reasoning) 3 times as powerful as a Federation battleship there's no reason to believe it would be any more capable of surviving that damage without being horribly crippled.

Also a blast of that force and magnitude is considerably larger than simple fusion/fission weapons should be capable of correct? (honestly asking here) And its quite a bit larger than even Warp core breaches we've seen. Which leads me to believe that the Imperium has more at its disposal than just fusion.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

And 38 thousand years from now a group that can create a shell capable of unleashing an explosion the size of a small planet, and destroy 0.02 cubic km warship with a single shot isn't going to be able to make something smaller? Btw those numbers you're throwing around are the theoretical maximums and assume that every single particle and anti-particle react with each other. Second you have to halve the numbers to get the actual damage dealt to a target by the photon torpedo. So absolute maxium damage done to a target is 21-32 megatons and that is wildly optimistic considering some of the reactants are going to get flung away without reacting.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

I think you're radically overstating the capabilities of the Federation to scale up its industrial capacity. We know that the Federation still has to assemble its ships in shipyards. This means that while you might be able to simply use replicators and holodecks to create the parts you still only have a handful of shipyards at which to assemble them. Which means most of the parts made in those industrial replicators and holofactories are going to go to waste without the shipyards to assemble them. Oh and Picard said in First Contact that the Federation is made up of 150 worlds. Does that mean 150 worlds total, or are there only 150 worlds with enough infrastructure to be worth mentioning?

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

Actually they have, photon torpedoes are shielded by force fields. Now while drones may not have faced weaponized forcefields Borg Cubes have and have adapted to them. Otherwise photon torpedoes would fly right through Cube shielding the way the force field bullets did. So the Collective has faced similar weapons before.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

Well considering the most common hand weapons have probably the worst ergonomics and lack any sort of aiming mechanism and that the phaser compression rifles are barely any better I'm not inclined to credit the Federation with much sense when it comes to small arms.

[Kartr]

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

So what you're saying is: that due to the power cost, the advanced replicator technology available on most planets and forms the basis of your argument that the Federation can rapidly increase their industrial capability is, less efficient and more energy intensive than simply mining the materials you need.

Also according to DS9 Tech Manual replicators work on the molecular level and transporters work on the sub-atomic level. So while Trek can replicate things on the sub-atomic level and actually do it every time they kill and clone someone via transporter travel, replicators do not build things on the sub-atomic scale. Rather they work on the atomic scale combining atoms to form molecules and combining molecules to create final products. Replicators do not take protons, neutrons and electrons and combine them to create specific atoms.

This is another reason simply having replicators on every planet doesn't mean you can just crank out the parts and assemble them in a hanger or spaced dock, without having the base metals and non-metals you need.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

However it can be radically overstated. Replicators draw lots of energy true, energy that is most likely supplied by anti-matter, anti-matter that is a valuable fuel for warships. While simpler methods extrapolated from that which is used today would require much much less energy and conserve anti-matter for use as fuel for the warships.

Also replicators, according to DS9 Tech Manual cannot create elements, but rather need elements to create molecules. So if you don't have any Duranium (what is duranium?) you can't use a replicator to create duranium. If you have duranium then you can use the replicator as a rapid prototyping machine and create your duranium parts.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

Replicators need two things to operate: energy and the right kind of atoms in sufficient mass. So I'll buy the fact that there's still money. There's only so much energy generated at any given second and there's only so much of any given element in stockpiles at any one time. So it only makes sense that there would be a sort of currency based on the power generation of the area (probably planet based) and the amount of each element available in stock pile.

Any time you went to a new area (planet or ship) you'd automatically get an allowance based on the current energy generation and stockpiles minus anything kept in reserve for government/military/emergency use divided by the population. Some sort of smart card/chip that interfaced with customs/ship/government networks would note the allowance ballance on the card and any "purchase" would be automatically deducted creating a society where the need to work for a living and the need to think about money wouldn't exist. Even purchases at a restruant like Sisko's wouldn't really be money changing hands. The items on the menu would have a value based on the cost to replicate them or ingredients which would be deducted from the overall total of resources rather than being credited to Sisko's account, since the energy and material used to create the items would no longer exist in the communal pool of resources.

