1189 replies to this topic

[Tarvitz]

Catamount, on 08 January 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

Tarvits, we've literally already addressed everything you've said, repeatedly, if sometimes implicitly.

If you want to make a coherent argument, you're not going to get it by comparing absurd bend-over-backward high Wars figures from Saxton's fan-**** ICS books that in no way correlate to non-EU Star Wars canon, to bend-over-backward low figures for Trek that in no way correlate to non-TM canon (which overrides TMs).

Such wonderful ignorance... You're talking to someone who is not only clearly vastly more familiar with the canons of these franchises than you, but has personally calculated everything from ship hull thickness to volume figures (which include getting figures that have, on occasion, shown ST-v-SW.net to highball or lowball volume figures, such as overestimating the Galaxy class), to calculating energy outputs based on observed instances of vaporization or destruction in general.

How childish, misspelling my screen-name to try and get a rise out of me. And I thought you were bad when you started throwing your weight around trying to prove your favourite series is better than all others. Don't get angry because someone brought up the fact another group is more powerful than yours on the most basic of levels when your own favourite franchise's stats consist of the same fan-****.

But if you really want to avoid using those books, let's take a look at things we see in the films and series shall we and make it even easier for Trek. Purely based upon on screen examples of events:

Planetary destruction:
Star Wars - Death Star blast (roughly 20 billion trillion megatons, ie- the number "two" followed by 22 zeroes). Planet blown apart at 5% of the speed of light. Even if we assume the shot was time-lapse photography (not that there's any reason to), the absolute lower limit is roughly 50 quadrillion megatons. Note that even if you scale this monster down by a factor of 10 million (to the volume of a Star Destroyer), you'd still have 5 billion megatons. More than a match for poor Enterprise.
Star Trek - 30-ship bombardment in "The Die is Cast" (surface-level explosions create fireballs in the megaton range at most, judging from fireball duration). No sub-orbital ejecta launched from planet's surface at all.

Asteroid destruction:
Star Wars: Jango Fett's seismic charges destroy asteroids in a radius of 5-10 km in AOTC.
Star Trek: according to Riker, it would take the entire photon torpedo payload to destroy a single 5km wide hollow asteroid in "Pegasus". In other words, it would take the entire payload of the Enterprise-D (a capital warship with a crew of a thousand) to equal just one of Jango Fett's seismic charges (a bounty hunter's weapon).

Combat Range:
Star Wars: in ROTJ, combat initially occurs at ranges of a few thousands kilometres, eventually closing to a few hundred kilometres ("point blank" according to Lando) until Rebel ships are within a few dozen kilometres of the Executor.
Star Trek: fleet actions in DS9 uniformly feature engagements at ranges of 5 km or less, just as they do in TNG's Klingon wars or Borg engagements. In "The Die is Cast", Sisko actually orders the Defiant to approach to 500 metres (while taking fire) before shooting at a Jem'Hadar attack ship, presumably due to some disadvantage incurred at longer range. The only long-ranged incidents involve stationary or near-stationary targets.

Space Travel:
Star Wars: travel from galactic core systems to outer rim systems ("halfway across the galaxy" as Amidala put it) is shown repeatedly in ANH, TPM, and AOTC. It is invariably same-day traffic, typically a few hours.
Star Trek: Voyager took 7 years to crawl across part of one quadrant of the galaxy, even with repeated assists from alien races, stolen technology, and even the occasional shove from a godlike being. Not hours ... years.

Even ignoring all your claims of fan-**** boosting the statistics, all your claims of authorship boosting stats to beyond EU levels, we still see Trek loses hands down even when based purely upon what is seen on screen.

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Please, don't come here, parrot the Wong et al clowns, and then toss an insult like this at someone who has done far more work in vs analyses then you probably ever will, at any point, in your entire life.

There are better ways you can start your time on these forums

And I have seen much more civil posts in a vs thread than this "Star Wars is a Cambellian tale of the kinds of God (erm, I mean, "destiny") elected "heroes" who were the agents of 6,000 years of human oppression.

40K is a story of a human civilization that tiptoed out of the muck, got a bloody nose, and crawled right back in (and so in lieu of actual stories of things that might be relevant to us, we're fed plot-induced deus ex machina crap, instead of actual stories)"
I've also seen casual fans who've only seen a handful of episodes of the science fiction series they're arguing for not be blinded by the level of bais and lack of research you've shown in this thread thus far.
Don't throw crap at people, declaring entire franchises to be utterly horrific while promoting your own then cry foul when someone does the same in retaliation.

How about some of those Star Trek stories you laud so highly? The racist one "Code of Honour" which has a purely black population living in poverty and treats them like Africans from a 1960s shlock film. How about "Dear Doctor" in which the captain and doctor opt to commit genocide on a mass scale and deem it the moral thing to do. How about the utterly moronic like "Spock's Brain", did you forget about all these? Try looking in a mirror rather than through windows before you start to try and criticise something.

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 02:43 PM, said:

The only reason I did not repeatedly bash my head against my desk at this statement is because I am too stiff and tired from splitting wood all day.

Tarvitz, you are not even trying to debate. You are trying to win an argument in as childish a manner as you possibly can. I have no interest in engaging in a preschool-level argument. I am here to engage in a civilized, mature, for-fun debate. If you want to argue like a pissed-off four-year-old and rehash things we have already beaten to death earlier in this thread, I don't have any desire to engage you.

I’m trying to debate in the exact way you and Cantamount seem to be, considering myself already to have won and looking down on every other series to the point of openly lobbing insults at them. You don’t like it, then perhaps certain people arguing for Trek should have acted with a little more civility earlier.

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If you can actually go through the effort of presenting your arguments in a civilized, mature manner, or better yet, actually go back through the thread and read all of our posts covering everything you've brought up and THEN put a civilized, mature post together, I'll bother responding to you.

Some of the fun being had seems to only be having is trying to promote your own series beyond others and throwing in crap when you get the chance. I also don’t see much maturity in the posts from some of the people I’m arguing against.

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As for your last sentence above, Catamount has already provided sufficient defense for me, but I just wanted to add that I know enough about Trek lore and technology that in my spare time at work, I write up overviews of starship design evolution from pre-ENT to late TNG, from memory. To accuse me of not knowing the lore of the franchises I'm debating is laughable.

