Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer [Archive] - HERO Games Discussion Boards

Nightmask

Sep 14th, '03, 11:20 PM

Star Trek: The Original Series would be Tech Level (TL) 9 and Star Wars would be TL 8.

The SD uses a lasers no matter how large cannot scratch USS Enterprise NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C, D orr E. If the SD has a force shield it cannot stop a phaser much less a photon torpedo! Movement, again no contest.

Chekov: Keptain, a scanner has detected a wessel.
Kirk: (dramatic pause between each word) Spock, what you make of it.
Spock: A large triangular vessel. About four times the size of the Enterprise. Several humanoid lifeforms aboard. Ion propulsion. Several laser weapons.
Vader: (Breathing loudly) Launch all fighters.
(T.I.E. Fighters fly out of the Death Star like bats from a cave.)
Chekov: Incoming.
Kirk: Fire!
(The Fighters fire on the Enterprise with no effect. While, the Enterprise fires at the Fighters, toasting five or more at a time.)
Sulu: Its powering up its laser weapons, sir.
Kirk: Full power on thr forward shield.
Sulu: Aye, sir.
(Enterprise's foreward shield glows for a moment.)
Sulu: It appears to be recharging, sir.
Kirk: Fire a full volley.
(Enterprise shoots phasers and torpedoes at the Star Destroyer. Then, its followed by a large explosion.)
Kirk: Turn into it.
Sulu: Aye, sir.
Kirk: Damage report.
Scotty: Shields at 30%, but holdin.
(The viewscreen shows a huge field of pieces of the Star Destroyer.)

Tech Level Definitions: Each level is roughly a half century (500 years). A minus (-) sign means BC. ie. Fantasy Primeval (100,000-75,000BC) = TL-200 to -150

Note: Although Star Wars was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you must equal the technology of that of Earth hisory. Laser weapons were used on the early Star Trek Federation starships 2161 (TL4.32*). They were replaced by phasers in 2265 (TL4.53**).
*Solar Hero
**Interstellar Era

WhammeWhamme

Sep 15th, '03, 01:46 AM

Star Wars = good, Star Trek = bad.

Ah, before I get burnt in effigy...

There is no obvious solution. The technology is not directly comparable, and size isn't everything.

Lupus

Sep 15th, '03, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by Nightmask
Note: Although Star Wars was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you must equal the technology of that of Earth hisory. Laser weapons were used on the early Star Trek Federation starships 2161 (TL4.32*). They were replaced by phasers in 2265 (TL4.53**). Okay. I'm not gonna buy into the argument (I've been in this one twice before on newsgroups), but I do feel I have to make sure there aren't too many bad assumptions. :)

For one, there's no reason that simply because the Star Wars movies refer to 'lasers' that they have to be compared to what were caleld 'lasers' in Star Trek. Number one, Star Wars is set neither in our future, nor even in our past. It's a fantasy story. Number two, even if you sci-fi it and explain its weaponry, the 'turbolasers' are never said to work on a coherent-light principle. The hand weapons are always referred to as 'blasters,' not lasers (an important distinction), despite the RotJ novelisation.

So the turbolasers may or may not be actual lasers. And in any case, they're far more powerful than old Star Trek lasers. The 'Science of Star Wars' website calculated the amount of power the Star Destroyer's turbolasers must generate, and figured out it was many megatons. Given that Star Trek photon torpedoes are rated in the megaton range (most sources put them at under 100 megatons, however), turbolasers obviously won't simply bounce off Enterprise shields... nor will Enterprise phasers and photon torpedoes automatically penetrate Star Wars force shields.

As I said, I'm not buying into the argument. As pointed out elsewhere, this one really depends on who's writing and script. But I find actual discussions of the powers/technologies involved far more interesting than 'X would win, because of Y. 'Nuff said.' That's just boring.

SuperPheemy

Sep 15th, '03, 09:36 AM

Checkov : Large wessel closingk fast Keptin!
Spock: Sensors indicate thousands of apparantly human life-forms on board.
Kirk: Open hailing frequencies!
Uhura: They're not responding Caaptain!
Spock: Alien vessel is preparing to fire
Kirk: Shield UP! Ready Pha...... *
Spock: Captain, why are you clutching your.... *
*Entire bridge crew suddenly grasps at their throats, and in a few scant moments choke and die*

Gary

Sep 15th, '03, 10:15 AM

I don't see how you can get around the fact that the Star Destroyer's weapons travel at exactly light speed and thus would never hit an Enterprise travelling at warp speed.

Polaris

Sep 15th, '03, 11:08 AM

I voted that the Star Destroyer would win... I do not think the Enterprise could handle the fighter compliment that is carried by the Star Destroyer... especially when having to deal with the guns of the Star Destroyer at the same time.

Polaris

Bartman

Sep 15th, '03, 02:16 PM

There is a reason this is no longer debated even in alt.startrek.vs.starwars. Star Wars was declared the winner years ago. Just take a quick look at the comparable numbers. These are the numbers from the most "official" publication from each universe (Star Wars Episode II Incredible Cross-Sections (SW2ICS) and Trek Next Generation Technical Manual (TNG TM)).

<table style="PAGE-BREAK-BEFORE: always" cellSpacing="3" cellPadding="4" width="100%" border="1"> <colgroup> <col width="128"> <col width="128"> <thead> <tr vAlign="top"> <th width="50%"> Star Wars: Acclamator troop transport </th> <th width="50%"> Star Trek: Enterprise-D </th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Light guns: 300 million GW (6 megatons per shot, 24 guns, assume 1 shot every 2 seconds for time-averaged power output rather than peak output) </td> <td width="50%"> Main phasers: 3.6 GW (5.1 MW per emitter, 200 emitters in the main phaser array, 2 full-sized saucer arrays and 3 smaller roughly half-size arrays on the stardrive section, p.123). Note that phasers appear to have a chain-reaction effect so their raw power output may be deceptively low. </td> </tr> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Heavy guns: 2.4 million megatons (200 gigatons per shot from each turret, 12 turrets) </td> <td width="50%"> Photon torpedoes: 64 megatons max theoretical (based on 1.5 kg antimatter payload, p.129) </td> </tr> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Sublight acceleration: 3500G </td> <td width="50%"> Sublight acceleration: 1000G (design goal, p.75) </td> </tr> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Operational range: 250,000 light-years (before refueling) </td> <td width="50%"> Operational range: 2750 light-years (7 years at warp 6 before refueling, p.3) </td> </tr> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Shield heat dissipation: 70 trillion GW peak </td> <td width="50%"> Shield heat dissipation: 3311 GW peak (473 GW per generator x 7 generators, p.138) </td> </tr> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Reactor power: 200 trillion GW max </td> <td width="50%"> Reactor power: ~4 billion GW at max warp 9.6 (scaled from the warp power chart on p.55 which uses units of joules for power; we assume this is a simple mistake). From the chart, their fuel supply for 7 years of warp 6 cruising would be roughly 2E23 J (enough to run an Acclamator's reactor at full power for just 1 second). </td> </tr> <tr vAlign="top"> <td width="50%"> Max hyperspace speed: not stated (however, the ability to travel "halfway across the galaxy" in a matter of hours as demonstrated in ANH, TPM, and AOTC requires speeds in the range of 10 million to 100 million times c). </td> <td width="50%"> Max warp speed: ~2000c (warp 9.6), sustainable 12 hours for a single sprint of roughly 3 light-years. This appears to have increased to roughly 3000c for newer ships such as the Intrepid-class. </td> </tr> </tbody></table>

As you can see an Imperial troop transport which predates the ISD by 20+ years could slaughter anything the Federation could throw at it. It just isn't fair to compare the war ships of a millenia old civilization which spans an entire galaxy to those of a centuries old civilization which is restricted to one little corner of their galaxy.

Bartman

Sep 15th, '03, 02:20 PM

Originally posted by Gary
I don't see how you can get around the fact that the Star Destroyer's weapons travel at exactly light speed and thus would never hit an Enterprise travelling at warp speed.

So why do they inevitably slow to impulse for every combat if they can taget and engage STL targets?

DoctorItron

Sep 15th, '03, 03:07 PM

Originally posted by Nightmask
SNIP
The SD uses a lasers no matter how large cannot scratch USS Enterprise NCC-1701
SNIP

Pointless argument. Shields and armor absorb, deflect, or dissipate energy, right? They have a finite capacity for doing so (i.e. they aren't infinitely powerful). If you can pump enough laser wattage into the Enterprise, you can damage the Enterprise.

I'm not going to bother voting. It's up to the plot. The Star Destroyer probably loses because they're the bad guys. However, maybe Vader temporarily gets the upper hand and cripples the Enterprise, just so the SFX crew can come back with a bigger and badder Enterprise for the next movie.

Bartman

Sep 15th, '03, 04:44 PM

Originally posted by Nightmask
The SD uses a lasers no matter how large cannot scratch USS Enterprise NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C, D orr E.
Hmmm, so do the Borg. Remember that the primary weapon of the Borg is their "cutting laser." They seemed to have no problem slicing and dicing the Fed at will. So why are the Feds immune to Wars "lasers" when they aren't immune to Trek "lasers?"

Tech Level Definitions: Each level is roughly a half century (500 years). A minus (-) sign means BC. ie. Fantasy Primeval (100,000-75,000BC) = TL-200 to -150

Note: Although Star Wars was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you must equal the technology of that of Earth hisory. Laser weapons were used on the early Star Trek Federation starships 2161 (TL4.32*). They were replaced by phasers in 2265 (TL4.53**).
*Solar Hero
**Interstellar Era
I think you are obsessing over a single word. Star Wars ships have been crossing their galaxy for 20,000+ years before the movies take place. They have speeds which are tens of thousands times greater than Trek. And these "lasers" are capable of vaporising whole worlds (when scaled up). By your own scale where 500 years = 1 TL. Star Wars is at least TL 40 because they have be spacefaring for 20,000+ years.

Space Cadet

Sep 15th, '03, 04:58 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
So why do they inevitably slow to impulse for every combat if they can taget and engage STL targets?

This reminds me of the time several years ago when Star Wars
first came out in the theaters, and MAD Magazine came out
with its parody of the movie shortly thereafter. There was a bit
of dialogue in the early part of the piece that your question
brought to mind, Bartman. Perversely amusing though it might
be, it should answer your question:

"We're travelling in a ship that flies faster than the speed of
light, and our weapons fire almost as fast as light! Do you
know what that means?"
"Yeah! It means we just SHOT OURSELVES DOWN!"

(It's been a long time since I read that particular piece, so my
recollection of that line may not be spot-on accurate.)

Space Cadet :D

Gary

Sep 15th, '03, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
So why do they inevitably slow to impulse for every combat if they can taget and engage STL targets?

I can point to scenes where ships fired at warp speeds, even against STL targets.

Bottom line, the SD has to hit to win, and it'll never hit a ship going at warp speed.

Lupus

Sep 15th, '03, 06:48 PM

Originally posted by Gary
I can point to scenes where ships fired at warp speeds, even against STL targets.

Bottom line, the SD has to hit to win, and it'll never hit a ship going at warp speed. And I can point to scenes where they had to drop out of warp to fire. Or others, where they could only fire photon torpedoes while at warp - and then, only against FTL targets.

If FTL combat was the standard, why didn't they always fight from FTL? Either there's shocking scriptwriting, shocking continuity, or they couldn't.

Possibly all three. :)

Of course, I find taking stats from an 'incredible cross-sections' product questionable at best. ;) It wasn't exactly written by scientists. Neither were the Star Trek stats. When gaming in the Trek universe, I've found that any real-world numbers just have to be thrown out.

In short... this is an argument which is poorly served by 'X would win, stupid!' no matter how you feel about the shows in question. :)

Nightmask

Sep 15th, '03, 07:00 PM

Just that, a star destroyer couldnt manage one single hit on the Millenium Falcon, it couldnt hit a bulls ass with a banjo.

starblaze

Sep 15th, '03, 08:29 PM

Originally posted by Space Cadet
This reminds me of the time several years ago when Star Wars
first came out in the theaters, and MAD Magazine came out
with its parody of the movie shortly thereafter. There was a bit
of dialogue in the early part of the piece that your question
brought to mind, Bartman. Perversely amusing though it might
be, it should answer your question:

"We're travelling in a ship that flies faster than the speed of
light, and our weapons fire almost as fast as light! Do you
know what that means?"
"Yeah! It means we just SHOT OURSELVES DOWN!"

(It's been a long time since I read that particular piece, so my
recollection of that line may not be spot-on accurate.)

Space Cadet :D
LOL

feywulf

Sep 16th, '03, 01:09 AM

Originally posted by Nightmask
Just that, a star destroyer couldnt manage one single hit on the Millenium Falcon, it couldnt hit a bulls ass with a banjo.

Is the Enterprise anywhere near as maneuverable as the Millenium Falcon? The Enterprise is also a much larger target.

Bartman

Sep 16th, '03, 06:55 AM

Originally posted by Lupus
Of course, I find taking stats from an 'incredible cross-sections' product questionable at best. ;) It wasn't exactly written by scientists. Neither were the Star Trek stats.

Well actually Incredible Cross-sections was written by a scientist, Dr Curtis John Saxton, theoretical astrophysicist, currently working at Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany to be precise. And this particular book was written precisely for the purpose of pinning down the real world numbers. He had full access to all the original footage and Lucas. It is the only book to have been given an official imprimur of 'canon' by LucasFilms. What would you suggest they do to make it less questionable.

As for the Trek techincal manual. It was written by Rick Sternbach and Michal Okuda. These are the guys who designed the Enterprise and were senior technical advisors for Next Gen, DS9 and in Okuda's case Voyager. These guys designed the visual effects. Now one can argue whether they succeded. But when they say this blast is supposed to be about 64MT I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

When gaming in the Trek universe, I've found that any real-world numbers just have to be thrown out.
But we aren't talking about GAMING in either universe. We are trying to compare the respective power of two vehicles. Why on earth would we just throw out what the IP owners of the vehicles have to say about them?

Bartman

Sep 16th, '03, 06:57 AM

Originally posted by Gary
I can point to scenes where ships fired at warp speeds, even against STL targets.
Please do. A episode name and summary of the scene will do.

Gary

Sep 16th, '03, 08:53 AM

Originally posted by Bartman
Please do. A episode name and summary of the scene will do.

Elaan of Troyius"[TOS]
Sabatoge to the Enterprise meant that it couldn't go warp speeds. A Klingon battlecruiser shoots the Enterprise several times, at both sublight and warp speeds.