Moneyless yes, free market, not so much.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

It doesn't matter if a planet has just as many industrial replicators as Utopia Planetia Fleet Yards or the Antares Fleet Yards, it still wouldn't be able to create ships without the yard facilities to assemble the components in. It wouldn't be able create the components unless it has a supply of the right kind of materials. Yes you could create facilities capable of creating components through rapid prototyping fairly easily thanks to the industrial replicators, but they have to have a supply of the metals and non-metals needed to make the component or you just have a bunch of fancy rapid prototypers sitting idle.

So the industrial capacity and its ability to scale up is based on the supply of materials in the Federation, the ability to transport those materials and the ability to assemble components. Any one world can only contribute as much as the materials it has available regardless of how many industrial replicators it has. Even then you're restricted by how many shipyards you have, when talking about ship construction, or factories when talking about vehicle/shuttle/small arms production and training grounds/instructors when talking about personel.

And considering that ESD was pressed into service as a shipyard during the Dominion war, despite the fact it's more of a drydock not a full shipyard, means that the Federation has a limited number of shipyards on it's 150 (major?) planets and that it can't scale its production as quickly or easily as you're implying.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

Yes I understand the time savings that a system that combines refining with rapid prototyping would allow for. However the fact that replicators require the same amount of raw metal x as there is metal x in the finished product, limits the usefulness to your supplies of metal x. Meaning the Federation's ability to scale its industry isn't based on how many replicators it can deploy/has, but rather on the volume of critical materials it mines and its ability to ship them from the mines to the factories and the finished components from the factories to the shipyards.

So while replicators make the actual production of parts easier and faster, they cannot help the Federation ramp up it's production further than it's mining operations can extract materials and it's transport infrastructure can support, or the volume of construction that can be supported by the shipyards.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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

That assumes that every last particle is going to collide with every last anti-particle once the explosion starts. Invariably some particles and anti-particles are going to get flung away from the explosion and never interact, which will reduce the total yield of the explosion. Secondly only half the energy at best is going to strike the target so the effective yield is less than 32megatons.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

(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).

Yield is explosive force that results from the detonation of a charge. The charge would be the 3kg of M/AM and the yield would be the 64MT of energy released. Also 3kg of M/AM times the energy per unit mass of M/AM of 9e16 J/kg would result in a theoretical maximum of 2.7e17 Joules or roughly 64.5 Megatons. Which is just over a tenth of your claim for theoretical maximum.

For a 500MT warhead the torpedo would need over 11.6kg of Anti-Matter and 11.6kg of Matter for a total payload of over 23kg.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

The Imperium uses weapons that dwarf the firepower of photon torpedoes by a sigificant amount. True they are large shells that can only be fired from the largest ships. However if you only need a shell that's 50m in diameter to make an explosion who's effective radius is close to or greater than 2000km and can destroy kilometer long warships massing significantly more than Federation warships, with considerably more volume than a Federation warship, it stands to reason that the same technology scaled down could achive impressive results? Couldn't a shell with a 0.5m diameter create a similarly devastating explosion with a 20km radius?

As for that thread you linked I looked at it and there were lots of nice big figures, but the only process for how they were reached was this line: "when analyzed using the common system that Ilithi, Catamount, myself, and several others recognize as logical." What is the process? Why isn't it spelled out so everyone can determine if it's "logical" or if there are flaws that might need to be adressed? Until you show the process the conclusions reached mean nothing.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

The Roman Empire was founded as a Republic, what it started as and what it became are two completely different things. The UFP may have been founded out of a war, it's older organizations and personnel may consider themselves to be military, that doesn't mean the current generation does.

The Federation is a bunch of pacifist weenies because they refuse to acknowledge that Starfleet is a military organization. Starfleet's role is to expand the Federations influence, project strength and protect it's intrests, the roles of any military. They are weenies because the refuse to acknowledge the truth of this despite the fact that Starfleet defends the Federation from any and all enemies, routinely projects strength by patroling neutral zones and expands the UFP's influence. Even simple exploratory missions project Federation strength and expand the UFP's influence through the presence of Starfleet vessels and their personnel.