It wasn’t Trek I was talking about, there’s something to be said for avoiding certain subjects in Trek episodes, it was Warhammer. The lack of knowledge and detail was utterly laughable especially the aspects of the Adeptus Astartes and Imperial Guard. What, were you getting the info through skimming through pages on the Warhammer wiki?

Edited by Tarvitz, 08 January 2012 - 04:12 PM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Tarvitz, on 08 January 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

How childish, misspelling my screen-name to try and get a rise out of me.

Actually, Catamount has a history of mispelling words, usually minor things like putting an s in instead of a z. Catamount's not trying to get a rise out of you, that's not how he (or I) debate. That's just how you're used to arguing on the internet, so you see it in every post made against you. That's why I'm not bothering to actually debate you, because anything I say will be interpreted as a personal attack against you and you will respond with copious amounts of poo-flinging. That's not why I'm here, it's not why Catamount is here, and it is probably not why most of the people reading this thread are here. Please, control yourself and try and address your fellow forum members in a calm, mature, civilized tone. Thank you.

[Tarvitz]

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 04:13 PM, said:

Actually, Catamount has a history of mispelling words, usually minor things like putting an s in instead of a z. Catamount's not trying to get a rise out of you, that's not how he (or I) debate. That's just how you're used to arguing on the internet, so you see it in every post made against you. That's why I'm not bothering to actually debate you, because anything I say will be interpreted as a personal attack against you and you will respond with copious amounts of poo-flinging. That's not why I'm here, it's not why Catamount is here, and it is probably not why most of the people reading this thread are here. Please, control yourself and try and address your fellow forum members in a calm, mature, civilized tone. Thank you.

If this is true then I apologise, but considering the "copious amounts of poo-flinging." quoted from him in my previous post alone I would not have put it past him. I'd also ask you to try and practice what you preach, for someone looking down on assumptions and insults you seem perfectly willing to make your own negative ones.

Edited by Tarvitz, 08 January 2012 - 04:17 PM.

[Catamount]

Tarvitz, you come on here, make a post out of nothing but thinly veiled insults and uncritically parroting talking points from vs sites, most or all of which we've already addressed earlier in the thread, which you apparently couldn't be bothered to read, then you follow up with progressively more petty poo flinging, and then when you're called out on it, you accuse others of being immature and adversarial?

Give me a break.


You want to have a discussion? Great. We like discussions. Please at least glance through some of the previous discussion so we don't have to repeat what's already been said. If you want to dispute a specific point, or bring up a point that has not been addressed, feel free to.


If all you're instead going to do is charge in here, and on some of your very first posts start throwing around the types of posts that have made up your time in this thread thus far, then I don't really think you're worth having a discussion with.


If you do want to have a discussion, then please bring up something of substance, that hasn't already been addressed, and don't fill your posts with "OMG you mispelled a letter in my name!!!1!".



We've had plenty of civil discussion in here, if you want to contribute something new to them, great. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Edited by Catamount, 08 January 2012 - 04:31 PM.

[Mason Grimm]

Children!!!!! Behave!!!!

Back on the topic at hand please.

Zakatak, on 08 January 2012 - 02:40 PM, said:

I think in a 1-on-1, Stargate really has is a top contender. The BC-304/O'Neill/Hive/Ori Warship is a match for anyone on the list. But in a full-scale war? The SG Universe lacks numbers. The Tau'ri have 6 ships, Atlantis, and some Ancient defenses. The Goa'uld, while large, are still nothing compared to the Empire/Imperium/Federation.

Also, another consideration for the poll. What does the Imperium/Federation/etc have against this?

If I could date the ships Avatar I would totally consider this the winner... Lexa Doig is all kinds of yummy no matter what universe she is in. No wonder Michael Shanks left his first Stargate SG1 wife and married this one!

Edited by Mason Grimm, 08 January 2012 - 04:37 PM.

[Tarvitz]

[color="#ffa504"]Mason Grimm[/color] - I am sorry, I did not see your post. I will focus on the vs argument so long as Catamount does.

Catamount, on 08 January 2012 - 04:30 PM, said:

Tarvitz, you come on here, make a post out of nothing but thinly veiled insults and uncritically parroting talking points from vs sites, most or all of which we've already addressed earlier in the thread, which you apparently couldn't be bothered to read, then you follow up with progressively more petty poo flinging, and then when you're called out on it, you accuse others of being immature and adversarial?

Give me a break.

You ignore the points brought up against yourself and try to claim i'm the one being called out on it, acting as if you've not said a single thing wrong. You also choose to completely ignore points brought up, even when they comply with your own arguments trying to force away stats which show your faction to be weaker than others. You'll have to forgive me if I don't react with surprise.

For someone who boasts about their skills and hurls insults of inferiority at others, you only display the sorts of knowledge and attitude i'd expect to hear from twelve year olds on Halo multiplayer.

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You want to have a discussion? Great. We like discussions.

No, what you seem to want is one sided curb stomps of arguments and to prove Star Trek is better than others, having people not bring up Trek's shortcomings lowering yourself to the level where you're openly insulting franchises you dislike but seem to lack any proper knowledge of.

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Please at least glance through some of the previous discussion so we don't have to repeat what's already been said. If you want to dispute a specific point, or bring up a point that has not been addressed, feel free to.

Why? If it contains any more of the bile filled insults and vitriol i've seen so far from you, i've no wish to look back and see what you've posted.

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If all you're instead going to do is charge in here, and on some of your very first posts start throwing around the types of posts that have made up your time in this thread thus far, then I don't really think you're worth having a discussion with.

Then perhaps you should start acting with a little more civility if you want to be treated in that way. Or better yet don't bother responding to my posts, i'll just happily demolish any hyperbole you try to pass off as a structured argument.
Also, you seem to be blind if you think this thread is the one i've introduced myself in.

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If you do want to have a discussion, then please bring up something of substance, that hasn't already been addressed, and don't fill your posts with "OMG you mispelled a letter in my name!!!1!".