"The Ultimate Computer"[TOS]
The Enterprise, under the control of the M-5 computer, attacks the sub-light freighter Woden. The Woden is torpedoed by the Enterprise, which was moving at a stated speed of warp four.

"Maneuvers"[VOY]
Voyager was able to use the transporter against a stationary target while travelling at warp speeds.

"Balance of Terror"[TOS]:
When running from the warp-speed Romulan plasma weapon, Kirk did not order a drop to sublight. If a warp weapon cannot hit a sublight target, this would have been an obvious move.

Lupus

Sep 16th, '03, 06:21 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
Well actually Incredible Cross-sections was written by a scientist, Dr Curtis John Saxton, theoretical astrophysicist, currently working at Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany to be precise. And this particular book was written precisely for the purpose of pinning down the real world numbers. He had full access to all the original footage and Lucas. It is the only book to have been given an official imprimur of 'canon' by LucasFilms. What would you suggest they do to make it less questionable. I stand corrected!

But we aren't talking about GAMING in either universe. We are trying to compare the respective power of two vehicles. Why on earth would we just throw out what the IP owners of the vehicles have to say about them? Well, we kinda are talking about gaming in these worlds, 'cause we're talking about what would happen if the Enterprise fought the Star Destroyer. It may not be sitting around a table rolling dice, but we are creating a conflict in a fictional universe, while trying to stick to accepted 'stats' (whether ones on paper, or ones deduced from on-screen behaviour). That's gaming, to me. And I just feel that any of the above stats, whether gained from books, cross-sections or on-screen behaviour, need to be looked at carefully. And teh IP owners of the vehicles are often pretty whacked when it comes to writing technical stuff down. :)

In any case, I'm busily being drawn into the argument, which I promised myself I wouldn't do. So I bow outta the thread now.

Sketchpad

Sep 16th, '03, 06:43 PM

I've played this arguement before ... honestly, you have to consider the physics, or lack of them, when determining this. For example: The SD has turbolasers and the Enterprise has phasers. Can someone really define what either of these are beyond hypothetical theories? If so, I'd like both delivered to my house ... I have some pesky neighbors to nuke ;)
My point is this ... if you're going to pit these two vehicles against each other, you have to take into consideration that the physics don't match. You kinda have to look at the numbers ... SD outnumbers the Enterprise in fighters, weapons & tractor beams. Not to mention, they occasionally have a Sith Lord that can kill someone over a good distance ... makes for interesting initial negotiations, huh? ;)

Bartman

Sep 17th, '03, 08:51 AM

Thanks Gary. I've never had anyone be able to provide actual warp/impulse interactions. It looks like that at least in some circumstances it is possible. It does still beg the question if it can be done why don't they always do it?

Asperion

Sep 17th, '03, 10:09 AM

There is another important point that needs to be concidered. In SW they possess the Force. Basically (IMHO) this is the full range of mental abilities. As a result after the fight has gone on for a while and neither side can come up with the upper hand then all the Vader has to do is hail the Enterprise on the pretense of declaring a truce. While they are under negotations, Vader can simply reach out and strangle Kirk. At the very least, there will be termoil on the Enterprise while everyone is trying to figure out exactly what happened. The SD can use this period to fire on the now helpless Enterprise. If Vader wanted to do something that is more sneaky, then he could mentally command Kirk into activating the Enterprise's self destruct system. Either way the Enterprise will prove to be less than the challenge that the raw numbers state that it should be. Numbers never do tell the entire story.

austenandrews

Sep 17th, '03, 10:53 AM

Well, if you include major personnel in the equation, then the Enterprise will always win. Sure Vader's got the Force and all, but Kirk always wins in the end, period. He's beaten a long line of near-omnipotent telekinetics, telepaths, demigods and what-have-you. Vader's a chump next to those guys.

But you could make the same statement if Kirk attacked the Star Destroyer with a space suit and his bare hands, so it's not really relevant. Likewise including Vader in the equation subjects the battle to the laws of drama as well as pseudo-physics. It's not really meaningful.

Stick to the hardware, guys. :)

-AA

P.S. You want to try the Force mind trick on James T. Kirk? Jedi, please! ;)

BlackSword

Sep 17th, '03, 11:45 AM

On the other hand providing a reasonable attractive alien female (perhaps a Twi'lek, or even a mon Calamari, or, well, any female) would sufficiently distract Kirk for an Imperial Ship to move in for the kill.

Dog Soldier

Sep 17th, '03, 11:48 AM

How would the winner fair in a fight with a "White Star" class from Babylon 5? :D

Bartman

Sep 17th, '03, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by Dog Soldier
How would the winner fair in a fight with a "White Star" class from Babylon 5? :D

Very well. Bab5 ships are generally more 'realistic.' There are no 'shields' or similar technologies and weapons are represented as being far more in line with reality. Sharlin cruisers were destroyed by 2 Megaton devices and Shadow vessels by 500 MT devices. Any good solid hit by a Trek or Wars ship would be likely to desable a White Star.

keithcurtis

Sep 17th, '03, 02:45 PM

No Brainer.
Stop comparing tech and just compare universes. In both universes, the good guys win. Kirk (assuming original Enterprise) is a good guy, a hero. Vaer is a villain. He may put the heroes through a wringer, but he loses. That's what he's there for.

Now if you really, really want to compare tech, then neither ship could exist in the same universe (and certainly not in ours). They're just too different. You can't discuss this in a meaningful physics sense, because neither ship is ultimately physically possible as we understand the universe. They are dramatic (read: fantastic) constructs and must be compared as such.

Keith "Drama 101" Curtis

Lezentauw

Sep 17th, '03, 03:01 PM

You wanted a reason for my vote, here it is.

I voted for the SD. SDs have hundreds of hard points worth of weapons, all capable of firing at the same time, coupled with the squadrens of tie fighters. The whole faster than light argument, really depends on the story. If a SD was bombarding a planet, who cares how fast the lasers shoot. The Enterprise is going to have to engage it out of warp anyways.

What it really comes down to me, is the intent of the two ships. A SD was created to preserve peace, and bring a war to a system if it was needed. The Enterprise was designed to explore. The Excelsior, the only Federation war ship was only designed to fight other ships. I will take a ship that was designed to bring a war to a system, over any ship designed only to engage other ships.

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 17th, '03, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
The Enterprise is going to have to engage it out of warp anyways.

Not true. Earlier posts listed several times the Enterprise fired while at warp.

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 17th, '03, 06:02 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
Hmmm, so do the Borg. Remember that the primary weapon of the Borg is their "cutting laser." They seemed to have no problem slicing and dicing the Fed at will. So why are the Feds immune to Wars "lasers" when they aren't immune to Trek "lasers?"

Actually, they refer to it as the Borg cutter beam, not as a laser.

Also, I can't remember the name of the episode -- it was the Romeo and Juliet take-off -- but it featured lasers as well. Here's the relevant situation: a much more primitive space vessel orders the Enterprise to heave-to and return the ruler's daughter (who is on board). The converstation on the Enterprise, following the 'ultimatum.'

Worf: Sir, they are locking lasers on us! (said in disbelief)

Riker: Lasers?!? Those won't even penetrate our navigational shields! (low-level shields up all the time, to deflect small bits of space debris, etc.)

Data: Regulations do call for shields to be raised when the ship is targeted by laser weapons.

Worf: That is a very OLD regulation!

Riker: (smiling, shaking head) Nevertheless, Mr. Worf...by all means, raise the shields.

Space Cadet

Sep 17th, '03, 06:31 PM

Doc, the name of the ST: TNG episode you're trying to think
of was "The Outrageous Okona". IIRC, the actor who played the
title role was the same fellow who played the title role in The
Rocketeer.

Space Cadet :cool:

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 17th, '03, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by Space Cadet
Doc, the name of the ST: TNG episode you're trying to think
of was "The Outrageous Okona".

Thanks! *That's* it, all right!

Oh, and for the record, there's at least one other episode in which it's stated that lasers are no threat to the Enterprise.

The episode is "Loud As A Whisper", about the deaf negotiator Riva, who has a trio of low-level telepaths (his "chorus") who speak his thoughts aloud. The planet to which the Enterprise is transporting him is in the midst of a very bloody civil war, which he is there to stop. When they arrive in orbit, Worf comments that there is considerably weapons fire detected on the surface -- laser weaponry. Picard then comments that the weapons possessed by these people are clearly no threat to the Enterprise.

The fact that the script/dialogue specified "lasers" made for a major "oops" a little later in the episode, when a native who doesn't want piece fires his "laser" at Riva's chorus and kills them. When the beam strikes them, they freeze in place, and then do a quarter-second "melt" in which they vaporize in layers, clothes to flesh to muscles to skeletons to nothing. Since a laser beam will burn a HOLE through an object it hits (or make it explode due to temperature differential and/or the rapid expansion of the vaporized part of the object), and NOT make the entire object vaporize like peeling an onion, this was clearly NOT a laser as we know the term. In fact it was glaring enough that I had a Rocky Horror moment -- I wanted to stand up and yell "Then it's not a laser, is it?!?"

DoctorItron

Sep 17th, '03, 08:04 PM

I was thinking about the invulnerability to lasers thing. All it means that the Enterprise can't be hurt by lasers from the Star Trek universe. Maybe Star Wars lasers are different/better?

So, I got this from a Lucasfilm site:
http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/superlaser/index.html

The Death Star's planet smashing weapon was a superlaser. So, if only the Enterprise was around, it could have jumped in the way and saved Alderaan :rolleyes:

Or, maybe "superlasers" are just Lucasfilm-speak and aren't really lasers? If that's the case, we can get all semantical and claim that the Star Destroyers use "turbolasers", not true lasers, and can hurt the Enterprise.

McCoy

Sep 17th, '03, 10:22 PM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Thanks! *That's* it, all right!

Oh, and for the record, there's at least one other episode in which it's stated that lasers are no threat to the Enterprise.

The episode is "Loud As A Whisper", about the deaf negotiator Riva, who has a trio of low-level telepaths (his "chorus") who speak his thoughts aloud. The planet to which the Enterprise is transporting him is in the midst of a very bloody civil war, which he is there to stop. When they arrive in orbit, Worf comments that there is considerably weapons fire detected on the surface -- laser weaponry. Picard then comments that the weapons possessed by these people are clearly no threat to the Enterprise.

The fact that the script/dialogue specified "lasers" made for a major "oops" a little later in the episode, when a native who doesn't want piece fires his "laser" at Riva's chorus and kills them. When the beam strikes them, they freeze in place, and then do a quarter-second "melt" in which they vaporize in layers, clothes to flesh to muscles to skeletons to nothing. Since a laser beam will burn a HOLE through an object it hits (or make it explode due to temperature differential and/or the rapid expansion of the vaporized part of the object), and NOT make the entire object vaporize like peeling an onion, this was clearly NOT a laser as we know the term. In fact it was glaring enough that I had a Rocky Horror moment -- I wanted to stand up and yell "Then it's not a laser, is it?!?"

Haven't seen that episode since first run, but I remember the weapon not as a native laser, but a Federation Phaser grabbed from a security guard who was probably reassigned the next day. I could be wrong.

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 18th, '03, 05:08 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Haven't seen that episode since first run, but I remember the weapon not as a native laser, but a Federation Phaser grabbed from a security guard who was probably reassigned the next day. I could be wrong.

I admit the effect described sounds much more like a phaser set on "disintegrate" than a "laser", but it was the native's own weapon. It happened like this:

Native delegation from one side comes around some rocks to the designated meeting area.

Native delegation from the other side comes around some rocks to the designated meeting area.

There are gestures/sounds of mutual distrust.

Member of the second delegation pulls his weapon and fires at Riva; someone (Riker, I think) gets Riva out of the way and calls for beam-up, but the weapon discharge has hit Riva's chorus and they melt away as previously described.

The other delegates turn their weapons on the killer and do to him what he did to the chorus, but it's too late...the Federation people are gone. The chief delegate from the first group yells "Come back!!!" up at the sky.

So, no, it wasn't a grabbed phaser, but one of the standard native weapons which had been described as "lasers."

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 05:19 AM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Actually, they refer to it as the Borg cutter beam, not as a laser.Do they. Let's take a look shall we.

TNG Season 2, Ep# 42: "Q Who?"

PICARD: Locate the exact source of the tractor beam -- lock on phasers.
WORF: Phasers locked on target.
PICARD: Fire.
(The Enterprise fires on the cube, with no effect).
WORF: They still have us.
DATA: Shields are down.
WORF: A type of laser beam is slicing into the Saucer Section.
RIKER: They're carving us up like a roast.
PICARD: With whatever force you need, terminate that beam ... fire!
(The E-D blows a hole in the cube)
DATA: The tractor beam has released.
RIKER: Damage report.
WORF: Sections twenty-seven, twenty-eight and twenty-nine on Decks four, five and six destroyed.
PICARD: Casualties?
WORF: Eighteen were in those sections and are missing.
RIKER: They couldn't have survived it.
DATA: A force field is maintaining hull integrity.
PICARD: What is the condition of their ship?
WORF: They have sustained damage to twenty percent of their vessel. Life support minimal.
Again Borg lasers look like they are effective to me.

Also, I can't remember the name of the episode -- it was the Romeo and Juliet take-off -- but it featured lasers as well. Here's the relevant situation: a much more primitive space vessel orders the Enterprise to heave-to and return the ruler's daughter (who is on board). The converstation on the Enterprise, following the 'ultimatum.'

Worf: Sir, they are locking lasers on us! (said in disbelief)

Riker: Lasers?!? Those won't even penetrate our navigational shields! (low-level shields up all the time, to deflect small bits of space debris, etc.)

Data: Regulations do call for shields to be raised when the ship is targeted by laser weapons.

Worf: That is a very OLD regulation!

Riker: (smiling, shaking head) Nevertheless, Mr. Worf...by all means, raise the shields. [/B]

If you are going to provide quotes at least make them acurate. Here is the scene you are refering to.

TNG Season 2, Ep# 30: "The Outrageous Okona"

WORF: Unidentified craft Sector four to Sector four two six one. Overtaking us, no response to our hailing.
...
DATA: Sensors report a minimum range combat craft of the Squadron Class, twenty-six crew.
WORF: Captain, they have locked lasers.
PICARD: Lasers?
RIKER: Regulations call for a Yellow Alert.
PICARD: It's too small of a craft to be of any threat to us. Do you agree, Lieutenant Worf?
WORF: We could blow it out of space before it could scratch our hull.Wouldn't you agree that this quite different than you quoted? There is nothing about lasers being unable to damage the Enterprise but that this particular laser armed ship is to small to harm Enterprise.