Instead they insist that the obviously military organization is nothing more than an organization dedicated to scientific exploration. Completely ignoring the fact that Starfleet acts and is the military arm of the UFP, which conducts exploration as one of its other jobs in times of peace. Also ignoring the fact that all organisms are thrust into conflict with their surroundings and other organisms and must understand that all are in competition for finite resources and the furthering of the propagtion and life of the organism.

The pursuit of peaceful coexistance is something I applaud and that isn't why I call them pacifist weenies. The reason I call them pacifist weenies is because they refuse to acknowledge that they have a military and just like any organism are in a struggle for survival, lest they be destroyed by something stronger. Instead they delude themselves into thinking that they are more enlightened and above the need to struggle for dominance and resources. This arrogance was one of the things Q tries to show Picard, and its been a while but, I belive that was the underlying lesson in the Borg. Something the Federation has to struggle against, something that brings out the "unenlightened" emotions of anger and hatred in Picard, something to bring they hypocrisy of enlightenment into view.

The day the Federation mans up and acknowledges that they are in a struggle against the universe and that their "enlightenment" is no more than an affectation brought about by the plenty they enjoy. When they acknowledge the truth that Starfleet is a military organization who's primary roles are the projection of power, the spreading of UFP influence and the defense of UFP intrests. Then I will no longer consider them pacifist weenies.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

You say they are more than just warships, which means that you know that they are warships. The primary roles of Starfleet are military in nature: defense of the UFP and its intrests, projecting power (example patrolling the neutral zone), and expanding the UFP's influence. Exploration is a means of projecting power and expanding influence, and in the past has often been carried out by warships. For example Captain Cook was an officer of the Royal Navy, and the Endeavour was a Royal Navy warship.

Some vessels like the Oberth are arguably not warships, they're primarily built for non-combat functions.
Non-combat vessels are slower, less manouverable, and usually are not designed to carry weapons. Vessels like the Constitution, Galaxy and the Sovereign are designed to be able to counter threats that face the UFP. As such they are designed as warships first, with speed, firepower, agility and strong defenses, which is why Worf referred to the Ent-D as a battleship on one occasion. However they're expected to conduct long range missions as well as the task of defending the Federation, therefore they are equipped with facilities that allow them to analyze problems and anomalies, and then fabricate solutions while far from support facilities. Because they're equipped with the equipment to conduct long range exploration and scientific discovery, and see more time in a peaceful exploration role, leads people to forget or ignore the fact that these vessels are the backbone of the military organization that defends the UFP and are designed to act as battleships.

Vessels like the Akira and Defiant are also designed to defend the UFP from threats and to project power. However they're not expected to operate on long range missions and so do not need the extensive facilities that are necessary for ships that cannot rely on nearby starbases and science vessels for support.

[Kartr]

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

/shudder ST:V the movie that shouldn't have existed and proof that time travel is impossible, otherwise someone in the future would've gone back in time and kept it from happening.

More serious note home made guns are a far cry from modern magazine fed rifles and belt fed machineguns with AP rounds.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

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.

Actually every time I went on post in Iraq I was wearing combat gear. Stateside I still had a full issue of gear ready to go and if I'd been under-equipped or supplied that would mean I didn't have as much ammunition or food as necessary, not that I didn't have my body armor. Even MP's have an issue of body armor, and while I was on guard duty in the states we had to have body armor and helmets ready to grab if we got a call. One night we had a drunk guy try and get into the base armory and then wander off, me and another Marine had to get into our flack jackets and helmets before running off after him.

If Starfleet has the capability to issue body armor and personal shields to their people, then either the people who are in combat and don't have it are fools for leaving their gear behind. Or Starfleet is foolish for not issuing every member body armor and shields when they get to their command. Any time they beamed on to an unknown planet, or pursued an alien enemy into hostile conditions was a point in time when they should've been wearing body armor and or shields. The fact that they almost never have them when beaming into unknown or potentially hostile situations speaks very poorly of Starfleet and its people.

ilithi dragon, on 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

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.