So not only do you ignore the apology, you latch onto one brief part of that post and ignore the points brought up which disagree with your own arguments. Again, i'd act with surprise if I wasn't completely expecting this.

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We've had plenty of civil discussion in here, if you want to contribute something new to them, great. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Yes, a civil discussion in which you've chosen to react with hatred to someone bringing up points you disagree with and throw out inaccurate, badly thought out mockery at other franchises. There's nothing civil in what i've seen from you thus far.

Edited by Tarvitz, 08 January 2012 - 04:46 PM.

[Catamount]

You were invited to bring up points that weren't already addressed here in earlier parts of the threat, and failed to rise to that.


I guess I'll take that to mean you have no points to bring up that haven't already been addressed. If you wanted to pick a school yard fight and you had something of substance (something new of substance) to say, that would be one thing, but apparently even that's too much to ask.

Very well.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Mason Grimm, on 08 January 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:

Back on the topic at hand please.



If I could date the ships Avatar I would totally consider this the winner... Lexa Doig is all kinds of yummy no matter what universe she is in. No wonder Michael Shanks left his first Stargate SG1 wife and married this one!

If I remember correctly, doesn't Andromeda's primary power source revolve around matter/anti-matter reactions or a mix of M/AM and fusion power, like in Trek? If so that puts some upper limits on their maximum power outputs (about the same as Trek's).

[Catamount]

Getting back on topic, Strum Wealth (and others), some mention has been made of Andromeda tech but I haven't seen any kind of quantifiable energy generation or weapon output figures (and, of course, they'd be interesting to compare for discussion).


Does anyone have any instances we could use for a rough comparison, of not a power output figure? Fleet destruction's a start, but it's highly dependent on how tough that fleet is to begin with



About the only thing I can gather from perusing the wiki is that the Ascendant appears fusion powered (which would seem to stick it below, say, Trek or Stargate for power generation, barring absurdly huge fusion reactors). Is that correct?


EDIT: Ilithi beat me to it

Edited by Catamount, 08 January 2012 - 05:47 PM.

[Zakatak]

Catamount, on 08 January 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

Getting back on topic, Strum Wealth (and others), some mention has been made of Andromeda tech but I haven't seen any kind of quantifiable energy generation or weapon output figures (and, of course, they'd be interesting to compare for discussion).

Approximately "enormous".

Seeming as it seems to take fist-sized projectiles going 0.9c to penetrate the hull.
It can travel between galaxies in minutes.
It can use debris of other ships to create weapons and armor using nanobots.
It has a mass of 100 million kg, but reduces in weight to 1kg using technobabble.
Launches anti-proton projectiles at 99% of lightspeed.
Can destroy worlds.
Sensors that put Enterprise-D to shame.

Basically, it wins. No shields (if battle blades don't count) but does it need theme?

Edited by Zakatak, 08 January 2012 - 06:04 PM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Zakatak, on 08 January 2012 - 06:03 PM, said:

Approximately "enormous".

Seeming as it seems to take fist-sized projectiles going 0.9c to penetrate the hull.
It can travel between galaxies in minutes.
It can use debris of other ships to create weapons and armor using nanobots.
It has a mass of 100 million kg, but reduces in weight to 1kg using technobabble.
Launches anti-proton projectiles at 99% of lightspeed.
Can destroy worlds.
Sensors that put Enterprise-D to shame.

Basically, it wins. No shields (if battle blades don't count) but does it need theme?

But do we have any specific figures, or even rough figures, to work with? 0.9c projectiles are going to hurt, but how massive are they? That determines how MUCH they hurt. Going with a rough estimate for fist size of 600 cm^3 (rounding up to an even figure from a 3inx3inx4in fist), and assuming a slug of solid tungsten, that gives us a projectile mass of ~11.35 kilograms.

The straight Newtonian kinetic energy is 413,707,500,000,000,000 Joules, or 413.7 PetaJoules. However, at 0.9c the effects of relativity become very noticeable. At 0.9c the Lorentz factor is 2.3. So we take our Newtonian kinetic energy figure and multiply it by the Lorentz factor to get the relativistic kinetic energy of the projectile, which is 951.51 PetaJoules, or to go with a nice round figure since this is just a very rough estimate, ~950 PJ. That's a pretty respectable bullet right there, on the upper range of Trek weapon yields. How fast can they fire those rounds?

Another critical question is do they use any mass-reduction on the rounds fired? This would be advantageous if it could be sustained at range because it would allow the ship's projectiles to travel faster without exponentially greater energy expenditure to fire the weapon, greatly increasing the weapon's travel time (and thus accuracy and effective range), but it would significantly reduce the above estimated figure.

Traveling between galaxies in minutes is pretty impressive, though not necessarily energy-intensive (depends on how energy-intensive their FTL drive is). However, do you have a direct example of this actually happening?

The ability to 'consume' debris from other ships for raw materials with nanotech is pretty impressive, though Trek transporters and replicators can effectively perform the same function. Handy in a pinch, though it's probably pretty energy-intensive, or requires consuming a fair amount of the material salvaged to power the nanites.

That's some impressive mass reduction, though Trek has comparable tech (and far more massive ships, by one to two orders of magnitude), and I think Stargate does as well, at least by late-series.

