1189 replies to this topic

[Jack Gammel]

I blame the contractor for the first Death Star Incident. An evil empire is gonna attract evil contractors (redundant?). They just cut way too many corners to save costs and make an evil profit.

[Catamount]

Jack Gammel, on 19 January 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

I blame the contractor for the first Death Star Incident. An evil empire is gonna attract evil contractors (redundant?). They just cut way too many corners to save costs and make an evil profit.

Is that like Stormtrooper amor?




"I thought this suit was designed to make sure you were dead if you got hit; why else would we wear 'em?"

Edited by Catamount, 19 January 2012 - 08:04 AM.

[Perfecto Oviedo]

Catamount, on 19 January 2012 - 06:45 AM, said:

To my knowledge, the USS Yamato and Enterprise D were the only case of a ship suffering a spontaneous core breach. The Odyssey had been rammed by a ship that detonated its core, the Enterprise in All Good Things could have easily ejected their cores, but for plot-related reasons, chose not to.

And the Enterprise D was hit by plot-induced stupidity (we call it the curse of the odd-numbered movies; they always suck), because they never even mentioned ejecting the core (but it made for a nice dramatic scene).

The Yamato would be the only one I would call "spontaneous," because of the Iconian program ravaging the computer system. The E-D took one hell of a beating (that it really shouldn't have taken. I mean, fire phasers more than a few times and lay down torpedo firing, and it doesn't matter that the D12 Bird of Prey has shields and the Galaxy-Class Starship doesn't. It would be like a half busted-up Atlas against a fully functioning Flea taking pot shots at each other from 10 paces standing still. The Flea would still lose).

And though one can't canonically prove it, I would bet money that the E-D's ejection system failed even though they never stated it, since most of the time the core ejection system failed (even occasionally with Voyager, where I thought it was a big thing that it ever worked)...but that's speculation

Edited by Perfecto Oviedo, 19 January 2012 - 09:37 AM.

[Catamount]

Perfecto Oviedo, on 19 January 2012 - 09:28 AM, said:

The Yamato would be the only one I would call "spontaneous," because of the Iconian program ravaging the computer system. The E-D took one hell of a beating (that it really shouldn't have taken. I mean, fire phasers more than a few times and lay down torpedo firing, and it doesn't matter that the D12 Bird of Prey has shields and the Galaxy-Class Starship doesn't. It would be like a half busted-up Atlas against a fully functioning Flea taking pot shots at each other from 10 paces standing still. The Flea would still lose).

And though one can't canonically prove it, I would bet money that the E-D's ejection system failed even though they never stated it, since most of the time the core ejection system failed most of the time (even occasionally with Voyager, where I thought it was a big thing that it ever worked)...but that's speculation

Well that's what's funny about the whole thing. There are separate ejection systems for the core and A/M pods, and a ridiculous number of other safeguards (when all else fails, they can literally just make the core shut down, almost instantly, for instance; it just takes a long time to cold restart).

Now, the ejection system has been jammed a few times in wierd circumstances (wierd computer bugs, and the like), which is probably why the the Yamato couldn't eject her core; the whole computer was basically not accepting commands correctly because of the Iconian probe program.


The whole Generations thing just felt contrived. I mean, in FIVE MINUTES you could have a runabout or a shuttle launch, blast the door open on the bottom, and tow the thing out with a tractor beam (or, if it was a runabout, use warp power to beam the thing out, or just beam it out in general; the saucer section has HUGE fusion reactors, and a fair bit of power, certainly enoug to do that). That's just an absurdly long time to be able to fix things. The engineering crew also didn't have to evacuate right away; they could have stayed for 4.9 minutes, and then been beamed out. Besides, at impulse, the saucer section should have been able to get clear 300,000 times over even in a few moment

The movie had its upshots (the soundtrack was great, and Soren was a fantastically acted villian), I just didn't like the whole Klingon scene. I mean, while we're on the topic, a scout BoP might be able to take one phaser shot from the E-D, but I mean, one volley like we see in the Husnock Warship battle would have just ripped that BoP limb from limb!



You know what I blame? I blame Riker for letting Deanna drive...

Edited by Catamount, 19 January 2012 - 09:49 AM.

[Rune Scorpio]

Sorry to all the trekkie fans but I have to give it to the eve universe. For the most part with trek pilots you have people who are actually trying not to die, where the eve universe couldn't care less in a war of attrition. Also trickery and unfair fights are the norm in eve.