The Enterprise is not immune to lasers. It is immune to some specific lasers of relatively low wattage. There are several more examples. In TNG Season 2, Ep# 32: "Loud as a Whisper" Picard wouldn't take the Enterprise into a war zone where the combatants were fighting with lasers because it would "endanger his ship." In TNG Season 4, Ep# 76: "Suddenly Human" Geordi had to reroute power to boost the shields sufficiently to deal with the Talarians' X-ray lasers.

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 18th, '03, 05:54 AM

Really? Hmmm. You could very well be right; I'm working off memory and don't have access to the scripts. Would you care to provide a link or source to those? They could be quite useful.

DoctorItron

Sep 18th, '03, 06:40 AM

Looks like we agree that lasers can damage the Enterprise. This rewinds the debate.

I doubt that anyone's going to be able to make a convincing argument either way. Maybe we should wait for Paramount and Lucasfilm to collaborate on a movie:

"Star Trek: The Wrath of Vader", or
"Star Wars Episode 10: The Federation Strikes Back".

:cool:

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Really? Hmmm. You could very well be right; I'm working off memory and don't have access to the scripts. Would you care to provide a link or source to those? They could be quite useful.

The TNG scripts were included with the DVDs. Bits and pieces can be found here and there but I don't know of a location that has all of them.

Gary

Sep 18th, '03, 09:41 AM

Originally posted by DoctorItron
Looks like we agree that lasers can damage the Enterprise. This rewinds the debate.

Only if the Enterprise isn't going warp speed. Something travelling at light speed can never hit something travelling FTL. Whereas at least some episodes have shown that something going FTL can damage something going sublight.

Lezentauw

Sep 18th, '03, 10:00 AM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Not true. Earlier posts listed several times the Enterprise fired while at warp.

For my statement to be true, you needed to read the entire example. I made the statement that if a SD was bombarding a planet, that the Enterprise would have to engage it out of warp.

That would mean that the SD was in orbit bombarding the planet, low or hgh does not make a difference. If I am correct neither universe allows for FTL that close to a planet. I know that one of them has a thing about not going to warp in a system, much less next to a planet. So we are back to my full statement again. Everything is dependant upon the story, and in the situation that I mentioned the Enterprise would have its hand forced. It would have to engage the SD out of warp.

Gary

Sep 18th, '03, 10:20 AM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
For my statement to be true, you needed to read the entire example. I made the statement that if a SD was bombarding a planet, that the Enterprise would have to engage it out of warp.

That would mean that the SD was in orbit bombarding the planet, low or hgh does not make a difference. If I am correct neither universe allows for FTL that close to a planet. I know that one of them has a thing about not going to warp in a system, much less next to a planet. So we are back to my full statement again. Everything is dependant upon the story, and in the situation that I mentioned the Enterprise would have its hand forced. It would have to engage the SD out of warp.

The original challenge in the first post of this thread was that both would be brought to some random place and neither could leave until the other was destroyed. So the SD can't hold a Federation planet hostage. :p

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 11:17 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Only if the Enterprise isn't going warp speed. Something travelling at light speed can never hit something travelling FTL. Whereas at least some episodes have shown that something going FTL can damage something going sublight.
There are several problems with this line of arguement.

1- We have seen STL ships engage FTL ships. In your own example of "Balance of Terror"[TOS] a STL ship, with impulse only, shoots at the Ent-nil while the Ent is at warp.

2-
A- Imperial ships can detect objects at superlumial speeds.
B- Federation ships can be and are affected by normal objects (stars etc.)
C- Ships at warp have vastly limited manuverability. Tom Paris provides the standard doctrional memnomic of "Faster than light, no left or right."
JANEWAY: Tom, what's the first thing they teach you about maneuvering at warp?
TOM: "Faster than light, no left or right." When possible, maintain a linear trajectory. Course corrections could fracture the hull.
JANEWAY: Exactly. We'd have to drop to impulse every time we made a course change.So the Enterprise can't make hard, sharp, or unpredictable course changes. At FTL they will have to take very predictable courses which the Imperials will be able to track and fire upon.

3- Because we don't know why the Feds usually slow to impulse for combat, we don't know if they have to here. If it is because of jamming or some other similar technique it is likely that the Imperials will also be able to force the Feds to impulse speeds to get proper firing solutions etc.

4- Even if the Fed is able to get targeting solutions at warp and fly unpredicatably enough to avoid being successfully hit, all that does is make the scenario a draw. A Star Destroyer has shields designed to deal with hundreds of gigatons per shot and well over a Petaton per broadside. While the Ent-nil deals damage in the range of dozens of Megatons per shot and hundreds of Megatons per broadside. I would take thousands of full broadsides from the Enterprise to breach the Star Destroyer's shields.

lemming

Sep 18th, '03, 12:00 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
3- Because we don't know why the Feds usually slow to impulse for combat, we don't know if they have to here.
Because it's harder to keep that 200' distance they always seem to be at.

Gary

Sep 18th, '03, 12:48 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
There are several problems with this line of arguement.

1- We have seen STL ships engage FTL ships. In your own example of "Balance of Terror"[TOS] a STL ship, with impulse only, shoots at the Ent-nil while the Ent is at warp.

Using FTL weapons such as phasers and photon torpedoes.

Originally posted by Bartman

2-
A- Imperial ships can detect objects at superlumial speeds.
B- Federation ships can be and are affected by normal objects (stars etc.)
C- Ships at warp have vastly limited manuverability. Tom Paris provides the standard doctrional memnomic of "Faster than light, no left or right."So the Enterprise can't make hard, sharp, or unpredictable course changes. At FTL they will have to take very predictable courses which the Imperials will be able to track and fire upon.

This flies completely in the face of much Star Trek history. There are many instances of Trek ships maneuvering at warp speeds.

Enterprise's "Shockwave, Pt. II" shows Suliban vessels surrounding the ship and firing on her at warp, maneuvering effortlessly. When Enterprise's hull plating begins to fail on the port side, T'Pol orders a ten-degree turn to the starboard. We see this occur while the ship remains at warp speeds.

Then there's "Operation: Annihilate"[TOS], in which the Enterprise pursues a Denevan ship towards the Denevan sun at a stated speed of warp eight. The Enterprise doesn't make it in time, however, and after the Denevan ship burns up, Kirk orders "one-hundred eighty degrees, hard about". We see the ship turn quickly to port, and it is only several seconds later that Kirk orders a reduction to "sub-warp speed".

In "Elaan of Troyius"[TOS], the Enterprise warp drive has been sabotaged, and then a battle begins against a warp seven Klingon ship. The bridge conversation implies strongly that the Enterprise would normally be maneuvering at warp in such a battle, since the impulse maneuvers are "sluggish" and make the ship "wallow like a garbage scow against a warp-driven starship." This notion is confirmed when, the engines repaired, Kirk orders a *pivot* at warp two, and the ship fires. The battle is won.

In "The Deadly Years"[TOS], a Starfleet commodore has foolishly taken the Enterprise into the Romulan Neutral Zone, where she is being pursued and attacked by "a maximum of ten" Romulan Bird-of-Prey class ships. The Enterprise sailed along at warp five. When Kirk resumes command, he employs a variation of the Corbomite Maneuver, and as the Romulans back off, he has the Enterprise engage in a simultaneous course change and acceleration to warp eight. We see the ship turn with extreme rapidity.

In "The Changeling"[TOS], the battle with Nomad causes the *loss* of "warp maneuvering power" due to the drain on the engines (via the shields).

From "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"[TOS], we have this gem:

Kirk : "Mister Spock, is this ship headed for Ariannus?"
Spock : "Negative captain. The Enterprise is now moving in a circular course."
Scotty : "And at warp 10 we're going nowhere mighty fast."

Circling, and at warp 10 no less!

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey does some serious maneuvering around the sun, and it cannot be explained as the ship simply `being maneuvered' by gravity.

In "The Wounded"[TNG], the Enterprise-D is flying in close formation with the Nebula Class starship Phoenix, escorting that ship back to Starfleet for having been naughty. The captain of the Phoenix, however, isn't done being naughty, and changes course. We can actually see what Picard see, as he observes the Phoenix on the viewscreen . . . it engages in a slow banking turn to starboard, at warp, the 'warp stars' streaking by.

There are other episodes as well. I'd say that the Voyager episode was the fluke.

Originally posted by Bartman

3- Because we don't know why the Feds usually slow to impulse for combat, we don't know if they have to here. If it is because of jamming or some other similar technique it is likely that the Imperials will also be able to force the Feds to impulse speeds to get proper firing solutions etc.

Usually, combats are between 2 warp capable ships maneuvering at warp. There are very few instances where sublight ships fight each other or against warp ships. Small sample size.

Originally posted by Bartman

4- Even if the Fed is able to get targeting solutions at warp and fly unpredicatably enough to avoid being successfully hit, all that does is make the scenario a draw. A Star Destroyer has shields designed to deal with hundreds of gigatons per shot and well over a Petaton per broadside. While the Ent-nil deals damage in the range of dozens of Megatons per shot and hundreds of Megatons per broadside. I would take thousands of full broadsides from the Enterprise to breach the Star Destroyer's shields.

And yet a super star destroyer was destroyed by a single kamikaze X-wing fighter crashing into its bridge. And there is nothing stopping the Enterprise from firing the necessary thousands of broadsides if the SD can't even hit the Enterprise.

Lezentauw

Sep 18th, '03, 02:34 PM

Ok sorry me bad. I misread the initial challenge.

In a straight theoretical world, the SD should still win, IMO. The main thing for me if I was the captain of the SD, is that as soon as I found that I was being fired upon in warp and I cannot return fire, I would drop out of warp. Make the Enterprise engage me where I can do the most damage to him. I would then guess that the Enterprise would play hit and run tactics. So I would start laying proximity mines. Deploy the Tie Fighters. Send as much trash as I can floating in space to mess with the Enterprises ability to maneuver.

But if this was ever done, and given to some author to write up, I would say that the Enterprise wins because they are the good guys.

starblaze

Sep 18th, '03, 03:26 PM

Actually not to get too off topic, would the Federation actually get involved with the War between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance? What with their prime directive and all they might just decide to stay out of it.

chaos_engineer

Sep 18th, '03, 04:36 PM

not to be a spoilsport, but why not just do a write-up of both ships using TUV. then fight a best two out of three bout. et voila! there's your answer

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 05:12 PM

Oh, Gary I just figured out where you are getting your quotes from, Robert Scott Anderson's www.st-v-sw.net. No wonder some of this sounded familiar. You do realize he is an inveterate lier who invents and distorts his evidence at whim don't you? I'm not going to bother debunking most of these but here are a couple of examples.

"Elaan of Troyius"[TOS]. In this RSA claims that the Klingon battlecruiser strafes the Enterprise at Warp. In fact the BC aproaches slowly enough that Sulu is able to call out the closing range in increments of 20,000 KM. Obviously impossible if the ship were moving at 300,000 KM per second.

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"[TOS]. RSA points out that the Enterprise is moving in a circle at Warp 10. Never mind the fact that the Enterprise is under the control of a being named Bele and moving faster than it is capable of itself. This is rather an indication of Bele's abilities rather than the Enterprise's.

Several of RSA's other examples such as "Operation: Annihilate"[TOS], "Elaan of Troyius"[TOS], and "The Deadly Years"[TOS] all take place at what I would call a slow leasurely pace not "extreme rapidity" as RSA claims.

Your examples don't even debunk my point. I said they "can't make hard, sharp, or unpredictable course changes." Not that they can't make course changes at all. If you are going to argue a point please argue the ones I've made. Obviously preplaned, relative minor, or slow long arcing manuevers are possible. In fact several of your examples prove my point. In Enterprise's "Shockwave, Pt. II" T'Pol is only able to make a 10 degree adjustment rather then bring a whole new facing to bear. In ST IV the Bird of Prey does a slow arcing swing around the sun which was pre-programed by Spock and takes nearly a minute to complete IIRC.

Usually, combats are between 2 warp capable ships maneuvering at warp. There are very few instances where sublight ships fight each other or against warp ships. Small sample size. Bull. If this were the case than the Picard Manouver and its varients would be useless. Remember that the very reason these are supposedly useful is precisely because Trek combat virtually never takes place at warp. If ships could regularly engage in warp combat than why don't they in situations like the attacks on DS9 in "Way of the Warrior" [DS9] and "Call to Arms" [DS9]? Here we have a station[ary target] against which such attacks would be ideal. And yet in order to engage it they had to drop to impulse and close to a couple of kilometers. If they can't even engage DS9 with warp-strafing why should we believe that they could against a Star Destroyer.

And yet a super star destroyer was destroyed by a single kamikaze X-wing fighter crashing into its bridge.Wrong. The SSD was destroyed by a massive attack from the combined rebel fleet. Did you forget or choose to ignore the command from Akbar to "Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer?" The SSD absorbed the firepower of a fleet containing dozens of 1-4 KM long cruisers and hundreds of smaller craft, including fighters. And until the A-Wing hit the bridge the only damage that had been done was to drop a single shield facing. Even then it was mostly unharmed. The only thing it lost was its helm. Had it not had the bad luck of manuvering toward the Death Star at that moment it probably would have lasted even longer than the 30 minutes it did. And all this against firepower millions of times more powerful than the Enterprise can dish out.

JmOz

Sep 18th, '03, 06:24 PM

Okay, a couple of assumptions:

Darth Vader is NOT THERE, nor anyone you would recognise, same on the Enterprise

Enterprise, adn here is WHY:

A SD can not survive a blast from a weapon designed to destroy a world, The enterprise CAN and did

McCoy

Sep 18th, '03, 06:41 PM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
So I would start laying proximity mines. Deploy the Tie Fighters. Send as much trash as I can floating in space to mess with the Enterprises ability to maneuver.
In that order? I do NOT want to be a TIE Fighter pilot under your command.

McCoy

Sep 18th, '03, 06:48 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
not to be a spoilsport, but why not just do a write-up of both ships using TUV. then fight a best two out of three bout. et voila! there's your answer
What makes you think that any two people would agree on the write-ups?

Main sticking point seems to be the Star Destroyer's superior firepower, which I conceed. But my question is can the big guns be brought to bear on a relatively small and maneuverable target, or would this be like a 20th century battleship trying to use its 16 inch guns for antiaircraft fire?