Bolts of anti-matter traveling at high relativistic velocities are pretty impressive, but not necessarily devastating. It's not that hard to get a low-mass charged particle stream traveling at near lightspeed. Trek does it all the time. Hell, we can do it today (what do you think an electron microscope is?). Any mass figures on their anti-proton rounds? Hydrogen has a density of 0.08988 gram per liter. If we take our 600 cm^3 fist-sized projectile from above and assume an anti-proton projectile of equal size and three times hydrogen density (which would be difficult to maintain cohesion after firing because the negatively-charged anti-protons would push each other apart to lower densities than neutral-charge hydrogen), we should be able to get a fair figure for the energy outputs of these projectiles. so 0.08988 g/L * 0.600 L * 3 = 0.161784 gram. At 0.99c the Lorentz factor is 7.09, and the kinetic energy for 0.161784 gram is 7,125,533,184,873 Joules. That gives us a total relativistic kinetic energy of 7,125,533,184,873 * 7.09 = 50,520,030,280,749 Joules or a rough figure of 50.52 TeraJoules worth of kinetic energy. Now, the projectiles are also comprised of anti-protons, which will have an annihilatory reaction with any matter containing protons it interacts with (technically, the anti-protons themselves would have to come into contact with the protons in the target material, which wouldn't necessarily happen just with contact with atoms, but the particles are traveling fast enough that we can assume they would overcome any interfering nuclear forces and make contact). This is easily calculated as well. We take our figure of 0.000161784 kilograms of anti-protons, multiply it by two, and plug it into E=mc^2. That gives us a total energy reaction of 29,121,120,000,000 Joules, or 29.121 TeraJoules. Adding that together with our kinetic energy figure and we get a total of ~80 TeraJoules per shot. That's pretty respectable, but paltry compared to what Trek puts out, or Stargate puts out late-series. It's also well over four orders of magnitude below the kinetic energy figure for the fist-sized object calculated above, which would suggest that the fist-sized figure above is highly over-estimated (this figure calculated here is not likely to be over-estimated, because it assumed three times the density of atomic hydrogen, which would have a greater density than raw protons or anti-protons because they would be repelled by their same eletromagnetic charge).

How many of these anti-proton bolts do they fire at a time, and what is their overall rate-of-fire?


Many franchises can destroy worlds. Trek, Wars, Stargate, 40K. Trek and Stargate have also destroyed entire solar systems.


Can you give us some specifics on their sensor capabilities? Specific examples of demonstrated performance, like observed ranges and the like.

I'm not convinced that Andromeda would win. Undoubtedly they have superior FTL capabilities to many franchises, particularly Trek at long range (their ships can sprint pretty damn fast, but they are limited in how long they can sustain that over great distances), though Trek will likely greatly overcome that soon (with the knowledge of slipstream and Borg transwarp tech Voyager brought back, it will likely only take Starfleet a few years, a decade at most, to develop a fully-functional slipstream drive, especially since Voyager was able to jury-rig their existing warp drive to kinda-sorta work twice). Exactly how they compare at FTL depends on what kind of specific FTL figures can be provided for Andromeda. The rest is still uncertain, since the above estimates for firepower indicates at best a weapons superiority by only a factor or two, and potentially significantly inferior weapons yields.

[Catamount]

So we've learned that Andromeda weapons are... anywhere from considerably less powerful to considerably more powerful than our advanced franchises (helpful, Ilithi, real helpful! )


That does definitely start to put some constraints out there though, so it's definitely a beginning. Now -barring a good canon power figure- we just have to figure out how to knock that margin of error to something more manageable by constraining it with some useful observations. I'll take a whack at it tomorrow and see what I can dig up. I'm sure others will have some interesting thoughts too. It'll be interesting to see what we can come up with

[Strum Wealh]

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

But do we have any specific figures, or even rough figures, to work with? 0.9c projectiles are going to hurt, but how massive are they? That determines how MUCH they hurt. Going with a rough estimate for fist size of 600 cm^3 (rounding up to an even figure from a 3inx3inx4in fist), and assuming a slug of solid tungsten, that gives us a projectile mass of ~11.35 kilograms.

The straight Newtonian kinetic energy is 413,707,500,000,000,000 Joules, or 413.7 PetaJoules. However, at 0.9c the effects of relativity become very noticeable. At 0.9c the Lorentz factor is 2.3. So we take our Newtonian kinetic energy figure and multiply it by the Lorentz factor to get the relativistic kinetic energy of the projectile, which is 951.51 PetaJoules, or to go with a nice round figure since this is just a very rough estimate, ~950 PJ. That's a pretty respectable bullet right there, on the upper range of Trek weapon yields. How fast can they fire those rounds?

"Offensive kinetic kill missiles are the main offensive weapons in any ship-to-ship or ship-to-ground combat.The actual payload of the missiles are about the size of an adult Human's fist and weighs about 1 kilogram, while the delivery system is about 3 meters long. They move at 90 to 95 PSL and cause a 40 megaton size explosion when they hit, due to the kinetic energy of impact. Most have a range of 8 to 10 Light Minutes."

"Defensive Missiles are the main defensive weapon against incoming offensive missiles in ship to ship combat and can also be used against enemy fighters. Defensive missiles are smaller missiles (about 1/3 of a kilogram), which move slower than offensive missiles (60 to 70 PSL), but with twice the acceleration. They have a range of only 6 to 8 light seconds.

Kinetic warheads do not carry an explosive payload, but rather rely on the fact that kinetic energy equals one-half mass times velocity-squared (ie, .33 Kg x 70% of 300,000 kilometers per second). Thus when defensive missiles impact with a ship, they cause incredible damage, with many megatons of energy."

"Smart Missiles are broad a broad range of weaponry that are essentially projectiles that rely on sensors to track, lock on, and intercept their targets. They are usually extended-range, high-endurance missiles with a variety of payloads and kill vehicles that rely on a combination of ship, drone and organic active/passive sensor systems to find targets and destroy them. At their top, speed, smart missiles can achieve upwards of 90 PSL. Smart missiles are most effective at less than one AU, but special variants can extend that range to 3 AU when combat operations permit missile control "handoff" from platform to platform; many Commonwealth fleets often do this, and indeed have several vessels that are specially outfitted to preform this specific purpose."

Unfortunately, the wiki doesn't have specs for the multiple independent kill vehicle, but I would think it can be not-unreasonably assumed that the warheads they launch are similar to OKKMs...

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Another critical question is do they use any mass-reduction on the rounds fired? This would be advantageous if it could be sustained at range because it would allow the ship's projectiles to travel faster without exponentially greater energy expenditure to fire the weapon, greatly increasing the weapon's travel time (and thus accuracy and effective range), but it would significantly reduce the above estimated figure.

I don't know.
It seems that High Guard ships (at least, the XMCs like the Andromeda) use an "electromagnetic launch system":

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Electromagnetic Launch Systems (ELS) are high powered mass launchers which accelerate offensive and defensive loads into space. The ELS is necessary to allow for a safe distance between a missile and the originating starship when the missile activates its organic acceleration capability.