*Trek battle commander, "Everyone retreat." "No sir, they have interdictors on the field. New cynosaural field detected. 200 supercaps & titans just jumped in with a fresh supporting fleet of ships I swear we just killed. Guess it was a bad idea to attack that lone cruiser."

Also saying eve doesn't have high tech stuff kinda ignores all the fancy supporting toys eve has to offer. Logistic ships and capitals remote repairing other ships in the middle of a battle kinda puts other groups at a disadvantage. ECM, infinite cloaking on frigates carrying battleship class torpedoes and area effect bombs... yeah...

Also if eve merged other universes you would have lots of a**hats crashing smartbomb battleships into populated planets for a laugh. Probably fill them with something fun like soil, tourists, or copies of Pax Amarria. Maybe tell you if you give them the money to buy 10 more battleships they will stop for a week.

/Would be funny to see though
//Would cool my beer against Picards frozen corpse

[Zakatak]

Don't most EVE ships outside of Capital/Battleships generate less then 1 gigawatt? Aren't the capacitors on non-Capital ships limited to like 5 terawatts? I'm just scanning through the EVE ship database, the stats are pretty poor for a M/AM civilization.

I bet the Asgard pre-Replicator war would come out on top. The FTL travel they have is pretty much only beaten by the Xeelee/Culture or other completely ridiculous races. Didn't they have a civilization that spanned multiple galaxies? Someone mentioned that 4 Petawatt reactors (1 megaton of energy per second) was poor compared to Trek. How much do they produce exactly? Asgard shielding can sustain 8 gigatons as a low-end estimate, and the FTL travel clocks around 4'000'000'000c, and the Ion cannons seem... good.

[Perfecto Oviedo]

Catamount, on 19 January 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

Well that's what's funny about the whole thing. There are separate ejection systems for the core and A/M pods, and a ridiculous number of other safeguards (when all else fails, they can literally just make the core shut down, almost instantly, for instance; it just takes a long time to cold restart).

You know, I forgot about the A/M ejection system. The only time I saw mention to the A/M pods was in the TNG Tech Manual (same with the E-D's captain's Yacht). Would have made sense for too see it in the series. But eh...

Quote

You know what I blame? I blame Riker for letting Deanna drive...

In all fairness to Troi...

[GargoyleKDR]

All the debate on which is better is rendered moot by the S.S. Heart of Gold. None of them can hold up to the Infinite Improbability Drive.

Weapons? The Heart of Gold doesn't need them. It has Infinite Improbability. Your vessel just turned into a turnip. A very, very large turnip.

Powerful shields? You can't disagree that Infinite Improbability has the edge in that category. Oops, you just fired a volley of tulips instead of anti-matter.

Massively overwelming size? It doesn't need it. It has Infinite Improbability. It's size and shape likely will change along the way anyway.

FTL speed? It technically has that too, but in the form of Infinite Improbability. The drive "passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously," meaning the traveller is "never sure where they'll end up or even what species they'll be when they get there," therefore it's important to dress accordingly.



[chuckle]

Edited by GargoyleKDR, 19 January 2012 - 01:27 PM.

[Catamount]

EVE is really odd there. Normally I'd say EVE is a lot more powerful than that, but that low power output is stated so clearly and consistently across all ships, I mean, it's silly yes, but how do you avoid that?


If I were evaluating EVE, I might be willing to look past that, because frankly, there's just no way. EVE power outputs are so low, that, oxygen provided, you could get those power outputs with coal power! Even fission reactors would beat that by a mile! It's just not possible that even a fusion-capable civ, let alone a M/AM capable civ, can have those outputs.


So generally, I just say hey, it's a M/AM civ, so let's just assume rough compariability with Star Trek outputs, ship per ship. Now, Trek is a more advanced power in most respects, with often more sophisticated tech a lot more exotic tech (the only thing EVE has that counts there are the jump gates), but EVE should be considered to be at least roughly comparable, in my opinion, given those assumptions.


Of course, you guys don't have to agree with those assumptions. Those power outputs are canonical and consistently stated for every ship, all the time, so while I choose to generally ignore them (much like I ignore the TNG TM phaser figures because they're just physically impossible), there is room for disagreement, certainly.