Trek phaser weapons (and disruptor weapons) work on NDF principles as you yourself have stated and not direct energy transfer. So a shield designed to stop NDF is unlikely to be as effective as a weapon that simply imparts a large amount of heat or kinetic energy.

Also due to the NDF effects of phasers they're less effective the more dense an object gets. So the armor made from elements with high atomic numbers is going to be very effective against phasers. After all while phasers can easily disintigrate carbon based life forms, they have trouble against silicon based life forms. Silicon having over twice the number of protons and over twice the mass. Imagine what even higher atomic number materials will do to the NDF effects.

[Zakatak]

Best idea for a spaceship ever.

"Spacetime airfoils/spacefoils". Basically some kind of material that makes spacetime behave like something made of matter when touched. So you could put ailerons, rudders, elevators, and propellers on a spacecraft! It would be cool for some mega-retro sci-fi. P-51 Mustangs flying around in a nebula shooting their .50cal antiproton coilguns at 5% of lightspeed. With FTL aircraft carriers that look like the USS Kittyhawk.

THAT versus Battlestar Galactica. Go!

Edited by Zakatak, 23 February 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[Zakatak]

Catamount, on 23 February 2012 - 02:26 PM, said:

The Ancients in Stargate, for instance, spanned at least two galaxies (and the Asgard spanned at least three), and are pretty much as advanced as any other race ever mentioned here. At their peak, either would wipe, say, the Federation, clean off the map, yet both are generally altruistic good-guys. I just find that to be interesting, that the most powerful races are also generally the least petty... mostly (the Borg are a different matter entirely)

Actually the Ancients had real estate on, at the absolute minimum.
- Alteran
- Milky Way
- Ida
- Kaliam
- Pegasus

Ida is 4 million LY from here, and that is considered "close" compared to the Alteran galaxy. Assuming that any 8th chevron can be locked, that would make it 39 galaxies they have occupied. If the other 38 possible locks on the 9th chevron lead to other clusters, well, you do the math. Seedships have been travelled tens of billions of lightyears, over the course of 50 million years nonstop to pave way for Destiny. With technology that powerful, and the Ancients not ascending for another 40 million years, it is safe to say that they have colonized thousands of galaxies.

Pretty kickass.

Edited by Zakatak, 23 February 2012 - 04:17 PM.

[Kartr]

Whooo this thread is going by too fast to keep up it seems like. Throw in engineering homework and math homework and it's even worse.

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

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).

Ironically they claim to have received emailed death threats from "rabid trekkies." As for the superlaser page that doesn't have much bearing on the NDF and Phaser pages and I'd be interested in your opinion on their contents.

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

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.

Actually more dense materials are not going to be more resistant to being melted. Melting has to do with heat capacity and most dense metals are easier to melt than lighter materials. For example it's much easier to melt lead(327.5C) than it is iron(1538C) and iron(1538C) is easier to melt than carbon(3550C).

How is it possible to know whether or not the tritanium and duranium didn't have an effect? My knowledge comes from what I read in the NDF and Phaser pages the rate at which the lighter elements on the Founder homeworlds crust were destroyed was much faster and the amount destroyed by the NDF effects was much greater than that of the Borg cube.

[Jack Gammel]

Catamount, on 23 February 2012 - 02:26 PM, said:

A lot of races in a lot of franchises are really powerful, but I'm just not seeing the Imperium of Man as being a top contender here, and you know what? We should be glad, because they're basically a petty, evil, willfully ignorant, backward society of xenophobic, oppressive, genocidal, theocratic thugs.


As Ilithi once said, not only would the Federation probably curb-stomp the Imperium, but we should cheer them on to do it. Actually, most of the most powerful races in science fiction are fairly decent, altruistic races. The Ancients in Stargate, for instance, spanned at least two galaxies (and the Asgard spanned at least three), and are pretty much as advanced as any other race ever mentioned here. At their peak, either would wipe, say, the Federation, clean off the map, yet both are generally altruistic good-guys. I just find that to be interesting, that the most powerful races are also generally the least petty... mostly (the Borg are a different matter entirely)

But that's the whole point of 40k. Humanity went into space and couldn't handle what they found. They tried. Instead of finding altruistic Vulcans to guide them along, they found real demons that wanted to eat their souls, and the goal became basic survival. It's fundamentally different from the Federation and Trek in every respect. I don't think that's a positive or negative for either franchise. It's just the way it is.