Lezentauw

Sep 18th, '03, 07:17 PM

McCoy

Sep 18th, '03, 07:35 PM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
That is where the cannon fodder, ummm, I mean the Tie Fighters come in. Three squadrons of them is enough to limit the maneuverability of the Enterprise. If they can manage to get a tractor beam lock on the Enterprise, then there goes thier maneuverability as well.
IIRC, TIE Fighters cant go FTL. Half a second at Warp 1, fire, half a second at Warp 1, fire, tractor beam? Send a photon torpedo down the beam, can't miss. (Wonder why no one ever did that in the show?)

Teleporters are a wild card, no evidence they, or a defense against them, exist in the SW universe. Easiest way to deal with the TIE fighters may just be transport pilots on board the Enterprise and have security details take charge of them. Never saw anything like an R2 unit on a TIE Fighter. (Would make more sense to cycle the pilots through the transporter to hard vacuum, but the Federation is too wussy to do that.)

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 08:05 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Main sticking point seems to be the Star Destroyer's superior firepower, which I conceed. But my question is can the big guns be brought to bear on a relatively small and maneuverable target, or would this be like a 20th century battleship trying to use its 16 inch guns for antiaircraft fire?
They would certainly have a harder time hitting the Ent-nil than another mile-long monstrosity. But a Type I ISD has 64 Heavy Turbolasers and hundreds of medium to light lasers. Even if the Ent-nil can get and stay in the blind spot below and behind the ISD dozens of turbos will be able to target it. And if for some reason the 289 M long Ent-nil is unable to maintain this perfect position the ISD will be able to completely surround it with fire. Some of it will inevitably hit. The results of which are not positive for the Feds.

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 08:18 PM

Originally posted by McCoy IIRC, TIE Fighters cant go FTL. Half a second at Warp 1, fire, half a second at Warp 1, fire, tractor beam? Send a photon torpedo down the beam, can't miss. (Wonder why no one ever did that in the show?)
TIEs are indeed STL unless the ISD is loaded with the post-trilogy options, which doesn't seem to fit the spirit of this debate. Ever play Star Fleet Battles? If you tractor someone they can't miss either. As far as both ships are concerned they are immobile in reference to the other. In some situations this was just fine but in some circumstances this put the tractoring ship at a disadvantage. Not only are you in the same situation as your opponent, you've added a significant energy drain to yourself as well. I imagine the show would use a similar arguement.

Teleporters are a wild card, no evidence they, or a defense against them, exist in the SW universe. Easiest way to deal with the TIE fighters may just be transport pilots on board the Enterprise and have security details take charge of them. Never saw anything like an R2 unit on a TIE Fighter. (Would make more sense to cycle the pilots through the transporter to hard vacuum, but the Federation is too wussy to do that.)
It's likely that Transporters wouldn't work. They don't work through Ionized clouds (thunderstorms) for one thing. And the Twin Ion Engines which give a TIE its name likely put out enough Ions to equal a thunderstorm. They don't work near reactors/radiation, so the reactor sitting right under the pilot would likely screw them up. They are consistantly blocked by heavy metals and raw ores, so the semi-armoured cockpit might give them problems. And last but not least they don't work through the Ent's own shields. And dropping your shields when you have 72 fighter swarming you at every angle doesn't seem like a very good idea.

Bartman

Sep 18th, '03, 08:23 PM

Originally posted by JmOz
Okay, a couple of assumptions:

Darth Vader is NOT THERE, nor anyone you would recognise, same on the Enterprise
Agreed the discussion is about the equipment not the crews.

Enterprise, adn here is WHY:

A SD can not survive a blast from a weapon designed to destroy a world, The enterprise CAN and did

What world destroyer in particular are we talking about. I can't recall the Enterprise surviving any such blast.

McCoy

Sep 18th, '03, 08:27 PM

Originally posted by Bartman
What world destroyer in particular are we talking about. I can't recall the Enterprise surviving any such blast.
The evil neutronium carrot doomsday weapon?

DoctorItron

Sep 18th, '03, 08:55 PM

When quoting things that we've seen in movies and on TV, don't forget that Star Trek has a lot of continuity errors (as does any show or comic with a lot of us fanboys watching every move). The Enterprise performs a miraculous feat in one episode. Then, when faced with a similar threat a few episodes later, the crew forgets all about the brilliant strategy they devised just a short while earlier.

Does a Star Destroyer have seat belts? If yes, then it wins, since the crew can continue to fight after making a hard right turn :p

BlackSword

Sep 19th, '03, 04:14 AM

Well, though it has been challenged to compare just equipment, the crew which operates has as much impact as the actual technology. Granted someone throwing a stone at a tank will lose, but these are both star fareing civilizations who have faster than light travel.

I am not familer with the Enterprise series so I can't comment on Archer.

TNG

Picard: We come in peace. We wish only to talk with you and discuss your culture. Perhaps if you beamed aboard we could have earl grey tea and discuss Shaekespeare.
Vadar: Very well, I shall "Beam" aboard.
Picard: Mr. Worf, lower shields and prepare to beam the Dark Sith Lord aboard.
Worf: Do you think that's wise captain?
Picard: These seem to be a peaceful species.
Worf: Shields lowered sir
Vadar: Fire

ToS

Vadar: Captain, you might be interested in a certain princess we have in captivitiy.
Kirk: Princess? Indeed....tell me....more.
Vadar: We have been able to get little out of her through torture, perhaps your prescence would be enough to finally break her will.
Kirk: Let me...discuss with my...senior officers.
Kirk: Bones, what do you think?
Bones: Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor. But that empire seems to have interesting torture devices, I'd be willing to help coerce some confessions out of rebel scum.
Kirk: Mr. Spock, what is your....analysis?
Spock: Sir, they do seem to be a tyrannical empire which has the resources of entire galaxy at hand to help pacify or destroy all opposition. Besides, they have spiffy grey uniforms as opposed to these technicolor vellure monstrosities the Federation has given us. The logical conclusion is to go with the sure bet and join the empire.
Vadar: Kirk, join with me and we shall rule the galaxy.
Kirk: Mr Dark Sith Lord...we shall...join you...please send the princess...to my quarters.

DoctorItron

Sep 19th, '03, 05:43 AM

BlackSword, good scriptwriting :)

Bartman

Sep 19th, '03, 06:32 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
The evil neutronium carrot doomsday weapon?

Ah, The Doomsday Machine. Thats a bit like saying that an X-Wing could destroy Voyager because Luke survived the Death Star. The DM never engaged the Ent-nil with its planet destroying 'anti-proton beam' and never brought it into its maw. It never really deviated from its course to Rigel 7. The Enterprise and Constellation were gnats that were repetatively swatted at, but never really engaged.

Bartman

Sep 19th, '03, 06:34 AM

LOL BlackSword. You should write more like this.

Starwolf

Sep 19th, '03, 08:27 AM

"What world destroyer in particular are we talking about. I can't recall the Enterprise surviving any such blast."

In the balance of terror after being fired at by the Romulan plasma weapon the Enterprise backs away from the approaching fire ball......After taking the hit by the dissipating weapon at its extreme range spock says to Kirk "Our shields are holding but just barley, they absorbed enery equal to 200 of our photon torpedoes"...

I think Enterprise wins due to the tactical abilities gained by warp speed. In an episode of TNG picard pulls a manuever by hopping about in a small area around an STL ship. It gives the appearance to the STL ship of being surrounded by multiples of the same vessel.

Outside of warp technology....I think the winner would be whoever scored first blood!

Gary

Sep 19th, '03, 08:56 AM

Originally posted by Bartman
Oh, Gary I just figured out where you are getting your quotes from, Robert Scott Anderson's www.st-v-sw.net. No wonder some of this sounded familiar. You do realize he is an inveterate lier who invents and distorts his evidence at whim don't you? I'm not going to bother debunking most of these but here are a couple of examples.

You're going to have to do better than simply saying he's a liar.

Originally posted by Bartman

"Elaan of Troyius"[TOS]. In this RSA claims that the Klingon battlecruiser strafes the Enterprise at Warp. In fact the BC aproaches slowly enough that Sulu is able to call out the closing range in increments of 20,000 KM. Obviously impossible if the ship were moving at 300,000 KM per second.

That's only a couple of passes that he was calling the range.

Third Pass:
Warp Strafe
The Klingon ship approached at a speed which Spock read as "greater than warp seven". Sulu did not call out ranges this time out. Kirk ordered Sulu to turn hard over as the Klingons approached, saying "he's going for our flank." The external shot showed the ship slowly drifting and turning to port. They were hit, apparently shot in the butt. The ship shakes.

(Possible extra pass here, since Spock says, a few seconds after the 3rd pass, "he passed us again, damage to our number four shield". But, no shaking happens. I can't imagine why Spock would say they'd been passed again, though, if everybody knew that. Another pass at this point would suggest a second warp strafing run, or else some impressive impulse maneuvering.)

(Dilithium found in Elaan's necklace.)

Fourth Pass:
Warp Strafe Likely
This attack run was given neither a range nor a speed, but it was clear that the Klingons were gunning for the number four shield, and the last time they were aiming for what Kirk was protecting, they warp strafed. Also, there is no indication that they slowed from the last run. Kirk orders Sulu hard to port, and the Enterprise turns very quickly, but they are still hit. Shields hold.

(Number four shield collapses. Impulse power at 31 percent. (Because of another shake-free strafe?) Kirk tries to stall for time while Scotty and Spock try to get the engines back online.

Originally posted by Bartman
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"[TOS]. RSA points out that the Enterprise is moving in a circle at Warp 10. Never mind the fact that the Enterprise is under the control of a being named Bele and moving faster than it is capable of itself. This is rather an indication of Bele's abilities rather than the Enterprise's.

Several of RSA's other examples such as "Operation: Annihilate"[TOS], "Elaan of Troyius"[TOS], and "The Deadly Years"[TOS] all take place at what I would call a slow leasurely pace not "extreme rapidity" as RSA claims.

Your examples don't even debunk my point. I said they "can't make hard, sharp, or unpredictable course changes." Not that they can't make course changes at all. If you are going to argue a point please argue the ones I've made. Obviously preplaned, relative minor, or slow long arcing manuevers are possible. In fact several of your examples prove my point. In Enterprise's "Shockwave, Pt. II" T'Pol is only able to make a 10 degree adjustment rather then bring a whole new facing to bear. In ST IV the Bird of Prey does a slow arcing swing around the sun which was pre-programed by Spock and takes nearly a minute to complete IIRC.

How about "The Deadly Years"? Kirk clearly orders a course change to 1-8-8 and the ship to warp 8. Or the warp maneuvering in the Ultimate Computer? Or Elaan of Troyius where the Enterprise pivots at warp 2? Or this bit of dialog in "the Changeling":

Shields still holding, sir,
but the drain on the engines
is reaching the critical point.
We lost warp maneuvering power.
Switching to impulse.

Why doesn't any of the Enterprises drop to sublight speed to change course?

Originally posted by Bartman

Bull. If this were the case than the Picard Manouver and its varients would be useless. Remember that the very reason these are supposedly useful is precisely because Trek combat virtually never takes place at warp. If ships could regularly engage in warp combat than why don't they in situations like the attacks on DS9 in "Way of the Warrior" [DS9] and "Call to Arms" [DS9]? Here we have a station[ary target] against which such attacks would be ideal. And yet in order to engage it they had to drop to impulse and close to a couple of kilometers. If they can't even engage DS9 with warp-strafing why should we believe that they could against a Star Destroyer.

And yet the Enterprise did attack the Wotan at warp speed. And the photon torpedoes of the Federation and plasma torpedoes of the Romulans clearly can attack at warp speed vs warp targets. Or the fact that the Voyager was able to use the transporter at warp speed.

Originally posted by Bartman

Wrong. The SSD was destroyed by a massive attack from the combined rebel fleet. Did you forget or choose to ignore the command from Akbar to "Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer?" The SSD absorbed the firepower of a fleet containing dozens of 1-4 KM long cruisers and hundreds of smaller craft, including fighters. And until the A-Wing hit the bridge the only damage that had been done was to drop a single shield facing. Even then it was mostly unharmed. The only thing it lost was its helm. Had it not had the bad luck of manuvering toward the Death Star at that moment it probably would have lasted even longer than the 30 minutes it did. And all this against firepower millions of times more powerful than the Enterprise can dish out.

What about the SD that was destroyed by a mere asteroid collision in the Empire Strikes Back? In the movie, it got its bridge tower sheered off and we don't see what happens to it, but in the novel it is destroyed by the damage. And the Enterprise can do a heck of a lot more damage than a mere asteroid.

I have doubts that the SW energy output is "millions" of times higher than ST. SW seems to use fusion energy as its basic energy source, while ST uses antimatter which is many times more efficient.

DoctorItron

Sep 19th, '03, 10:15 AM

Originally posted by Starwolf
SNIP
spock says to Kirk "Our shields are holding but just barley, they absorbed enery equal to 200 of our photon torpedoes"...
SNIP

Sci-fi scriptwriting often takes poetic license and tosses around b.s. numbers. Don't mistake it for "science".

Are you trying to use that statement to imply that the Enterprise would be able to survive after being shot by 200 torps :confused:

BlackSword

Sep 19th, '03, 11:14 AM

As pointed out, Star Trek varies from episode to episode as to how the physics of the Star Trek universe really works. However there is one single episode which comes to mind showing the superiority of the Star Trek universe (but not necessarily the Enterprise).

ToS

{Scene: The Enterprise being fired upon from behind as per the opening scene of Star Wars}
Kirk: Scotty, are you ready?
Scotty: Aye Cap'n, we've taken a lot of damage, but I believe that I have enough power.
Kirk: Energize
{'60s era sound fx}
{outside the fire from the Star Destroyer stops and both ships seem to hang motionless in space for a long period of time}
Vader: Kirk, your tribute of humorous furry balls pleases the Sith Lord, you may be on your way.
{Forward display of the Enterprise shows an image of Vadar cloaked in black with a Tribble sitting upon his shoulder}

Tempuswolf

Sep 19th, '03, 11:29 AM

Enterprise. The FTL advantages are too great. The Feds have FTL weapons vs. the Empire's c lasers. The Feds move about at FTL speeds vs. the Empire's <<<c rocket engines. Enterprise has FTL sub-space sensing, the Star Destroyer has windows and telescopes maybe. By Next Gen, the Feds even have FTL computers.