Quote

I bet the Asgard pre-Replicator war would come out on top. The FTL travel they have is pretty much only beaten by the Xeelee/Culture or other completely ridiculous races. Didn't they have a civilization that spanned multiple galaxies? Someone mentioned that 4 Petawatt reactors (1 megaton of energy per second) was poor compared to Trek. How much do they produce exactly? Asgard shielding can sustain 8 gigatons as a low-end estimate, and the FTL travel clocks around 4'000'000'000c, and the Ion cannons seem... good.

That 4PW was a direct statement of the Bilisnker's power by Thor. He stated it as "1 billion kilojoules per millisecond" per neutrino ion generator, of which there are four. However, as is often the case, I'm not inclined to take that as a written-in-stone maximum for the Asgard, especially because they present exotic technology and capabilities often in excess of even what Trek can do in the exotic department (though perhaps with less ability elsewhere).


I'm curious, where is that estimate of Asgard shielding from? I don't doubt it; pound for pound, that puts them roughly on par with Trek, or just a bit better possibly, since Asgard ships are notable bigger than even Federation capital ships (the O'Neill class is 1500m long, so it'd have substantially more volume than a Galaxy class, probably anywhere from four to six times more, taking a rough guess), and the Asgard are not less advanced than the Federation by any means.


Of course, the Asgard probably once featured a fleet massively larger than Starfleet, given that they spanned at least three galaxies at some point or another.


Another race that would probably handily beat almost any other power would be the pre-Wraith Ancients, who seemed to span significant parts of at least two galaxies at one point.



Also, I'm afraid the above poster is correct. The Infinite Probability drive wins

Edited by Catamount, 19 January 2012 - 01:33 PM.

[Catamount]

Perfecto Oviedo, on 19 January 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:

In all fairness to Troi...

Yes! Win!

[Vincent Vascaul]

GargoyleKDR, on 19 January 2012 - 01:12 PM, said:

All the debate on which is better is rendered moot by the S.S. Heart of Gold. None of them can hold up to the Infinite Improbability Drive.

Weapons? The Heart of Gold doesn't need them. It has Infinite Improbability. Your vessel just turned into a turnip. A very, very large turnip.

Powerful shields? You can't disagree that Infinite Improbability has the edge in that category. Oops, you just fired a volley of tulips instead of anti-matter.

Massively overwelming size? It doesn't need it. It has Infinite Improbability. It's size and shape likely will change along the way anyway.

FTL speed? It technically has that too, but in the form of Infinite Improbability. The drive "passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously," meaning the traveller is "never sure where they'll end up or even what species they'll be when they get there," therefore it's important to dress accordingly.



[chuckle]

I dunno I would throw the Whoniverse up against the IPD they deal with that kind of stuff alot in the series (not exactly that but stuff like it) Props for bring Hitchhikers guide to the discussion though.

[Zakatak]

Catamount, on 19 January 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

Another race that would probably handily beat almost any other power would be the pre-Wraith Ancients, who seemed to span significant parts of at least two galaxies at one point.

Well, the Milky Way is obviously one of them.
The Lanteans built gates in the Pegasus.
The Ancients and Ori were splinter groups of the Alterans, and the Ori chased them out of Alteran galaxy.
Didn't the Destiny take 50 million years to get here? How fast is it going and where did it come from?
The Asgard live in the Ida galaxy, yet they had a MkII Stargate on their planet.

If the producers made up a galaxy (Ida is fictional) instead of just using one we have already discovered (like Andromeda), then it must be really damn far away, so you could infer that the Ancients stopped at many galaxies in between. So, my guess? The Ancients occupy the Local Cluster. Quite a large civilization.

The Destiny has been going non-stop for 50 million years, bathing in the corona of blue giants to recharge its batteries. The ship also can travel faster then light without entering subspace, which would break our known laws of physics. If that isn't impressive, I don't know what the hell is. So yeah, the Ancients kick ***. Unfortunately, all super-powerful empires eventually are infected with Plot Disease, and there is no known cure.

Edited by Zakatak, 19 January 2012 - 02:38 PM.

[Catamount]

Well the Ancients did have a lot of bad luck, from the [presumably] Ori plauge that drove them to laregely abandon the Milky Way, to the Wraith war. Of course, even had they not had that kind of luck, they would likely all be ascended by the modern day.


Now the Asgard, THERE'S a race that got hit by plot-induced stupidity. I can think of at least a half-dozen ways for them to avoid what they did, some of them not ideal solutions, but certainly better than blowing your civilization up in a mass suicide.

Edited by Catamount, 19 January 2012 - 03:04 PM.

[Jack Gammel]

Catamount, on 19 January 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

Is that like Stormtrooper amor?