While the Geller Field does work, it does not always work. The nature of the Warp means that the Immaterium constantly tests--with a psuedo-sentient purpose--the boundaries of the Field, and it can get through. I have absolutely no doubt that the Federation could recreate a similar technology (though I take some issue with Trek Subspace~40k Immaterium) the nature of the 40k franchise's Warp would mean IMO that at the very least the Federation would have similar issues with whatever analog technology they created (or they'd just modulate the shields?). That assumes that the Federation even wanted to go into Warpspace.

Furthermore, its been mentioned many times that the Federation would be able to easily invent anything they needed (i.e. Geller Fields) and I agree. However, I want to point out that the IoM does have the Adeptus Mechanicus. They are certainly not as efficent as Federation scientists (they don't have to finish their research in 15-20 min.), but it does bother me a little that there seems to be an assumption that the IoM could not also reverse-engineer anything. The Adeptus Mechanicus does this all the time with the xenos technology they encounter (or at least try to), but as I stated before in a previous post, they tend to keep this kind of tech for themselves. After all, the IoM navy does ok with what they have, and because the Imperium does not possess replicator technology, and their ftl communications are subject to the same vagaries of the Warp as their ftl ship technology, introducing brand new technology across the entirety of human controlled space is prohibitive. Obviously, this is a weakness, but I also kind of like it. It feels more real to me.

Pure science aside, the IoM has been doing what they've been doing for 10,000 years, and they've been able to successfully hold their territory against all their enemies regardless of their technological weaknesses. The Necrons at the very least must have technology similar to Trek as they are capable of doing very similar things, and since the Eldar were created specifically to fight the Necrons (which they were successful at) I think it would be safe to assume that their technology, which is also far more advanced than IoM, must be similar in capabilites. Of course, Eldar technology is based so heavily on their psychic abilities that quantifying any of it would be very difficult. I should note here that I have not read the new Necron codex, so it's possible that fluff has been introduced which I am not aware of which could change my premise.

While I would not go so far as to disparage the Federation as cowards, I do understand where that feeling comes from. I love Orginal Series and DS9, but I don't watch much NextGen and Voyager specifically because I end up screaming at the screen too much. The Borg were such a great enemy. They were actually evil. The Federation couldn't talk with them, they had to fight them, and they were at a significant disadvantage in that arena. Then "I, Borg" aired. I think the series later dealt with this episode by claiming that the Enterprise couldn't have really killed all the Borg, but the fact remains that Picard refused to use an opportunity to save billions of lives because it didn't feel right. Then there's Janeway. My roommate is a rabid Voyager fan and she loves Janeway, so she can never know I said this, but if I had been on Voyager I would have shot Janeway within a week and assumed command. She constantly puts others before her crew (kind of the whole premise of the show). Then she decides that she actually doesn't care anymore and pulls a Dr. Who on the Borg. Gosh...I really liked the Borg.

Even DS9 has a bit of this. I love that show, Garrek, and Section 31, but even in DS9 you find command level personnel who make bizarre decisions. I like Sisko, but the Maquis episodes made me hate him a little.

I'm just venting, but I can appreciate the sentiment that the Federation doesn't have any clue what the IoM deals with on a regular basis. In Trek most alien races are genuinely reasonable. They look pretty human, act a lot like humans, and they mostly just want to make a living and provide for themselves and their families. There are notable exceptions (did I mention that I loved the Borg pre-"I, Borg" and Voyager?), but the average alien seems to be pretty humanoid with comprehensible goals and a willingness to conduct diplomacy. The closest species to that ideal in 40k are the Tau, and the Tau have the benefit of not having souls. They produce no Warp signatures, have no psykers, and barely have to worry about the Immaterium. It helps that the Tau Empire exists on the exact opposite side of the galaxy from the Eye of Terror. Every other alien species in 40k is just that: alien. The Orks don't care. They just want to fight. If they negotiate at all its because they think its funny. The Eldar are the closest species to Humans, but even they experience a hightened reality which could drive a Human insane. The Tyranids don't talk at all. They just eat. There's even an alien species that treats all negotiations like theater (they believe that their wars with other species are essentially a giant play-they fight other species because they're trying to be polite). The list goes on, and the IoM has been fighting them far longer than the Federation has even been in existance. They've made terrible sacrifices to survive, but they have survived.