Bartman, since you invoked Star Fleet Battles, think about how a Star Destroyer would look in that game. Each turn (which is divided into, up to, 32 impulses) is a second. Each hex is 300,000 km. Enterprise would zip around the map at say 20 hexes a turn (~Warp 2.5, Warp 2 = 8 hexes, Warp 3 = 27 hexes). Over the course of 60 turns (a minute) the Star Destroyer would move maybe one hex. The effective range of the Star Destroyers lasers would be zero or if you are extremely indulgent 1 hex. Enterprise's phasers are only half as effective at about 8-12 hexes as they at point blank range. FTL photon torpedoes designed to hit FTL targets would all be direct hits from just about any range. The only way it wouldn't be a turkey shoot would be if the Star Destroyer's defensive systems were designed to soak up more damage than it takes to slag a continent, the oft quoted fire power of TOS damage output.

lemming

Sep 19th, '03, 11:46 AM

Originally posted by BlackSword
Vader: Kirk, your tribute of humorous furry balls pleases the Sith Lord, you may be on your way.
{Forward display of the Enterprise shows an image of Vadar cloaked in black with a Tribble sitting upon his shoulder}
Hmmm, I think I need to or Durnin or someone needs to photoshop that one...

BlackSword

Sep 19th, '03, 11:50 AM

Originally posted by lemming
Hmmm, I think I need to or Durnin or someone needs to photoshop that one...
I was thinking of this as well, but I am unfortunataly at work and can't do the photo editing right now. I was thinking of a photo with Vader doing his menancing finger pointing.

chaos_engineer

Sep 19th, '03, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
What makes you think that any two people would agree on the write-ups?

what makes you think they won't?

Main sticking point seems to be the Star Destroyer's superior firepower, which I conceed. But my question is can the big guns be brought to bear on a relatively small and maneuverable target, or would this be like a 20th century battleship trying to use its 16 inch guns for antiaircraft fire? [/QUOTE]

game it and find out.

McCoy

Sep 19th, '03, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
what makes you think they won't?

game it and find out.

Have you read this thread? Direct quotes from the source material is dismissed as BS by the other side. But by all means, feel free to conduct the experiment.

Write them up. Post them.

Then duck!

DoctorItron

Sep 19th, '03, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Have you read this thread? Direct quotes from the source material is dismissed as BS by the other side. But by all means, feel free to conduct the experiment.

Write them up. Post them.

Then duck!

Is this directed at me? I've said that a few quotes are BS, but I'm not on the other side.

I haven't decided who I think should win. I'm pointing out contradictory/incorrect quotes to see if we can reconcile the differences to "prove" which ship would win.

Bartman

Sep 19th, '03, 07:50 PM

Originally posted by Gary
You're going to have to do better than simply saying he's a liar.

Robert Scott Anderson aka RSA, aka Guardian2000, aka G2K, aka DarkStar is a rather well known troll among the vs community. Here are a series of links which provide some of the background on this colorful character. Due to the colorful language frequently used by the vs debators, anyone is offended by strong language should probably not read these.

http://www.sfdebris.com/faq.html#37 - Here RSA manages to make it into the official FAQ of alt.startrek.vs.starwars.

http://www.daltonator.net/fuq/trolls/g2k.html - Here RSA manages to get a full page of the official FUQ (Frequently Unasked Questions) of alt.startrek.vs.starwars.

http://foobar.homelinux.net/rsa/ - Here is 15MB of plain text showcasing some of the many lowlights of RSA's posting history in A.S.V.S.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2499799412d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=MPG.1691d135eb7fcbe998983a%40news.cis.dfn.de&rnum=65 - Here is the opinion of one of the most virulantly pro-trek debators on A.S.V.S. about RSA. It's not to flatering.

There are others. But frankly he gives me headaches so I would rather not bother digging them up. Do I need to also provide links to places like where he miss-quotes annother poster but refuses to change it because his misattribution was "astetically pleasing?" Or how about where he uses a quote about a sector of space and represents it as the whole galaxy. Or how about where he selectivly quotes George Lucas removing certain sentances which don't agree with his viewpoints?

RSA is as much of a fruitcake as C++/Hitesh.

{snip more warp strafe stuff}

And you have seen these scenes Gary? One of RSA's favorite tactics is to find the most obscure reference he can. This makes it hard to catch him when he fudges the evidence in favor of his arguement. He frequently uses TOS episodes becasue they are far less commonly seen. I happened to stop by Target and Blockbuster on my way home tonight. And Troyius wasn't available in either. I can't even remember the last time any local station ran TOS episodes. And because of effects budgets back then many times combats such as these frequently weren't even shown. Thus RSA can claim whatever he wants and has a good chance of not being contradicted and if he is he can claim plausable deniability, ala "well thats YOUR interpritation."

What about the SD that was destroyed by a mere asteroid collision in the Empire Strikes Back? In the movie, it got its bridge tower sheered off and we don't see what happens to it, but in the novel it is destroyed by the damage. And the Enterprise can do a heck of a lot more damage than a mere asteroid.

"That SD" in ESB had been in a massively energetic asteroid field for days at that point. And that following a battle in which it likely took hits from a planetary defense cannon. On top of this its shields were down. Vader had ordered his captans to communicate with him via holonet, which is blocked by shields. So a 70m long rock hurls into it moving about 500m/s, doing somthing in the range of 100KT of damage to an unshielded target and all that happens is the bridge tower is clipped off? That is supposed to show me how weak the thing is? And if the novelization says that it was completely destroyed please provide the quote.

I have doubts that the SW energy output is "millions" of times higher than ST. SW seems to use fusion energy as its basic energy source, while ST uses antimatter which is many times more efficient.

Star Wars, like Star Trek, uses fusion reactors for some purposes. DS9 for example uses fusion reactors instead of antimatter. However Star Wars capital ships like Star Destroyers are powered by Hypermatter reactors. We don't know precisely what Hypermatter is but we do know some things about it. It is the equivalent of a "minature sun." And it allows the Star Destroyer to make Hyperspace jumps that use "as much energy in a single hyperjump as many planetary civilizations will consume in their entire lifetimes." Somehow that seems to indicate a power density somewhat higher than antimatter. Once again you are spouting off the little lies RSA likes to use. He is well aware of the fact that Star Destroyers are equipped with Hypermatter reactors but he likes to insist that they must have fusion reactors.

BlackSword

Sep 20th, '03, 06:12 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Have you read this thread? Direct quotes from the source material is dismissed as BS by the other side. But by all means, feel free to conduct the experiment.

I am not an expert on either series, but this debate has series flaws.

a) Quoting Star Trek material is useless. Someone quoted from the Voyager series that said, "Faster than light, no left or right." This was dismissed by the Trek side as that was the only time it has ever been used in a ST episode. Star Trek has had so many shows, and the writers tend to use continuity only if its conveinant. It is sometimes amazing if they keep the same continuity between two shows, much less the same show at times. This is not to say that the Star Wars 'data' is infalliable, but with only 10 hours of source material there was a lot less room for error.
b) Comparing rubberband physics. Neither universe has any ties with real world physics, so to me it makes it difficult to compare two sets of fake physics and say that this fake physics could destroy that fake physics.
c) Cinematic effect. The person on the Star Wars vs. Star Trek site posted an example of calculating the Millenium Falcon's speed and max acceleration from one single scene in ESB(how many problems are there that ST-side says ignore this episode, but this single 20 sec clip from ESB tells me everything I need to know about a galaxy far away and long ago). The scene under question is when the MF is outmanuevering the SD. While interesting that someone would spend that much time crunching fictinoal numbers its not as useful as it first appears. He compared his calculated speed to that of the Enterprise accelerating to Jupiter orbit. In this particular scene, if the Millenium Falcon had been moving much faster (comparable to calculated Trek speeds) or accelerating faster there would have been an indistiguishable blur and it would take away all dramatic and cinematic effect.
d) A subset of cinematic effect is drama. Both movies can be categorized as Space Opera, they are not Science Fiction per se as the Science is dropped in order to provide the drama set in space. Ultimately the point of a Space Opera movie is not to provide real world or conistent physics which can be calcualted, but to provide drama.

Continue on, but I believe that my scripts are the most likely outcome of any event. Actually, I think an important point is contrary to the one that said don't compare crews, compare ships. As the above four ponits show, the ships cannot be compared because they are not based in the same universe (or anything comparable to our universe) so the only thing left to compare is the crews. In this case its difficult.

The Enterprise is equipped with a stellar crew which we get to learn about and we know the strengths and weaknesses of each member. The SD is a faceless monstrosity and at most we know a captain before he gurgles his last and Vadar. The force allows some slight precognition (if I remember correctly) so Vadar may be able to have his guns target the point in space the Enterprise will soon be in. The various Enterprise crews have all managed to survive any foe that has been put before them no matter how powerful by catching some plot loophole.

Still working on a vader and tribble picture.

McCoy

Sep 20th, '03, 07:48 AM

Originally posted by DoctorItron
Is this directed at me? I've said that a few quotes are BS, but I'm not on the other side.
Not everything is about you Scott. I was commenting on a general lack of consensus, not any particular individual.

Agent X

Sep 20th, '03, 07:59 AM

Based purely on what I've seen both ships do and not a bit on meticulous interpretations of the physics behind scenes, I have to give it to the Enterprise. It just seemed capable of doing much more than a Star Destroyer.

Whatever people theorize about the power of a laser/phaser is I really don't care. In Star Wars, a big deal was made out of the Death Star's ability to destroy a planet. In Star Trek, the Enterprise and any other cruiser is able to destroy a planet. The ultimate weapon of the Empire, much more powerful than a Star Destroyer, is touted as a planet-killer! It's a foregone conclusion that many warships in the Star Trek Universe can do that.

And Darth Vader isn't on every Star Destroyer in the Empire.

chaos_engineer

Sep 20th, '03, 12:12 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Have you read this thread? Direct quotes from the source material is dismissed as BS by the other side.

it is getting pretty acrimonious, isn't it.

but if both ships started with the same number of points it wouldn't matter too much how each side wrote them up -- assuming they could agree to start with an equal points base ;)

But by all means, feel free to conduct the experiment.

Write them up. Post them.

Then duck!

i'm afraid i'm not that interested in the subject. i'm not that big on either ST or SW. i'd rather read an alastair reynolds novel or the like.

i just think that writing the ships up using TUV & then fighting a duel would be a reasonably objective way to find out which is tougher. and it would probably be pretty fun.

Gary

Sep 20th, '03, 01:20 PM

Bartman, I'm not interested in getting into a pissing match about RSA since I haven't seen a TOS episode in years.

However, I did check up on the novelization of ESB. On page 49, it clearly states that it was the Avenger that was hit by the ion cannon of the rebels. Since the Avenger survives the asteroid belt, previous damage can't be used as an excuse for the SD that did get destroyed. On page 95, it states that a "lesser ship" of Darth Vader was destroyed. Since Vader was on a 8 km Super Star Destroyer, a 1.6 km regular star destroyer would qualify as a "lesser ship". It doesn't specifically mention that it was a star destroyer, but it states that the dead ship was a "battleship". Combined with the scene from the movie which clearly shows that it was a SD that was hit by the asteroid, the evidence suggests that it was a SD that got exploded. So RSA got this one correct.

Another interesting scene is page 75. 2 SDs appear in front of the MF. Han clearly sees them through the window of the MF. To see a 1.6 km object in a recognizable form, the SDs were probably only about 1-2 thousand km away or less. A few paragraphs down after the SD moved toward the MF at max speed, it states that they were just out of firing range of the MF. The fact that the SDs were close is graphically shown when the 2 of them actually hit each other after the MF dives away. This scene seems to show that the weapons of a SD have an effective range of 1000 km or less. With such a cruddy range, the Enterprise would massacre the SD using phasers and photons which have lots more range than that.

McCoy

Sep 20th, '03, 02:41 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
it is getting pretty acrimonious, isn't it.

but if both ships started with the same number of points it wouldn't matter too much how each side wrote them up -- assuming they could agree to start with an equal points base ;)

i'm afraid i'm not that interested in the subject. i'm not that big on either ST or SW. i'd rather read an alastair reynolds novel or the like.

i just think that writing the ships up using TUV & then fighting a duel would be a reasonably objective way to find out which is tougher. and it would probably be pretty fun.
Doubt that either side would agree to a point limit, "We have the info to stat them out, why not just write them up as they are, and whatever point cons that turns out to be, that's it!"

But there are a lot of details not addressed in the source material. It looks to me that a Constitution-class starship can go to warp almost instantly, but there is a time delay on a Star Destroyer going to hyperspace. Is this correct? Can a couple cenemeters of armor plating provide the same protection against teleportation as tens of meters of metallic ore? Can the main guns of a Star Destroyer be used as anti-aircraft fire, or should they get a limitation? (Personally I think if they could track small, fast, targets, the TIE fighters would be redundant.)

McCoy

Sep 20th, '03, 02:47 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
In Star Wars, a big deal was made out of the Death Star's ability to destroy a planet. In Star Trek, the Enterprise and any other cruiser is able to destroy a planet. The ultimate weapon of the Empire, much more powerful than a Star Destroyer, is touted as a planet-killer! It's a foregone conclusion that many warships in the Star Trek Universe can do that.
Point, game and match. Arguement over.

BlackSword

Sep 21st, '03, 06:58 AM

Some cosmic power has decided to bring forth the two major space superpower together for one fnial showdown. Chosing an Imperial Star Destroyer and the Federation ship Enterprise to fight it out to determine which franchise is the best.

{outside: The two ships come together, the Enterprise dwarfed by the massive bulk of the Imperial Star Destroyer. The ships begin to engage but the differences in technology seem to block each others weapons from doing any damage, cut to Enterprise bridge}

Warf: Captain, our last round photon torpedos did nothing.
Picard: We need to find some way to penetrate those shields. Geordy, what do you have for me?
Geordy: Well captain, I think by reversing the polarization of the photomic guidance system of the torpedoes we can phase through their shields and hit the ship.
Picard: Good, make it so. Warf, fire the torpedos as soon as Geordy has loaded his new design.
{tense pause}
Geordy: Ready captain.
Warf: Torpedo away captain.