The ELS functions just like a rail gun where a set of electromagnets are switched on in a line, which shoots projectiles almost at the speed of light. The effective range of most ELS launchers covers approximately 2 light minutes. Once the missiles are a predetermined distance from the ship, the vehicles conventional propulsion system activate. This is very useful, because a ship's ELS launchers can assure explosives activate away from the vessel and the amount of fuel needed for a single missile is decreased thus decreasing its overall size. Since smaller weapons are easier to store, a starship with an advanced ELS can carry more offensive and defensive missiles.

High Guard vessels, as well as many other spacefaring species and organizations, use the ELS as their preferred launch system of choice.

Granted, "...where a set of electromagnets are switched on in a line..." makes the ELS sound more like a coilgun than a railgun, but it doesn't really change the point made, yes?

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Traveling between galaxies in minutes is pretty impressive, though not necessarily energy-intensive (depends on how energy-intensive their FTL drive is). However, do you have a direct example of this actually happening?

I think "between the galaxies in minutes" is pushing it.

I quoted earlier that the Andromeda, without a pilot (Andromeda-verse ships need organic pilots to safely and efficiently navigate slipstream in a manner similar to how the Imperium's ships need Navigators to traverse the Immaterium), was able to travel from the galaxy M66 (~36 million light years from the Milky Way) back to Commonwealth territory in the Triangulum galaxy (a satellite galaxy to the Andromeda's namesake, ~3.07 million light years form the Milky Way) in 13 months.

Without knowing the actual distance between the two galaxies or their respective positions relative to each other or the Milky Way (by knowing the distances of each from the Milky Way), we can say that the Andromeda was able to cover a distance of between 33 million and 39 million light years in 13 months while lost and pilotless.

From there, we can reasonably assume that the same ship traveling at the same average rate would be able to cover a distance of ~3 light years (the distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda/Triangulum) in about 1/11 to 1/13 the time - about a month.
With a pilot (and the associated ability to navigate slipstream), we can assume the Milky Way to Andromeda/Triangulum trip (across the Commonwealth) would probably be much shorter - a few days to a week or so.

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

The ability to 'consume' debris from other ships for raw materials with nanotech is pretty impressive, though Trek transporters and replicators can effectively perform the same function. Handy in a pinch, though it's probably pretty energy-intensive, or requires consuming a fair amount of the material salvaged to power the nanites.

That's some impressive mass reduction, though Trek has comparable tech (and far more massive ships, by one to two orders of magnitude), and I think Stargate does as well, at least by late-series.

"Nanobots are used extensively on High Guard ships. They are used to break down Asteroids that are pulled on board to extract useful minerals subsequently used to absorb missile damage and repair the ship's hull. They can also be used to clean the hulls of toxic waste and Ag mass packets. They are also used in Force lance smart bullets. Others nanobots defend against attacks from hostile nanomachines (which have a long history of use as weapons in modern warfare)."

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Bolts of anti-matter traveling at high relativistic velocities are pretty impressive, but not necessarily devastating. It's not that hard to get a low-mass charged particle stream traveling at near lightspeed. Trek does it all the time. Hell, we can do it today (what do you think an electron microscope is?). Any mass figures on their anti-proton rounds? Hydrogen has a density of 0.08988 gram per liter. If we take our 600 cm^3 fist-sized projectile from above and assume an anti-proton projectile of equal size and three times hydrogen density (which would be difficult to maintain cohesion after firing because the negatively-charged anti-protons would push each other apart to lower densities than neutral-charge hydrogen), we should be able to get a fair figure for the energy outputs of these projectiles. so 0.08988 g/L * 0.600 L * 3 = 0.161784 gram. At 0.99c the Lorentz factor is 7.09, and the kinetic energy for 0.161784 gram is 7,125,533,184,873 Joules. That gives us a total relativistic kinetic energy of 7,125,533,184,873 * 7.09 = 50,520,030,280,749 Joules or a rough figure of 50.52 TeraJoules worth of kinetic energy. Now, the projectiles are also comprised of anti-protons, which will have an annihilatory reaction with any matter containing protons it interacts with (technically, the anti-protons themselves would have to come into contact with the protons in the target material, which wouldn't necessarily happen just with contact with atoms, but the particles are traveling fast enough that we can assume they would overcome any interfering nuclear forces and make contact). This is easily calculated as well. We take our figure of 0.000161784 kilograms of anti-protons, multiply it by two, and plug it into E=mc^2. That gives us a total energy reaction of 29,121,120,000,000 Joules, or 29.121 TeraJoules. Adding that together with our kinetic energy figure and we get a total of ~80 TeraJoules per shot. That's pretty respectable, but paltry compared to what Trek puts out, or Stargate puts out late-series. It's also well over four orders of magnitude below the kinetic energy figure for the fist-sized object calculated above, which would suggest that the fist-sized figure above is highly over-estimated (this figure calculated here is not likely to be over-estimated, because it assumed three times the density of atomic hydrogen, which would have a greater density than raw protons or anti-protons because they would be repelled by their same eletromagnetic charge).

How many of these anti-proton bolts do they fire at a time, and what is their overall rate-of-fire?

I don't know the actual ROF of the AP cannons, but the graphic from the wiki shows several individual bolts in close proximity, so we can not-unreasonably assume that it is fairly high.
XMCs have 12 AP cannons.

Likewise, I do not know the official ROF for the point-defense lasers (35-50 MW range (high end for an XMC), range of 4 light minutes), but the graphic from the wiki shows that it is fairly high.
XMCs have 12 PDLs.

The ELS have a stated ROF of 8 missiles per second, and the XMCs have 40 ELS launchers - a total ROF of 19,200 missiles per minute.

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Many franchises can destroy worlds. Trek, Wars, Stargate, 40K. Trek and Stargate have also destroyed entire solar systems.

The Andromeda's normal armaments are stated to be able to depopulate a planet (implied to be an Earth-sized planet) in "under 2 minutes".

With regard to outright destroying a planet: Nova Bombs (XMCs carry 40) would be used to destroy the star (bathing the planets in starfire in the process), an AP Fusion Catalyst would fire a beam of anti-protons at a planet (which may or may not be enough to destroy a planet via the M/AM reaction), and dumping the exotic matter pulsar (the core of the slipstream drive) would reduce a planet to rubble at the cost of a ship's slipstream capability.