Like I said, I'm just venting a little. Maybe the Federation could defeat the IoM, but then they would also be in a position where they would have to wipe out at least 4 other species before they would be safe (Orks, Tyranids, Necrons, Dark Eldar), and then they would have to handle Chaos and the issues of possession etc. Obviously, there are elements in the Federation willing to do this (and the Klingons would just LOVE the Orks) like Section 31, but these elements are not supported or condoned by the Federation.

Would I want to live in the 40k universe? Absolutely not. Star Trek all the way. They just are what they are.

Edit: I know there are threads on the internet about this, and this issue might have already been addressed in this thread. But I'm just wondering, why do Trek cargo crates and ambient pipes seem to be made of pure anti-phaser material?

Edited by Jack Gammel, 23 February 2012 - 08:49 PM.

[Jack Gammel]

Zakatak, on 23 February 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

Best idea for a spaceship ever.

"Spacetime airfoils/spacefoils". Basically some kind of material that makes spacetime behave like something made of matter when touched. So you could put ailerons, rudders, elevators, and propellers on a spacecraft! It would be cool for some mega-retro sci-fi. P-51 Mustangs flying around in a nebula shooting their .50cal antiproton coilguns at 5% of lightspeed. With FTL aircraft carriers that look like the USS Kittyhawk.

THAT versus Battlestar Galactica. Go!

You should read Starslip. The airfoil concept is part of their ftl drive. Its also a great webcomic.

[Zakatak]

EDIT: fixed my numbers, to not contradict the HORNET Mine being "enough"

I was looking at Halo again in hope of having a non-WH40k conversation piece (I know ******* nothing about it). The wiki seemed... inconsistent. Frigates having 270TJ cannons and the Orbital Platforms having 10ZJ cannons (30km/s and 600 tons vs. 120'000km/s and 3000 tons, respectively). So I tried changing the km/s number in to m/s, assuming it was a mistype, and got around 1.1 megatons for orbital platforms, and 64.5kt for ships. Sounded just right, but there was one problem...

HORNET mines are 30 megaton devices and are generally "just barely enough" to destroy a CCS Battlecruiser (most common Covy ship). Archer missiles are stated to require "hundreds of missiles to destroy a ship", and because I am an assuming ******* who likes multiples of ten, I went with 300 missiles as a guess. So each Archer would be 100 kilotons each (sounds quite right, as Archer ports have nuclear warnings on the launch doors). A UNSC Destroyer/Frigate carries 780 of these bad boys, which is 78 megatons of power, according to my absolutely flawless and indisputable assumptions.

But this is what gets me. The MAC cannon was put into greater use because they were "better" against Covy shields then Archer missiles which were "useless", despite being 64.5kt and taking over a full freaking minute to chamber a slug, while Archers can be spammed en masse and having range of couple light seconds (I read that somewhere! I know it!) while a half-power MAC trucks along at a pathetic 30km/s. The UNSC appears to be able to work magic with fusion (possibly by replacing electrons with muons which makes the reaction 217 times more awesome), with NOVA Bombs (a fundamentally fusion device) having a moon-cracking yield of 1 PETATON, as well as having enough power to create singularities which rip a hole in spacetime (that is how they enter Slipspace FYI). If it takes them more then a minute to charge a MAC cannon, then it has got to be more then 64.5kt. So here is what I did.