Yes.

Actually, the fluff specifically states that stormtrooper armor is so cheaply produced that it normally doesn't deflect blaster-level weapons (even though new recruits are told that their suits will protect them). However, stormtrooper armor is ostensibly strong enough to deflect primitive slug weapons. Guess the ewoks proved that was a lie too . The more I think about Episode 6 the more I realize that Episodes 1,2, and 3 shouldn't have been a suprise.

The red armor of the Emperor's personal bodyguard is much more sophisticaed.

Edited by Jack Gammel, 19 January 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[Tyzh]

I'd have to place my faith in Eve's OP Titan doomsday trick.

[Alivda]

Warhammer 40k...

One of the mechanical cult's ships has the ability to literaly slice other ships in half with an energy shield... oh, and did I mention the Titan transports? Imagine a mech roughly three times bigger than an atlas slamming on your ship and ripping pieces of it out...

http://www.belloflos...ator-titan.html

Admitidly, it was custom built, but it's not even as tall as it's supposed to be even in the tabletop... It's meant to be 8 feet tall in the tabletop game. Now, imagine that thing, landing on your ship... piloted by crazy relgious nuts who don't care if they die so they have a very good chance of just preforming an alpha strike directly to your generator... Oh, for referance, the human forces are space marines, and in the fluff they stand 8 feet tall... they are 6 inches roughly in the tabletop though so... do the math, cuse I can't, lol...

Oh, and if things get bad enough, the ships just slip away into the warp to go repair and repleish their boarding crews from their inumble forces from the hive worlds... think of worlds like corusacant, but over 20 of them...

However, as Qui-gon Jin said... "There is always a bigger fish..." However, As of yet, I'm not sure what that is...

[IR0NF3N1X]

Catamount, on 30 November 2011 - 11:07 AM, said:

Halo is an oddball here. The UNSC's power source is nothing but fusion (the Covenant use a very inefficient form of M/AM power, afaik), and yet, they can somehow power those absurd MAC guns, which outstrip any franchise for energetic output, hands down, by orders of magnitude, especially pound-for-pound (those stations are big, but they're not THAT big).


We're talking outputs in the low-mid zettajoules (~I get 21.6, the Halo wiki gets ~2.16; maybe someone could double check my math?), because they can accelerate 3,000 tons (I assume metric tons) to 120,000km/s. How? I have no idea. I won't be surprised in the least if that figure is eventually called a typo or retconned, but for the moment, a MAC gun on an orbital defense platform can output the energy of about eighty thousand late 24th century photon torpedoes.

It's also worth noting that the 120,000km/s figure could be off, because it doesn't seem to match the fraction of c given on the same Halo wiki page. I don't know which is correct, but I'm assuming that figure is here. Even if it's off by a couple orders of magnitude, it wouldn't really change the implications much here

You could argue that one of those would never actually strike a moving vessel

keep in mind that those ODP's were powered from multiple ground based power stations

[Catamount]

IR0NF3N1X, on 19 January 2012 - 08:33 PM, said:

keep in mind that those ODP's were powered from multiple ground based power stations

For all those ODPs though, I think we'd be talking about a fusion reaction on the order of the size of the moon...

[Zakatak]

I'm 100% sure that it is just a typo, because that would make the space station 4 times larger then a cruiser 4 orders of magnitude more powerful then the ship-based railguns. No doubt it meant metres, not kilometres. Your average UNSC cruiser fires 64.4kt per round. If it meant 120'000m/s as oppose to the later, that would put its power around 1.10mt or 17 times more powerful. That estimate seems spot-on, don't you think?

Edit: Almost forgot! Is the 2000-6000G acceleration statistics on Star Wars also EU garbage? I know that ships in the movies are slow, but every sci-fi slows things down for sake of drama and visuals.

Edited by Zakatak, 19 January 2012 - 09:05 PM.

[Mr Lopez]

well im not citing numbers cuz they normally are fluff to buff the power of any series. looking at the actual effects portrayed in movies and shows i see the folowing. phasers cannot destroy rocks effectivly as they are always used as cover..(so much for insta vaporize on organic targets..) blasters also dont destroy rocks. so that would make any show/series whos infantry can destry rocks superior as their larger weapons would have the same destuctive properties but on a much larger scale and possible higher orders of magnitute. telepaths as well would be a massive advantage just sowing fear among your enemies. *flame on
plot armor and weapons are copouts for bad writing. .meh perhaps im an *****