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Can you give us some specifics on their sensor capabilities? Specific examples of demonstrated performance, like observed ranges and the like.

"The AIS-117M Advanced Imaging Sensor (Sythetic Aperture / Moving Target Indicator) is a combined SA and MTI sensor package that can detect fixed and mobile targets, as well as fuse sensor tracks from multiple arrays into a complete picture of the area of interest. The SA suite is also capable of interferometric analysis, which allows the local AI node to build a three-dimensional representation of visible surfaces to a one nanometer resolution at 24 light-seconds."

"The AIS-117I Advanced Imaging Sensor (Inverse Synthetic Aperture) is an ISA system that is capable of long-range detection of relatively stationary targets in high-noise environments. The ISA component is an active sensor system that creates virtual swaths based on the pitch or yaw of te target. Since the size of the aperture is dictated by the motion of the target, ISA sensor detection capability is not limited by range."

"The ES/A-9r Electronic Support and Attack Measure Suite is a sensor and electronic countermeasure suite that detects active sensor and communications emissions from hostile assets, including ships and missiles. The electronic attack component of the package can be used to jam both types of signals, and in some cases can overload the hostile transceiver."

"The HSS-114D Hyper-Spectral Scanner (EO) is a combined electro-optical / active sensor array that detects target reflections across a continuous spectrum, and measures the spectral signature of targets against the expected spectral signature of the background area. Useful for detecting camouflaged or otherwise obscured targets, and suspected targets can be tested with an active EM sensor in order to improve accuracy in high-threat environments."

"The PAS-37Q System Search Sensor (Phased Array) is an active EM search system that uses phased arrays of small sensor transceivers to create shapable swaths across any portion of the sky. Large fields of these sensors allow for wider scanner swaths and more sensitive target detection in high-threat, high-noise environments. Despite their capability, these sensors can potentially give away the the sensing ship, limiting their use in combat situations."

"Sensor Drones are non-sentient, disarmed, drones that many High Guard ships use to extend their sensor range. The Andromeda carries about a dozen drones on board, and she uses these drones when she is searching for something or surveying a large area of space. While the Andromeda herself has a large on board sensor array, it can be limited. So, when she needs to extend her range, she deploys the drones so that she can get a live picture relayed to her from the drones, or she can deploy them in a rough circle at the very edge of her sensor capabilities. Since the drones themselves possess powerful sensors, they can probe and see a lot farther that the Andromeda can, and they relay this data back to her. She can use this to gather data about a battle and then plan and attack accordingly, or any other imaginable usage."

"The Eternal Vigilance class Long Range Surveillance (LRS) ship provides the eyes and ears for a HCBG and PRG. Equipped with multiple arrays of high-powered active and passive sensor suites, the LRS is ideal for providing early-warning of impending attack or the strategic positioning of enemy vessels."

ilithi dragon, on 08 January 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

I'm not convinced that Andromeda would win. Undoubtedly they have superior FTL capabilities to many franchises, particularly Trek at long range (their ships can sprint pretty damn fast, but they are limited in how long they can sustain that over great distances), though Trek will likely greatly overcome that soon (with the knowledge of slipstream and Borg transwarp tech Voyager brought back, it will likely only take Starfleet a few years, a decade at most, to develop a fully-functional slipstream drive, especially since Voyager was able to jury-rig their existing warp drive to kinda-sorta work twice). Exactly how they compare at FTL depends on what kind of specific FTL figures can be provided for Andromeda. The rest is still uncertain, since the above estimates for firepower indicates at best a weapons superiority by only a factor or two, and potentially significantly inferior weapons yields.

Well, plenty of technical information is posted above.

Perhaps we could get the same information, condensed to the same degree in a single post, for the equivalent Federation and Imperium equipment?
For example: on weapon ranges, all I could find was "In that same year {2367}, the range of a Federation photon torpedo was slightly below 300,000 kilometers" (see here), while on sensor range, "In 2367. Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge stated that the long range sensors aboard the USS Enterprise-D were able to scan a radius of ten light years within a 24-hour period; effectively, one sector per day" (see here). Perhaps you could provide some additional information (and citations)?
Also, could you elaborate on the exact capabilities of ST's versions of slipstream, subspace, and transwarp - how are they different from each other and from standard warp propulsion, and what are their respective capabilities and limitations?

Also, we'd have to look at specific periods for each, yes?
I've maintained the position of the original Systems Common at its height (before the fall to the Nietzscheans' attack from within and the Magogs' attack from without and the "Long Night"), rather than the second Systems Commonwealth established following the return of the Vedrans (which was beginning to rebuild as of the series finale).
I assume we're taking the Federation circa 2379 (Star Trek: Nemesis; post-Voyager and post-DS9) and the Imperium circa 999.M41 (year 40,999 or 41,999 )?

Edited by Strum Wealh, 08 January 2012 - 10:26 PM.

[Tarvitz]

Catamount, on 08 January 2012 - 05:37 PM, said:

You were invited to bring up points that weren't already addressed here in earlier parts of the threat, and failed to rise to that.

You apparently missed points like phasers being less effective than modern day 9mm pistols and being more dangerous to the person carrying them. Instead just throwing a fit that I brought up statistics which show Trek to be weaker than other franchises and try to brush them off in an instant. Well, there are other things worth bringing up such as the lack of Federation soldiers. Despite claims that Federation infantry is the most effective fighting force in existance, laughable, we never see them nor any of the equipment which they claim to have.

Countless red/goldshirts are killed on the Enterprise with only one occasion of a personal shield saving someone, and that was due to him making it out of scrap-metal on the fly and the aforementioned phasers tend to more often than not lightly hurt a person than kill him. Not to mention the lack of Federation soldiers themselves, only one appearing on screen and in desperate battles such as the Siege of AR-558 they never show up. Instead Fleet officers are used to defend such a vital location, none of which are armed with anything more than handguns and no personal shields. This suggests that few of them exist.

Quote

I guess I'll take that to mean you have no points to bring up that haven't already been addressed. If you wanted to pick a school yard fight and you had something of substance (something new of substance) to say, that would be one thing, but apparently even that's too much to ask.