Now official (obviously) Halo yields
-30'000m/s? Mistype! It is now 300'000m/s, deal with it.
-120'000km/s? Mistype! It is now 1200'000m/s, deal with it.
-Ship MAC: 27 Petajoules, or 6.1 megatons, oh yeah! (frigates carry 1, cruisers/destroyers carry 2, carriers carry 4)
-Station MAC: 2.16 Exojoules, or 516 megatons, oh yeah! (only 1 cannon)

So those are your new comparison numbers. I actually did a less presumptious estimate on FTL speeds, circa 2552.
-Forerunner: 897'000c < can slow/quicken time in slipspace
-Covenant: 333'000c < accurate to an atom
-Human (Halycon-cruiser): 8650c < accurate to a ~5 lightseconds
-Human (UNSC Infinity): 315'000c < accurate to a kilometer
-Human (Civilian): 1100c < only outside of gravity wells

Also, regarding Titanium-A armor plating. It sounds weak because it sounds like... is like... a real element (unlike duranium/tritanium/trinium). But it is said to be strengthened at the "molecular level". This means alot more then you think. Compare graphite and graphene. Uses the same materials. Graphite is on the end of your pencil, and can be crushed into fine dust just by pushing on it with a half your strength. Graphene is carbon atoms arranged in perfect hexes, and is so strong that 10 micrometers of it could hold 3 metric tons (a massive male elephant). With the right manufacturing, Titanium-A could be as good as ST magic metals.

I made a big boy post. Where can I buy my Intellectual Pants©?

Edited by Zakatak, 24 February 2012 - 01:06 AM.

[GDL Rahsan]

Sturm Wealth for the Graviton Pulsars being used on spaceships I got the info from the Imperial Navy page on the wiki I quote:

Quote

Weapons batteries usually are the primary armament for most warships. Since each battery consists of numerous ranks of individual weapons, whole sections of the starship's hull can be covered by gun ports, launcher systems, turrets and weapon housings. The weapons employed vary immensely: Plasma Projectors, close-range missile launchers, Laser Cannons, Rail Guns, Fusion Beamers and Graviton Pulsars have all been found on Imperial warships. These batteries fire in coordinated salvoes, to increase the chances to hit and the amount of damage done to a target.

Which I guess you have added after editing your previous post, but I think what the page actually meant that the Graviton Pulsars are actually found on the Mechnicus ships more often than the Imperial ships? I mean it is already canon that they keep all the "nice tech" for their armies and ships.

For the Imperial ship weapons being a more powerful versions that their ground counterpart I am sure I read it on the wiki somehwere let me go check to see if I have misread it, but if that's the case then , as in I misquoted the info, then my sincerent apologies

Finally for the void shields, I think my previous post was confusing what I was saying is that the void shields can stop a fast torpedoes but it just happens that most of those used are slow enough to pass throught, probably just the ones used by Chaos, orks and the Imperium, and it is stated that way on the Imperial Navy page again I quote:

Quote

Unlike weapons batteries and lances, torpedoes cannot be deflected by a ship's Void Shields -- most shields intercept incoming fire based on its speed. Torpedoes travel slowly enough (relatively speaking) that shields will not intercept them and they can pass through these powerful gravitic energy barriers unimpeded.

Quote

A lot of races in a lot of franchises are really powerful, but I'm just not seeing the Imperium of Man as being a top contender here, and you know what? We should be glad, because they're basically a petty, evil, willfully ignorant, backward society of xenophobic, oppressive, genocidal, theocratic thugs.


As Ilithi once said, not only would the Federation probably curb-stomp the Imperium, but we should cheer them on to do it. Actually, most of the most powerful races in science fiction are fairly decent, altruistic races. The Ancients in Stargate, for instance, spanned at least two galaxies (and the Asgard spanned at least three), and are pretty much as advanced as any other race ever mentioned here. At their peak, either would wipe, say, the Federation, clean off the map, yet both are generally altruistic good-guys. I just find that to be interesting, that the most powerful races are also generally the least petty... mostly (the Borg are a different matter entirely)

Well ironically this is why a lot of fans love the series the whole universe is a shade of Black vs Black. And seeing the Great Devourer fighting the legions of hell is just as common as seeing the brave heroic starfleet fighting the evil borg. And I am pretty sure I never stated that Imperium is on the level of the most powerful civilizations, the Imperium before the age of strife probably is but we will never know, you should also cut the Imperium some slack here. Yes, they are of that but you must feel some sympathy of how a once Glorious Empire that provided everything for it's citizens and could do miracles by their technology devolve into this state.