{cut to space: the torpedo fires from the Enterprise and moves slower than any other torpedo in the Star Trek universe. Once again Geordy's modifications have made the weapon more powerful, but slower then molasses. Special effects of torpedo moving past SD's shields and a powerful explosion mid-ship. Cut to SD's bridge}

Damage Control Officer (DCO): Sir, we've been hit.
Vader {turns to Chief Engineer} : Commander, why are they now able to penetrate out shields?
Chief Engineer (CE): Sir I believe that they have invoked technobabble to change their weapons to bypass ourshields.
Vader: What can we do to eliminate the threat?
CE: Well sir, we don't have technobabble to counter with...{choke}{gurgle}
Vader: Lieutenant, congratulations on the promotion, what are we going to do to counter this new threat?
New CE (learning quickly): Well sir, perhaps recalibrating the shield flux frequency chambers could change the make up of our shields to block this new weapon.
Vader: Indeed, make the necessary changes.

{cut to space, latest salvo of modified torpedoes explodes on SD's "recalibrated" shields, return to the bridge of the Enterprise}

Picard: Geordy, what happened?
Geordy: Sir, they seem to have countered our technobabble with some new technobabble of their own.
Picard: Dammit Geordy, we need more technobabble.
Geordy: I'm giving you all I've got sir.
{engineer: Geordy picks up an electrical engineering text and begins to randomly select words}
Geordy: Sir, the source of the inhomogeneous vector of our weapon can be realigned for the domain of their ridge waveguide shield generator.
Picard: Make it so, Warf, fire when its ready, computer, Earl Grey, hot.
{cheap special effects and a man in late 18th century garb appears next to Picard, his clothes steaming}

{space, again, another slow photon torpedo bears down on the SD, past the shield and strikes in another part of the midship}

Vader: Lieutenant, what have you go?
NCE {disregards script and picks up college text}: Sir, the temporary GRIN Differentiated equation can be modified to replicate the Erbium ionic shield.
Vader: Blah, blah, why are you telling me this, make it so.
NCE: Sir, none of this means a thing unless spoken, only by invoking the words of science can we solve this problem.
Vader {to himself}: And they call the force magic.

{Bridge of the Enterprise}
Geordy: Captain they have managed to defeat our latest volly of technobabble, should I get some more.
Picard: Yes Geordy, start making up some new words and be prepared to use them. Deanna, do you have a read on their commander.
Troy {begins to concentrate and furrows her brow in that oh so sexy way}: Yes Captain, I am getting a reading on their commander, he is, dark, and mysterious, and evil. I get a sense of great evil about him. But, but, he's so cool in that black outfit, and that commanding voice. He's evil captain, but in a way that makes me want to be evil with him.
Riker: Deanna, what are you saying?
Troy: Will, he has a deep domineering quality which makes my legs like jelly, you whine.
Grey: It true, I've only been here ten minutes I can already tell you whine like a mule.
Riker: Shut it before we space you Earl. Deanna, what does this mean?
Troy: Oh Will, don't you get it, I want to be evil, I want to join with him and rule the galaxy.

{SD's bridge}
Communications Officer: Sir, we are getting a transmission.
Vader (stands imposingly in front of communication screen}
Picard: One of our crew would like to beam aboard and join you on your quest for galactic domination.
Vader: Yes, I sensed you had a telepath amoung you. It is not suprising she would wish to join with us.
Picard: She is right, your voice is very sexy, you do have that cool bad guy look to you.
Vader: Yes, that is why I sell more action figures than my whiney son.
Picard: Does he whine as much as my first officer Riker?
Vader: Probably, most of my first officers don't last long so I don't have anything to gauge it on.
Riker {off screen}: Captain, I must protest, I don't whine.
Vader: Yes, they are about equivilant.
Picard: How do you deal with your first officers?
Vader: I choke them with the poorly described mystical energy, the Force.
Picard: That Force sounds very useful for dealing with annoying first officers, perhaps if we joined forces.
New Chief Engineer: Sir, their technobabble is vastly superior to ours, perhaps we could learn something from them.
Vader {Nods sagely}: Very well Picard, we shall join forces, come to my command bridge and I will show you how to deal with first officers.

Note: The later parts of technobabble were developed exactly as described, using University texts and randomly opening the book and picking out words.

lemming

Sep 21st, '03, 08:39 AM

Originally posted by BlackSword
Vader: Blah, blah, why are you telling me this, make it so.

Just the image of Vader going "Blah, Blah" :D

Next, we'll see him "Land your units near the rebel base, yada yada yada"

austenandrews

Sep 21st, '03, 09:35 AM

Maybe that should be, "Yoda Yoda Yoda ..."

-AA

austenandrews

Sep 21st, '03, 09:40 AM

Btw, BlackSword, that was awesome. I'm adding Technobabble as a new talent for scientists in my space opera game. :)

-AA

kidsavior

Sep 21st, '03, 05:44 PM

Well I voted for the good Ole’ Enterprise. Not to dismiss the awesome power of a Start Destroyer, but as pointed out the Enterprise is capable of destroying planets, a Star Destroyer isn’t. So if you follow that logically then the Enterprises’ shields are designed to resist other weapons powerful enough to destroy a planet, which it is admitted the Star Destroyer doesn’t have.

Also there is the sheer adaptability of Star Trek technology (or Technobabble, hey if Star Wars gets the Force, then Trek gets Technobabble) which Star Wars just can’t compete with. A good amount of anti-matter beamed over to the Star Destroyer and it’s all over.

austenandrews

Sep 21st, '03, 06:20 PM

Just to stir things up again, let's clarify this point: Star Trek ships can raze the surface of a planet - that is, "destroy the planet" in the same sense that we can do today with nuclear weapons - but I never had the impression they could literally vaporize a planet into so much space dust. You're talking about many orders of magnitude difference. Ergo, you can't compare Star Trek weapons to the Death Star superlaser. The superlaser more parallels ST's Death Carrot planet-destroyer, which does basically the same thing and which dwarfs anything the Federation ever imagined (unless things have changed that radically since TOS; I have admittedly not watched a great deal of the later series).

-AA

Agent X

Sep 21st, '03, 06:24 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Point, game and match. Arguement over. Woo Hoo! When McCoy and I are in agreement it is cause to celebrate! :)

chaos_engineer

Sep 21st, '03, 06:25 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
But there are a lot of details not addressed in the source material. It looks to me that a Constitution-class starship can go to warp almost instantly, but there is a time delay on a Star Destroyer going to hyperspace. Is this correct?

sounds right to me. i'd give it the Limitation Extra Time (1 turn; -1 1/4)

Can a couple cenemeters of armor plating provide the same protection against teleportation as tens of meters of metallic ore?

i don't see why they would. however, ST transporters are easily blocked by shields. i'd do them as Teleportation with the limitation Blocked by Shields (-1/4). shields being any active Force Field or Force Wall.

Can the main guns of a Star Destroyer be used as anti-aircraft fire, or should they get a limitation? (Personally I think if they could track small, fast, targets, the TIE fighters would be redundant.)

well, my x-wing got fried by them more than once while playing those Lucas Arts space sims, so i'd say yes they can. and you could use the "Bigger is Better" rule (SH, pgs. 217-218) to make it easy for capital ships to smoke fighters.

one thing that's easy to figure out is the size of each ship in HERO terms:

Enterprise
Size: 22; Length: 160"; DCV -14; STR 120; KB -22; BOD 32; Cost 110

Star Destroyer
Size: 29; Length: 800"; DCV -19; STR 155; KB -29; BOD 39; Cost 145

(actually the star destroyer falls halfway between size 29 & 30, but because it tapers so sharply i went with size 29.)

sizes based on the Sci-Fi Starship Size Comparison Chart
<http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comparison.xhtml>

hmm...looks like i may end up doing those write-ups after all:)

McCoy

Sep 21st, '03, 06:27 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
Woo Hoo! When McCoy and I are in agreement it is cause to celebrate! :)
We agree more often than not, just when I mention it you accuse me of being catty.

Agent X

Sep 21st, '03, 06:28 PM

BlackSword

Sep 21st, '03, 06:35 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer

well, my x-wing got fried by them more than once while playing those Lucas Arts space sims, so i'd say yes they can. and you could use the "Bigger is Better" rule (SH, pgs. 217-218) to make it easy for capital ships to smoke fighters.

Star Destroyers, like many capital ships, have two sets of weapons, point defense weapons for dealing with small, close proximity threats which would include single person or small ships and missles and the main battery weapons which is used against other capital ships. This also is for comparing the range of the SD as mentioned earlier it closing with the Millenium Falcon, this was probably due to the fact that they wanted to use point defense weapons which could more easily target the manueverable ship.

Agent X

Sep 21st, '03, 06:55 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
We agree more often than not, just when I mention it you accuse me of being catty. Hey now, that was catty.;)

austenandrews

Sep 21st, '03, 06:58 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
Ummm, why build a Death Star if your Star Destroyers can raze the surface of the planet? I'm thinking that they can't and that is the reason for a Death Star. Why didn't the Klingons build Death Stars? Because they didn't need them.

Eh? I think you misread my comments. ST ships raze planetary surfaces. I have no idea what Star Destroyers can do. Make lots of big, smoking holes, I would guess.

-AA

Agent X

Sep 21st, '03, 07:23 PM

Originally posted by austenandrews
Eh? I think you misread my comments. ST ships raze planetary surfaces. I have no idea what Star Destroyers can do. Make lots of big, smoking holes, I would guess.

-AA What I'm getting at is there is no need for a Death Star if the Star Destroyers have the kind of firepower that the Star Trek Cruisers have.

McCoy

Sep 21st, '03, 07:26 PM

Originally posted by austenandrews
Just to stir things up again, let's clarify this point: Star Trek ships can raze the surface of a planet - that is, "destroy the planet" in the same sense that we can do today with nuclear weapons - but I never had the impression they could literally vaporize a planet into so much space dust. You're talking about many orders of magnitude difference. Ergo, you can't compare Star Trek weapons to the Death Star superlaser.

I'm sure someone else will correct me if I misremembered, but I think the exact phrase was disintigrate the crust down to the mantle. A single Constitution class ship. Admittedly the Death Star is orders of magnitude more powerful, it can disintegrate the planet, and in a single shot. HOWEVER, if a single Star Destroyer could slag a civilization, the Death Star becomes redundant, it could only do faster what a Star Destroyer could do anyway. Obviously, the Death Star is also many, many orders of magnitude over a Star Destroyer or even a Super Star Destroyer, with the power of the Constitution class ships fiting in the slot between the Super Star Destroyer and the Death Star.

Originally posted by austenandrews
The superlaser more parallels ST's Death Carrot planet-destroyer, which does basically the same thing and which dwarfs anything the Federation ever imagined.

Except the First Federation ship Thesarius, The Lights of Zetar, The Squire of Gothos, the Organians, the Calandans, the Kelvin Empire, the Metrons, the Melcotians, the Thesians, the Vions, Nomad, V'ger*, and the probe that talked to whales.

*Which I felt was a problem with the Star Trek: Voyager series; after the V'ger incident, a Federation ship is more likely to be named Titanic, Hindenberg, or Challenger than Voyager.

austenandrews

Sep 21st, '03, 08:11 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
What I'm getting at is there is no need for a Death Star if the Star Destroyers have the kind of firepower that the Star Trek Cruisers have.

Ah. Yep, that would stand to reason.

-AA

austenandrews

Sep 21st, '03, 08:14 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Except the First Federation ship Thesarius, The Lights of Zetar, The Squire of Gothos, the Organians, the Calandans, the Kelvin Empire, the Metrons, the Melcotians, the Thesians, the Vions, Nomad, V'ger*, and the probe that talked to whales.

*heh* Yeah, that was my point about Kirk being involved. He's faced so many vast cosmic entities and come out on top that a chump like Vader would be a slight setback at best. :)

-AA

Lupus

Sep 21st, '03, 08:42 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
I'm sure someone else will correct me if I misremembered, but I think the exact phrase was disintigrate the crust down to the mantle. A single Constitution class ship. Admittedly the Death Star is orders of magnitude more powerful, it can disintegrate the planet, and in a single shot. HOWEVER, if a single Star Destroyer could slag a civilization, the Death Star becomes redundant, it could only do faster what a Star Destroyer could do anyway. There's no telling how long it takes a Constitution-class ship to do that, of course. Give a Star Destroyer enough time, it could do the same. Its weapons are incredibly powerful - each blast is capable delivering many megatons.

As for the 'why Death Star'.... well, in the real world, you can drop kilotons worth of bombs in a night. So why did the A-Bomb get developed?

Doing that much damage in one shot, and totally destroying a world... it's a weapon of fear, as pointed out in the first movie. A couple Star Destroyers would have been a lot more effective at taking out the Rebel Base, for instance. But the using the Death Star makes for a grand gesture of power; and it's that incredible power that allows them to more effectively control space through fear, in the same way that one country possessing nukes can.

And yes, this thread is acrimonious, and yes, people do dismiss canon stuff. This is because both series have discontuity, especially Star Trek, which contravenes its own limits constantly (especially before those limits were instituted).

I personally find 'X would win! Yargh!' much less interesting than 'if this happens, X would win. If that happened, Y would win' calm discussions. There have been a few attempts at that in this thread. Tryign to get 'a winner' is pointless, useless and leads to acrimony.

Me, I couldn't care less who 'wins.' I just hate seeing crappy reasoning used in the process. :)

McCoy

Sep 21st, '03, 11:19 PM

Originally posted by Lupus
There's no telling how long it takes a Constitution-class ship to do that, of course. Give a Star Destroyer enough time, it could do the same. Its weapons are incredibly powerful - each blast is capable delivering many megatons.
"Mirror Mirror" implies this can be done, easily and efficiently, in one planetary rotation. "A Taste of Armageddon" says an hour and forty-five minutes, I'm assuming that's with a "push." "Whom Gods Destroy" implies that not only can this be done, but it has been done in the past.

Originally posted by Lupus
As for the 'why Death Star'.... well, in the real world, you can drop kilotons worth of bombs in a night. So why did the A-Bomb get developed?
The bombing of Dresden took over a thousand planes. If we had had B-2's, or even B-52's, that could take out a city with a single plane with conventional weaponry in 1945 would we have deployed A-bombs? Maybe, maybe not. As it was, we are talking same force applied with three orders of magnitude fewer airplanes. If a Star Destroyer can slag a planet, Star Destroyer or Death Star, it's still a single ship. (In fact, given the number of fighters carried by a Star Destroyer vs those carried by the Death Star, it probably represents a DECREASE in efficiency.) Why this massive capital investment in a single ship (placing all eggs in one basket) to do what each of hundreds if not thousands of ships can already do? Why was not a single planet slagged by a Star Destroyer or Super Star Destroyer in retaliation for the destruction of the Death Star? Why the rush to build a second, larger, more expensive Death Star?