And you were given the option of dropping this and walking away, quite happily ending this whole thing here, but you childishly opted to ignore that and instead try to geta few last insults in. Not to mention your determination to start school yard fights with irrelivent posts which do nothing besides give innacurate insults of franchises you dislike while trying to hail the one you're arguing for. The truly sad part is you can't even seem to realise you're doing it.

Still, if it's more proof of Trek's ineffectiveness you're wanting i'm game. We see repeatedly during the series that photon torpedoes are completely ineffective against many targets, usually the threat of the week. This seems to not only be due to the power of the enemies they're facing but also failures upon the part of Starfleet Engineering.
The targeting systems of the Enterprise are especially dubious, unable to gague proper ranges. The most obvious example of this can be seen in the aforementioned episode "Code of Honour" in which the Enterprise tries to fire a warning bombardment of a dozen torpedoes and detonate them one thousand meters above ground level. Well, not only do they miss entirely and explode in the upper atmosphere but this suggests the sheer lack of explosive force in them, to the point where the enlightened Enterprise crew isn't worried their supposedly high explosive yield might kill everyone down there.
We see further proof of their lack of firepower in Voyager's "Alliances" in which several torpedoes are fired at a Trabe small shuttle next to a building, not only failing to damage the shuttle but only going off with the force of several grenades. Neither damaging the building nor harming any of the exposed people within despite supposedly having the same potential for damage as a nuclear weapon.

Apparently Starfleet ships can not only hit a simple stationary target but they can't even hurt it if they wanted to. You complained that statistics for Star Wars were bloated and had no grounding in any non-EU media, and yet we we see Trek apparently has exactly the same problem.

Edited by Tarvitz, 09 January 2012 - 06:15 AM.

[Catamount]

Tarvitz, on 09 January 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

You apparently missed points like phasers being less effective than modern day 9mm pistols

Oh, and you showed this so unequivocally, did you?

Catamount, on 03 December 2011 - 07:47 PM, said:

It takes 2.7MJ of energy to vaporize 1kg of water, or 1 liter of water, at 37C, of which the average human male has 40 liters. That means that just to vaporize the water in a human being, a hand phaser needs to put out the energetic equivalent of 108 megajoules, not even counting vaporizing the rest (so figure, what, 150-200?).

Catamount, on 09 December 2011 - 09:57 AM, said:

the constant power draw of a Type III phaser (phaser rifle) was measured at 1.05MW (TNG Mind's Eye)

Note that to match even that lowest end figure among what we've garnered, a 9mm pistol would have to fire over 1400 rounds/second, having energies of only ~550-700J/shot (depending on the round and firearm).

Catamount, on 25 December 2011 - 09:13 AM, said:

Hmm, in DS9, rapture, a phaser vaporized a 2m by 4m chunk of solid rock in a couple of seconds (HFS!!!!!).

You're right, that puts the yield between ~2 and ~16 gigajoules, as per ST-v-SW'net's analysis (seriously, that's frakking obscene!)

Now, this probably isn't a case of it being actually that much energy, but rather a much lower figure, perhaps dozens of hundreds of megajoules worth of classic photon emissions and particle acceleration, but vaporization occurring mostly via the nadion disruption effect... Yet another consideration is that full 200MJ vaporization of people were being achieved by the comparatively primitive mid 23rd century, so it shouldn't be surprising that that figure has gone up by a large amount more than 100 years later.

Note that that number was actually for TNG Chain of Command (yes, there's more than one instance of this sort of vaporization; it's not a one-off thing).


For DS9 Rapture, the energy output would be at least as high, and potentially higher, depending on how thick our ~2mx4m rock wall is, but I digress.

Would you mind linking me to a 9mm pistol that can match even the middle outputs there, required to vaporize a person? Of course you can't. You couldn't even show a 9mm pistol with the capability to match the lowest canonical outputs of phasers, let alone a middling or high-end figure.

And this is pretty much the content of your posts, absurd, already-debunked and long-tired talking points that we've not only already addressed, but addressed in multiple posts, just as we've already discussed troop numbers, Trek personal shields, and most, if not all of everything else you've brought up to date.

Did you READ the discussion we had? Of course not, otherwise you'd bring up something new.


If you didn't want to read through the whole thread, you could have asked for a quick summary, or at least made points with the caveat that they might already have been addressed, instead of treating them as unequivocal refutations to the so-called fanboy poster who's posts you clearly never even bothered to read in the first place


Instead, you ran in, offered a nasty characterization of us as posters, and of the posts we made, without even really bothering to read them, and this is why you are not worth having a discussion with.



You needn't worry if you feel like getting the last word in, though. Until you present something of substance, I'm not going to bother to respond further and allow you to derail a discussion that was going just fine for 14 pages until you got here.

Edited by Catamount, 09 January 2012 - 08:35 AM.

[Catamount]

Strum Wealth, it sounds like Andromeda weapon outputs are comparable to Trek weapon outputs. Stargate weapon outputs are a little harder to judge accurately in a lot of cases (though they've got some pretty ordinance in fairly small packages), but they're probably comparable as well.


In terms of range, you'll note that the Memory-Alpha page you linked notes Voyager's torpedo range to be 8 million kilometers. I'm assuming either those were different warheads than what was mentioned in The Wounded (onboard the Pheonix, or the Enterprise? MA should specify that ), or because the stated range in The Wounded had some other circumstance coming into play.

Either way, even at the higher figure of 8 million kilometers for Voyager's 2370s torpedoes, they're still outranged by Andromeda's offensive armaments, since even at 8 light minutes, you'd be looking at 144 million kilometers, which outclasses any non-FTL combat ranges for Trek (something we'll have to get to later).



One question you could perhaps answer is how fast these weapons can be thrown out. Trek has shown the ability to toss out photon torpedoes at an impressive rate (several per second, apparently with decent sustainability on the largest ships if TNG The Survivors is any indication). Also, I believe Trek has been uprating some of their torpedoes considerably since the 64mt warheads of early TNG. Ilithi knows more about the particulars than I, but on the largest warheads, it's a 5-10 fold increase iirc (like I said, Ilithi has specifics, so he can chime in later), though I'm not sure how to count those, because 64mt may still be what you'd see as standard armament largely, and even if standard armaments were uprated, and even if there were torpedoes out with half an order of magnitude more power, I doubt those would become standard armament. It gets fuzzy around Voyager, because ships start packing multiple ordinance types (just for photorps), and it's not clear what all the ups and downs of each is, nor how many of each a ship typically carries (Voyager's torpedo compliment, at launch, was a piddling 39, iirc).