And if I recall the lore correctly after the first humans existed, during the stonge age, the Eldar even had a fancy to just exterminate them becuase they didn't like them, and it was from there the term Mon'Kiegh which means They who must be exterminated came from, after that when the Imperium went into space they met their unpleasent neighbours who just bashed on the United Human Stellar Confederation, the old name of the Human civilization, in the end most of those races were such a trivial threat that the humans decided to right non agression pacts with them isntead of just wiping them all out, and then of course came the war of the Men of Iron and the birth of Slaanesh which cut off the colonies off each other and led to the Age of Strife it was at that moment when the rest of the alien races broke the non agression treaties and either enslaved, killed, or whatever did to the human colonies nearby them. Then came the Age of the Imperium where the Emperor decided to exterminate religion and superstition ,he actually did it to starve chaos and kill it, and but even after what our dear alien races did it is said that some other aliens ,the ones who didn't wrong the humans of course those were exterminated, were welcomed into the Imperium of Man as allies and friends ,most of those races were said to have been killed during the Horus Heresy, and after that came the HH and the IoM start regressing even more in the next 10,000 years. You actually don't need any Federation to finish them off because now it is just a matter of time before the Imperium bite the dust, IF Games Workshop decides to move the plot that is.

[Bluey]

I think Starwars wins hands down cause have you ever seen an extended universe book of starwars about ships.So many details calculated and realistic interiors

[GDL Rahsan]

Actually if what Catamount said about the Author of that book being a fan of VS threads and wanted to see SW always on top then it is fair to say he just made up big numbers and related them to ships etc. But then again this is science FICTION which always means the writers come up with big numbers and pretty scientific words and create a universe and technology that is about it that's why we love those silly universes.That's why we love those franchise. A good example is the WH40K with their 2-8km ships, chainswords, titans etc. but then again as I stated eariler WH40K works more on the Rule of Cool and don't always try to give us technical info about it ((HOW CAN THE IMPERIUM MAINTAIN SUCH SHIPS?!))

So, sit here start discussing made up numbers and useless info and enjoy after all a universe winning on the other doesn't mean it is bad or anything

Edited by GDL Rahsan, 23 February 2012 - 11:37 PM.

[TheBossHammer]

Battleship Yamato. Period. Weapons typically have a maximum range of 100 to 300 MEGAMETERS, which is significantly longer than any other series in existence, and are capable of blowing right through even the toughest armor and shields with ease. The Shock Cannons themselves are completely ridiculous as is, but the Yamato's Uber-charged Wave Motion Gun in Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection is capable of bringing down a cascading black hole, defined in the movie as being unexplainable by science, and the fact that it blew a hole in the front of the ship be damned! Nothing in any universe can top that, and the only ones in the same ballpark are Robotech, Star Wars, 40k and Gundam.

Edited by TheBossHammer, 23 February 2012 - 11:41 PM.

[Zakatak]

Physics question, as we seem to have alot of physics majors in the house (warning, science content)...

Could muons (wiki it, super electrons) theoretically be used in aneutronic fusion (such a He3 + He3) to produce more energetic reactions? According to wikipedia, muon-catalyzed fusion allows particles to combine at room temperature, but would it necessarily be more energetic? If I had a MTF fusion plant, similar to the General Fusion Canada design, and heated it to 1.5 million degrees and threw in some X-reactant + Y-reactant; would replacing electrons with muons inside the chamber yield better results? Basically I am looking for a way to explain how to put a 40GW reactor in a 300 ton corvette that seems plausible by 2200, and combing He3 with itself seems impossible by that timeframe without the use of magiscience.

Wow, that is enough science to make me throw up. Regarding Battleship Yamoto, which I never heard of before prior... 300 megameters is 1 lightsecond, which Andromeda and TNG-era Trek take a dump on, but that is still pretty good and the weapons sound pretty awesome. Like the conventional "boat" looking design.

Edited by Zakatak, 24 February 2012 - 12:58 AM.