Originally posted by Lupus
Me, I couldn't care less who 'wins.' I just hate seeing crappy reasoning used in the process. :)

I agree, insisting that a Star Destroyer could slag a planet like a Constitution class starship is crappy reasoning.

McCoy

Sep 22nd, '03, 01:20 AM

Found it. When Captain Pike was in command, some 13 years (and a couple of upgrades) before TOS, the Enterprise channeled "enough [power] to blast half a continent" onto Talos IV in under 60 seconds, shearing off the top of a mountain in the first second. This was a precision, pinpoint focused attack, with Enterprise crew less than 20 meters away. Could probably slag the surface with phasers alone in two or three orbits, less if they used photon torpedos as well.

Agent X

Sep 22nd, '03, 03:55 AM

If Star Destroyers are capable of what the Enterprise is capable of why did the Empire put troops on the ground at Hoth? They could have simply slagged the planet and the Rebel Base at the same time.

Dog Soldier

Sep 22nd, '03, 04:22 AM

Has there actually been an episode where the Enterprise actually razed a planet?

McCoy

Sep 22nd, '03, 06:35 AM

Originally posted by Dog Soldier
Has there actually been an episode where the Enterprise actually razed a planet?
In the mirror universe Kirk's first action as Captain of the Enterprise was "suppression of Gorlan uprising through destruction of rebel home planet."

DoctorItron

Sep 22nd, '03, 06:57 AM

Originally posted by Agent X
If Star Destroyers are capable of what the Enterprise is capable of why did the Empire put troops on the ground at Hoth? They could have simply slagged the planet and the Rebel Base at the same time.

I think the rebel base on Hoth had big honkin' shield generators to protect it from orbital bombardment. The shields were vulnerable to ground attack.

Does anyone know if a planet like Alderaan would have the tech and resources to build a planetary shield? Maybe those shields could stop Star Destroyer weapons, hence the need for a Death Star?

Regarding FTL, Star Wars hyperspace is almost another dimension. Ships can't rapidly hop into hyperspace; they need to plot a detailed course in advance, otherwise they might wind up getting lost, or worse. Also, hyperspace combat is impossible (or maybe just really difficult) because ships in hyperspace travel so fast they can't detect anything, whether it's in hyperspace or realspace.

IMO, hyperspace is much faster than warp. Warp is more flexible, however, and can be used in combat. Additionally, we've seen the warp-based technobabble that allows ships to travel through time and do other nifty tricks.

Anyone else recall a class of Imperial ships that could emanate gravity waves, thereby preventing opposing ships from escaping into hyperspace? I think it appearded in comics and RPG supplements, so I'm not sure if it's canon. I wonder how that might interfere with warp travel?

McCoy

Sep 22nd, '03, 07:19 AM

Originally posted by DoctorItron
I think the rebel base on Hoth had big honkin' shield generators to protect it from orbital bombardment. The shields were vulnerable to ground attack.
Because we all know nothing keeps a secret Rebel outpost hidden like covering the planet with a big honkin' shield requiring a couple fusion generator's worth of energy. Especally on an ice planet.

Seriously, any mention of shields in the source material?

austenandrews

Sep 22nd, '03, 10:03 AM

Originally posted by Agent X
If Star Destroyers are capable of what the Enterprise is capable of why did the Empire put troops on the ground at Hoth? They could have simply slagged the planet and the Rebel Base at the same time.

Easy Answer: Vader wanted to capture Luke, not blast him to atoms.

Real Answer: Because the attack of the Walkers was the single coolest scene in any SW movie, much cooler than any orbital bombardment. :)

Let's not even get into the logic of walking troop transports in a milieu with repulsorlifts. Logic must succumb to coolness in most cases - which is why the Enterprise David must eventually defeat the Star Destroyer Goliath. :)

-AA

Gary

Sep 22nd, '03, 11:12 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Because we all know nothing keeps a secret Rebel outpost hidden like covering the planet with a big honkin' shield requiring a couple fusion generator's worth of energy. Especally on an ice planet.

Seriously, any mention of shields in the source material?

Having just read the novelization, Hoth did have shield generators. They usually aren't on so as to not attract attention. The commander of the Imperial fleet came out of hyperspace too soon against Vader's orders because he was too cautious (needless to say, Vader made sure he had a much more flexible neck for this blunder). This allowed the rebels to turn on the shield which could only be taken out by ground troops.

DoctorItron

Sep 22nd, '03, 01:59 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Because we all know nothing keeps a secret Rebel outpost hidden like covering the planet with a big honkin' shield requiring a couple fusion generator's worth of energy. Especally on an ice planet.

Seriously, any mention of shields in the source material?

From starwars.com (http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/deflectorshieldgenerator/index.html):

"Ground-based installations use immense projectors to generate a deflector shield, like the one that protected the Rebel base on Hoth from orbital bombardment. This shield worked in both directions, however, and had to be lowered momentarily to allow the launching of evacuation ships. During the Battle of Hoth, Imperial ground craft landed beyond the shield perimeter, and marched over land to destroy the generators powering the shield."

McCoy

Sep 22nd, '03, 02:20 PM

Originally posted by DoctorItron
From starwars.com (http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/deflectorshieldgenerator/index.html):

"During the Battle of Hoth, Imperial ground craft landed beyond the shield perimeter . . ."
So unlike the shields on the Tantalus colony or Elba II, these shields do not cover the entire planet. So what keeps a Star Destroyer from slaging the majority of the planet beyond the shield? Vaporize enough of the crust, and the resulting firestorm sucks the air out from under the shield. End of problem.

Because while a Constitution class starship could do that, a Star Destroyer can't.

Agent X

Sep 22nd, '03, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by austenandrews
Easy Answer: Vader wanted to capture Luke, not blast him to atoms.

Real Answer: Because the attack of the Walkers was the single coolest scene in any SW movie, much cooler than any orbital bombardment. :)

Let's not even get into the logic of walking troop transports in a milieu with repulsorlifts. Logic must succumb to coolness in most cases - which is why the Enterprise David must eventually defeat the Star Destroyer Goliath. :)

-AA The Easy Answer: Was Vader already hunting Luke? Now see what you did. I'm gonna have to watch ESB again!:)

Agent X

Sep 22nd, '03, 05:35 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
So unlike the shields on the Tantalus colony or Elba II, these shields do not cover the entire planet. So what keeps a Star Destroyer from slaging the majority of the planet beyond the shield? Vaporize enough of the crust, and the resulting firestorm sucks the air out from under the shield. End of problem.

Because while a Constitution class starship could do that, a Star Destroyer can't. I think we've got you on this one guys. Partial Shields do not a planet protect. If planet goes kaboom then Rebel Base isn't a fun place to be.

...And Vader's anger about silly guy coming out of hyperspace too soon invalidates the idea that they wanted to land troops.

McCoy

Sep 22nd, '03, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
So unlike the shields on the Tantalus colony or Elba II, these shields do not cover the entire planet.
And I should mention that the Enterprise's phasers could have punched through the shields on Elba II, they didn't because Scotty was unsure if anyone on the planet (including Kirk and Spock) would live through that.

austenandrews

Sep 22nd, '03, 06:01 PM

McCoy, as a serious Classic Trek geek in the early 80's, I salute to your expansive knowledge of TOS. I suppose the name should have been a giveaway. :)

-AA

austenandrews

Sep 22nd, '03, 06:09 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
...And Vader's anger about silly guy coming out of hyperspace too soon invalidates the idea that they wanted to land troops.

I believe in ESB Vader is upset because the rebels were alerted to the attack, not because the orbital bombardment was rendered impossible. The novelization might have said that, but books are EU. :)

Here's part of the opening crawl: "The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space..."

I was a ST geek in the early 80's, but I'm a SW geek now. ;)

-AA

McCoy

Sep 22nd, '03, 06:10 PM

Originally posted by austenandrews
McCoy, as a serious Classic Trek geek in the early 80's, I salute to your expansive knowledge of TOS. I suppose the name should have been a giveaway. :)

-AA
Actually it's a tribute to Hank, not Leonard. Tried to register as Beast, but it was taken.

Saw First and Third seasons of TOS in first run, technical difficulties prevented me from seeing second season in original broadcast, I've tried to make up for lost time.

Agent X

Sep 22nd, '03, 06:22 PM

Originally posted by austenandrews
I believe in ESB Vader is upset because the rebels were alerted to the attack, not because the orbital bombardment was rendered impossible. The novelization might have said that, but books are EU. :)

Here's part of the opening crawl: "The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space..."

I was a ST geek in the early 80's, but I'm a SW geek now. ;)

-AA That is a good point. You could read it two ways then. Either he believed Luke being "strong with the force" would be flushed out if he hammered the base with the big guns or he always intended to land troops.

chaos_engineer

Sep 22nd, '03, 07:04 PM

Originally posted by BlackSword
Star Destroyers, like many capital ships, have two sets of weapons...

not in the Lucas Arts games they don't. they just have generic turrets that they use against both fighters and larger ships.

...point defense weapons for dealing with small, close proximity threats which would include single person or small ships and missles and the main battery weapons which is used against other capital ships.

that would be simple to do. just make the main batteries MegaScale and the point defense guns regular scale.

as for the Enterprise, i'd make the Phasers, Shields, and Engines flexible slots in a Multipower. that way when the Capt. barks, "Divert power to the shields!", it actually means something in game terms.

Mordacius

Sep 22nd, '03, 07:54 PM

Aww, you guys know this'd just be ST IV: The Voyage Home all over again, except that the valiant crew of the Enterprise would rescue a pair of mating Jedi, instead of humpback whales. :)

On a more serious note: I'd consider a matchup between the original Constitution class Enterprise and the Star Destroyer a tossup. The Enterprise has vastly, insanely better technology, but their shields are ablative, and the Star Destroyer makes them look like a gnat.

I wouldn't give the Star Destroyer five minutes against vessels from the Next Generation, though. Particularly in the post Wolf-359 era, when they shifted their focus from "boldly going where no one has gone before" to "not getting killed by the Borg." :)

Agent X

Sep 22nd, '03, 07:59 PM

I just can't see why people are voting for the Star Destroyer. I love Star Wars, like Star Trek TOS, tolerate DS9, and loathe the rest of Star Trek and I am willing to admit the advantage easily goes to the Enterprise.

DoctorItron

Sep 23rd, '03, 06:22 AM

I finally cast my vote for the Enterprise. Both ships have weapons, shields, FTL travel, and tractor beams, and although I haven't seen incontrovertible proof of which ship is better, the edge goes to the Enterprise.

The Enterprise also has a decisive edge in versatility. The Star Trek universe has more nifty technology, while Star Wars often feels like a World War 2 movie set in space.

austenandrews

Sep 23rd, '03, 06:38 AM

Here's another way to look at it. If the two ships met in a ST episode, odds are the Star Destroyer, attacking cravenly and without warning, would blast through the Enterprise's navigational shields and damage some internal systems. The crew would be prisoners of the Empire for awhile until the Enterprise's systems got fixed, then the Federation boys would pump up the shields and lay a whuppin' on Palpatine's thugs.

If the two ships met in a SW movie, the Enterprise would trade blows with the SD while a smaller ship like the Defiant, or maybe a shuttlecraft, would do the real dirty work. :)

-AA

BlackSword

Sep 23rd, '03, 07:03 AM

Let us not forget that all Imperial capital ships are built with a flaw which can easily exploited. Said flaw is usually at a place that is obviously marked, such as a large arrow pointing towards a vent shaft with caution tape surrounding it and crudely made sign which says "no bombs." In addition, even though the ships have fleets of fast attack craft it can only have four out at single time, because Imperial regulations prevents the ship from launching a decisive force.

austenandrews

Sep 23rd, '03, 08:03 AM

BlackSword, every time I see your sig I read "Brum" instead of "Brun," so the verse conjures strange images: http://www.brum.tv/

(I've got preschool kids, what can I say? :))

-AA

Dog Soldier

Sep 23rd, '03, 09:33 AM

Has anyone actually tried to create either of these ships with Hero rules using accepted series canon?

Blue

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:02 AM

I see it less as a matter of hardware and more a matter of crew. To me, piloted by the appropriate crews, it's no contest. The Enterprise annihilates nearly anyone; they're just too damn clever. And scotty could replace the warp engines with buffalo wings and he could still get warp 2. How do you fight that?

McCoy

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:19 AM

Originally posted by Dog Soldier
Has anyone actually tried to create either of these ships with Hero rules using accepted series canon?
Obviously I need to move Ultimate Vehicle up on my priority list.

Some preliminary discussion has been done, no actual write-ups that I am aware of.

McCoy

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by Blue
I see it less as a matter of hardware and more a matter of crew. To me, piloted by the appropriate crews, it's no contest. The Enterprise annihilates nearly anyone; they're just too damn clever. And scotty could replace the warp engines with buffalo wings and he could still get warp 2. How do you fight that?
There is that. Was it Star Trek III where all but Kirk were beamed up to the enemy ship as prisoners, and by the time Kirk got there they had taken the ship?

Herolover

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:49 AM

This is such a stupid arguement. It is so obvious.

My Cylon Baseship with Raiders would destroy both soooooooo easily.

Go on ahead, prove me wrong. I dare anyone to refute the above statement.

McCoy

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:52 AM

Originally posted by Agent X
If Star Destroyers are capable of what the Enterprise is capable of why did the Empire put troops on the ground at Hoth? They could have simply slagged the planet and the Rebel Base at the same time.
OK, just re-watched the begining of The Empire Striles Back.
[list=1]
The secret Rebel base did have big honkin' shield generators to announce their presence to all passing Imperial scouts.
Vader knew Luke was on Hoth, and wanted him alive, which would preclude planetary destruction as an option.
Sensor technology in this reality really sucks! Luke reports "no life reading" when a two-ton warmblooded predator is less than 10 meters from him. An off-the-shelf 20th century IR detector could have spotted that one.
[/list=1]

Herolover

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:54 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
OK, just re-watched the begining of The Empire Striles Back.
]Sensor technology in this reality really sucks! Luke reports "no life reading" when a two-ton warmblooded predator is less than 10 meters from him. An off-the-shelf 20th century IR detector could have spotted that one.
[/list=1]

Don't be so quick to say that. Polar Bears cannot be picked up by IR detection even when they are in their natural environments.

Vanguard

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:58 AM

LOL . . HeroLover . . you are a man after my own heart . . although I'd have to disagree just slightly and say the Battlestar with it's Viper's would rock everyone.