Phasers are harder to exactly pin, partly because a lot of their effective yield seems to be the nadion disruption effect, but it's probably a safe assumption that they're more or less as effective as the torpedoes of the ship firing them. Afterall, if phasers are orders of magnitude better than torpedoes, then why bother to stock torpedoes, and if the reverse were true, why bother to stock phasers? (that's part of why the 5.1MW/emitter number is so absurd, regardless of the potential partial-canonicity of the TMs). Phaser strength differs greatly depending on the length of the array, and seems to vary with the size of the sequential discharge riding over the array (but SDE is Ilithi's doing, so I'll let him explain why we've long held that to be true), but since array size tends to vary with torpedo loadout anyways, again, I'd assume you're looking at rough parity of effective yield between a ship's best spray of torpedoes, and best phaser shot, so the ED, even with 64mt/270PJ warheads, should at least be capable of something in the ballpark of 640mt/2.7EJ outputs from her main dorsal array.



Knowing rate of fire on these weapons also helps us determine how long a Trek ship would have to endure shots before being able to close range.



Sensors definitely seem to fall on the side of Andromeda in terms of resolution, but what about range? Trek sensors have effective ship-to-ship ranges in the low lightyear range.

Quote

The Andromeda's normal armaments are stated to be able to depopulate a planet (implied to be an Earth-sized planet) in "under 2 minutes".

I would note that in DS9 The Die is Cast, a group of 20 ships made 30% of the crust of a planet disappear in a single volley, so that's about in line with what Trek can do, only it wouldn't just depopulate the planet, it would completely melt the crust (or vaporize? It's not clear).



My overall impression so far here is that, just on range advantage, a single Trek ship, even a capital ship, would have trouble destroying on of these Andromeda vessels. They seem at least comparable in firepower, but the Andromeda ship would be able to hit from further away. A few trek ships, on the other hand, would probably be a different story.


From the sound of it, there aren't more than a handful of Glorious Heritage class ships left, which would present a problem against a fleet of 10k-30k ships (likely towards the higher end), ignoring, of course, Federation allies, but what about other ships? The Systems Commonwealth seems pretty darned big, so looking past a handful of capital ships, what would their mainstay ship look like? How many do they have?

Edited by Catamount, 09 January 2012 - 09:13 AM.

[Grayson Pryde]

I havent posted here for a long time because i realised its not possible to compare Warhammer 40k and Star Trek. The thing is that Star Trek tries to give us a "realistic" view of teh future. Warhammer 40k doesnt even try to do it. I will give some examples.

Some Baneblades have a steam engine. That sounds realy cool but think about that tank and then think about steam engines. How big shall a steam engine be to move this:


Then we have the Space Marines. There armor is unrealistic. Acording to the lore, their terminator armor couldnt be penetrated by everything smaller then a freaking laser cannon. But in game terms its even possible to kill them with a small pistol(always get killed by freaking sergeants and their laser pistols....).


Lets come to the fleet. Every Warhammer 40k ship is freaking big. I remember i read a Star Wars book and tehre was said that 1 Imperial Star destroyer ruins the economy of a world.A Star destroyer is nearly 3km long(cant remember the real number and im too lazy to look it up). Lets look at the IoM. Would be impossible to have that fleet even with the amount of planets controlled. And the amount of planets is the next thing. No imperium could control few million planets. Especially when they are controlled by humans.



Even if a normal IoM ship couldnt destroy a Federation ship they would use the "Scorched earth" doctrine. You dont wanna be part of our imperium? Fine then your existence is not needed.

And even if you think you could do something against the warp i dont belive it. What would happen when demons invade the earth? But that would be cheap to bring in the "gods" of both universes. I mean compare Q or any other "godlike" beeing is impossible.

So i hope this whole thing ends soon. At least between warhamemr 40k and Star Trek. By the way i think Stargate could be nice to discuss. Dont think about the humans. But the older races are still interesting.

[Catamount]

40K, like any franchise, can easily destroy your planet if they don't like you, and as far as I know, no one in Trek has ever come up with a planetary shield to make them immune.

Still, between stationary planetary defenses, and patrol vessels, you'd have a hell of a time even getting ordinance to a planet before you and it were shot down, let alone enough to kill it




I agree, though, Stargate would be a really interesting franchise to discuss here, and has been left largely untouched (it only got added in the first place after I complained bitterly about it early on ).

Stargate tech is notable, not just because it's powerful (as in, Rodney Mckay accidentally destroying half a solar system), but more than that, because they have what most franchises lack: good exotic tech. I mean, the Asgard artificially increased the mass of a star to make it implode into a black hole. That's pretty hard to top.

Edited by Catamount, 09 January 2012 - 09:29 AM.

[Chuckie]

GEEZ.. look what you started...

Star Trek "UNIVERSE" (not just Federation, etc..) for three SIMPLE Reasons

1) The Borg assimilate ALL

2) ALL Knowledge of ALL species KNOWN to exist in the ST Canon (Aside from Species 8472) Have been assimilated by the Borg) So the Borg have knowledge of ALL..

3) Species 8472

So either the any competitors would have to either be able to beat Species 8472 mono-a-mono

Or avoid getting assimilated by the Borg and once they are well the Borg will know what they do AND all the ST Canon.

Case closed..

As for those arguing against Canon / "Real" Tech arguments.. ahh.. do you guys have a life / wife / girlfriend..?

If not I think you need to get one, because you apparently have WAY too much time on your hands

BTW.. am I the only one that sees the early BT Universe in the Firefly/Serentity Universe..?

OH also.. why isnt SpaceBalls on this ? They had a shield against planet destruction

Edited by Chuckie, 09 January 2012 - 10:00 AM.

[Grayson Pryde]

And it starts again....