Seriously folks . . this is a dead topic. NO ONE is going to agree on anything so might as well let it die slowly . .

lemming

Sep 23rd, '03, 12:11 PM

Originally posted by Vanguard
LOL . . HeroLover . . you are a man after my own heart . . although I'd have to disagree just slightly and say the Battlestar with it's Viper's would rock everyone.
I don't know. Those Cylons and Vipers always seemed to fly in the exact same flight patterns. Too predictable. :)

DigitalGolem

Sep 23rd, '03, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by Herolover
This is such a stupid arguement. It is so obvious.

My Cylon Baseship with Raiders would destroy both soooooooo easily.

Go on ahead, prove me wrong. I dare anyone to refute the above statement.

Well, if we're talking about carriers, I'd put my money on the HMS Minotaur from the Honor Harrington series. :D

I can't resist: All your Baseship are belong to us!!!

DG

Vanguard

Sep 23rd, '03, 01:18 PM

Originally posted by lemming
I don't know. Those Cylons and Vipers always seemed to fly in the exact same flight patterns. Too predictable. :)

hehe . .their doing that just to lull you into a false sense of security. :)

Starwolf

Sep 23rd, '03, 03:25 PM

OK if we are now allowed to invoke other fictional ships, I think the Galactica would have her clock cleaned by the fighter wing from the TCS Concordia of Wing Commander fame.
:D

Vanguard

Sep 23rd, '03, 03:36 PM

Hmm .. that's possible. Although I'd give the Viper's even money against the TCS fighters. The Vipers more manueverable then the starfightes (except for maybe the lightest) but they don't have any shields so all it would take would be one or two hits from the TCS fighters and that would be all she wrote.

And also give the Galactica at least a good shot due to it's defensive weapons. But that's just me and I'm biased. :D

Lupus

Sep 23rd, '03, 04:58 PM

The Argo/Yamato. Star Blazers. I forget what the Japanese name of that series was, though.

Sure, their fighters would take heavy casualties - the Galactica's fighters are probably superior.

But then, when all hope is lost, they fire the wave motion gun, taking out everything in about half a light year in front of them. :D

(Now, why wasn't firing the WMG ever the first action they took? Obviously not gamers. "We got a 40d6 killing attack? Screw the fighters. Toss 'em into space. I'm installing another one of these babies.")

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 23rd, '03, 05:13 PM

Okay, this is getting out of hand...so I gotta up the ante!

Doc Smith's Skylark of Valeron. Top THAT!

McCoy

Sep 23rd, '03, 05:29 PM

Originally posted by Lupus
The Argo/Yamato. Star Blazers. I forget what the Japanese name of that series was, though.

Sure, their fighters would take heavy casualties - the Galactica's fighters are probably superior.

But then, when all hope is lost, they fire the wave motion gun, taking out everything in about half a light year in front of them. :D

(Now, why wasn't firing the WMG ever the first action they took? Obviously not gamers. "We got a 40d6 killing attack? Screw the fighters. Toss 'em into space. I'm installing another one of these babies.")
That's a 40d6 area effect megascale RKA. Yeah, one of those fireing forward, one to the rear, covers most circumstances. If it survives that, smile sweetly and hope it's in a forgiving mood.

McCoy

Sep 23rd, '03, 05:41 PM

Originally posted by Herolover
Don't be so quick to say that. Polar Bears cannot be picked up by IR detection even when they are in their natural environments.
The fur covered parts are invisable in IR, "Scientists could see the eyes, nose and breath, but not the bear."

Herolover

Sep 23rd, '03, 05:44 PM

First, I said a Cylon Baseship not the Galactica. A Cylon Baseship, original series, is far more powerful than even the Galactica.

Second. How about the SDF-1 from Robotech. It even has a "main gun."

Yes, I realize I hijacked/side treked this thread, but it was asinine anyway. :p

McCoy

Sep 23rd, '03, 06:21 PM

Given the shots fired/ships or people hit ratio, Cylons have to be the worst shots in the universe. Don't make me laugh.

Vanguard

Sep 23rd, '03, 08:47 PM

Yes HL you did say Basestar. I was the one that said Battlestar. And while I do hate to admit it. A single Basestar could give a Battlestar a run for it's money. (But the Battlestar would do some serious damage before reduced to space debris).

And the Cylons are all about quantity . . not quality there McCoy. They figure if they send enough fighters or throw enough blaster bolts at something they've GOT to hit.

lemming

Sep 23rd, '03, 10:18 PM

Originally posted by Lupus
The Argo/Yamato. Star Blazers. I forget what the Japanese name of that series was, though.

But then, when all hope is lost, they fire the wave motion gun, taking out everything in about half a light year in front of them. :D
And then have some Spring Water to celebrate. ;)

DigitalGolem

Sep 24th, '03, 05:18 AM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Okay, this is getting out of hand...so I gotta up the ante!

Doc Smith's Skylark of Valeron. Top THAT!

Oops, forgot about that one. Dr. A. wins!

DGv3.0

Agent X

Sep 24th, '03, 02:50 PM

Back on the Star Wars/Star Trek debate: Does anybody remember in A New Hope when the Millenium Falcon jumps out of Hyperspace and discovers that the planet Alderaan has been destroyed? Han exclaims something like the entire imperial starfleet couldn't destroy a whole planet.

McCoy, run with it.:)

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 24th, '03, 05:25 PM

Actually, going from memory (and we all know where THAT got me earlier in this thread):

"Impossible! Half the fleet couldn't do it...it'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than..."

At which point he got interrupted by the arrival of a TIE Fighter.

Space Cadet

Sep 24th, '03, 05:27 PM

The original name of Star Blazers was Space Cruiser Yamato.

Space Cadet :cool:

McCoy

Sep 24th, '03, 07:33 PM

Han: The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet, it'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've . . . there's another ship coming in!

So if we take Captain Solo as an expert witness, who has properly studied his foe, we see that the Death Star is more powerful than the rest of the fleet put together.

A New Hope, Death Star destroys a planet.

Mirror Mirror, the Enterprise, not just any Constitution class starship but specifically the Enterprise herself, has destroyed a planet.

A New Hope, the entire starfleet, minus the Death Star, couldn't destroy a whole planet.

A Star Destroyer going up against a Constitution class starship is going to find itself outmaneuvered and outgunned.

Agent X

Sep 24th, '03, 07:38 PM

DoctorItron

Sep 24th, '03, 07:45 PM

I agree. McCoy's made a solid argument.

WhammeWhamme

Sep 24th, '03, 07:46 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Han: The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet, it'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've . . . there's another ship coming in!

So if we take Captain Solo as an expert witness, who has properly studied his foe, we see that the Death Star is more powerful than the rest of the fleet put together.

A New Hope, Death Star destroys a planet.

Mirror Mirror, the Enterprise, not just any Constitution class starship but specifically the Enterprise herself, has destroyed a planet.

A New Hope, the entire starfleet, minus the Death Star, couldn't destroy a whole planet.

A Star Destroyer going up against a Constitution class starship is going to find itself outmaneuvered and outgunned.

Of course, that requires taking Captain Solo as an expert:

1) What Starfleet was he familiar with? Aren't the star Destroyers fairly new model themselves?

2) He's a smuggler, not a general. (then)

3) He was wrong about it being humanly possible to blow up a world...

Also, I'm pretty sure Han was exaggerating out of shock: among other things, the Imperial Starfleet should have more than 2000 ships: Galaxies are *huge*, and now they're ruled by fear. (all IMO)

Agent X

Sep 24th, '03, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by DoctorItron
I agree. McCoy's made a solid argument. Well, at the risk of sounding immodest, I was Pancho to his Cisco Kid.:)

McCoy

Sep 24th, '03, 07:56 PM

Design note: If anyone still wants to write up these ships, this gives us an upper limit of power on the Star Destroyer. Several websites have said that the weapon on the Death Star released 2E32 joules of energy, call it 4.3 trillion joules in base 10. That means the average ship in the Empire's fleet has an upper limit of 4.3 billion joules for all weapons put together.

Now does anyone remember how to convert joules into megatons and Damage Classes?

Agent X

Sep 24th, '03, 07:58 PM

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme
Of course, that requires taking Captain Solo as an expert:

1) What Starfleet was he familiar with? Aren't the star Destroyers fairly new model themselves?

2) He's a smuggler, not a general. (then)

3) He was wrong about it being humanly possible to blow up a world...

Also, I'm pretty sure Han was exaggerating out of shock: among other things, the Imperial Starfleet should have more than 2000 ships: Galaxies are *huge*, and now they're ruled by fear. (all IMO) Please tell me you are joking. You're not going to have any hair left if you don't stop splitting them like this. Han seems to know an awful lot about ships considering all the work he's done on the Millenium Falcon and a few remarks concerning the Imperial fleet... and, when a fictional character that is a central hero to the story states an opinion, it is usually normal to assume their comments are credible.

McCoy

Sep 24th, '03, 08:01 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
Well, at the risk of sounding immodest, I was Pancho to his Cisco Kid.:)
And I belatedly thank you.

Agent X

Sep 24th, '03, 08:20 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
And I belatedly thank you. Ooh Cisko

McCoy

Sep 24th, '03, 09:18 PM

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme
Of course, that requires taking Captain Solo as an expert:

1) What Starfleet was he familiar with? Aren't the star Destroyers fairly new model themselves?

2) He's a smuggler, not a general. (then)

3) He was wrong about it being humanly possible to blow up a world...

Also, I'm pretty sure Han was exaggerating out of shock: among other things, the Imperial Starfleet should have more than 2000 ships: Galaxies are *huge*, and now they're ruled by fear. (all IMO)
Han is expert enough to make a living as a smuggler, this takes some knowledge of the capacities of various Emperial ships. Also between 1) and your unnumbered final point pick a side; you cannot argue that Star Destroyers are new and unknown and simultaneously as common as pebbles on the beach.

Don't know as much about Star Wars as Trek, but think an arguement could be made that Star Destroyers had been superceeded by Super Star Destroyers by the time of A New Hope, and that the plan was to phase out Super Star Destroyers in favor of the Death Star.

Gary

Sep 25th, '03, 11:56 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Design note: If anyone still wants to write up these ships, this gives us an upper limit of power on the Star Destroyer. Several websites have said that the weapon on the Death Star released 2E32 joules of energy, call it 4.3 trillion joules in base 10. That means the average ship in the Empire's fleet has an upper limit of 4.3 billion joules for all weapons put together.

Now does anyone remember how to convert joules into megatons and Damage Classes?

I think 2E32 means 2 X10^32, not 2^32. 4.3 trillion joules would mean 4.3 X10^12 joules which is completely wimpy and insignificant in a galactic scale.

1 kg of matter converted into energy would be (3 X10^8)^2 = 9 X10^16 joules of energy. I recall that it was roughly equal to a 20 megaton nuclear bomb. 4.3 X 10^12 is thus roughly a 2 kiloton explosion, less than Hiroshima. :p

austenandrews

Sep 25th, '03, 12:10 PM

It's been a long time since I've seen Mirror Mirror. Did the Enterprise actually blow the planet to space dust, or did it just blast a mile or two off the crust, or did it simply destroy the livable surface? Because the Death Star actually blew Alderaan to smithereens, core and all. I still don't think the Enterprise could do that, even with a generous dose of technobabble.

So yes, Han Solo's comments do apply, but from there it's a matter of quantity. Let's generously assume that a thousand Star Destroyers could blast a planet down to the core. How many Enterprises would it take? Has anyone else in the ST universe, like maybe the Borg, actually exploded an entire planet to space dust? If so, maybe we can assume an equivalent power level with the Death Star and track the comparison.

-AA

McCoy

Sep 25th, '03, 01:25 PM

Originally posted by Gary
I think 2E32 means 2 X10^32, not 2^32. 4.3 trillion joules would mean 4.3 X10^12 joules which is completely wimpy and insignificant in a galactic scale.
I stand corrected, wondered why they were doing that in binary but assumed they had their reasons. Two hundred octillion joules sounds more like a planet buster. That would mean the "average" ship in the fleet would be able to fire 2 x 10^29 joules. Which leaves only the arguement if Star Destroyers are above or below average.

McCoy

Sep 25th, '03, 01:37 PM

Originally posted by austenandrews
It's been a long time since I've seen Mirror Mirror. Did the Enterprise actually blow the planet to space dust, or did it just blast a mile or two off the crust, or did it simply destroy the livable surface? Because the Death Star actually blew Alderaan to smithereens, core and all. I still don't think the Enterprise could do that, even with a generous dose of technobabble.

So yes, Han Solo's comments do apply, but from there it's a matter of quantity. Let's generously assume that a thousand Star Destroyers could blast a planet down to the core. How many Enterprises would it take? Has anyone else in the ST universe, like maybe the Borg, actually exploded an entire planet to space dust? If so, maybe we can assume an equivalent power level with the Death Star and track the comparison.

-AA
Unknown. All we know is the computer said that after Pike's assassination Kirk's first action as Captain of the Enterprise was "suppression of Gorlan uprising through destruction of rebel home planet." "Destruction" is rather vague, could have been destruction of the indigenous culture, reducing the planet to rubble, or anything in between.

While I doubt that a Constitution class ship could turn a planet into an asteroid belt in one shot, I see no problem in it being done in a day or two. May seem a bit excessive, but if the purpose is to set an example . . ..

WhammeWhamme

Sep 25th, '03, 03:43 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Han is expert enough to make a living as a smuggler, this takes some knowledge of the capacities of various Emperial ships. Also between 1) and your unnumbered final point pick a side; you cannot argue that Star Destroyers are new and unknown and simultaneously as common as pebbles on the beach.

Don't know as much about Star Wars as Trek, but think an arguement could be made that Star Destroyers had been superceeded by Super Star Destroyers by the time of A New Hope, and that the plan was to phase out Super Star Destroyers in favor of the Death Star.

The entire Imperial fleet is fairly new; it didn't exist until some time between ep2 and ep4. The capabilities likely constantly changed. I don't know about 'as common as pebbles on the beach' but the Empire is huge. It would need a lot of ships, especially once the Rebellion began.

Why would Han have ever dealt with a front line battleship?

Personally, I haven't voted. There are *far* too many variables.

McCoy

Sep 25th, '03, 04:39 PM

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme
The entire Imperial fleet is fairly new; it didn't exist until some time between ep2 and ep4. The capabilities likely constantly changed. I don't know about 'as common as pebbles on the beach' but the Empire is huge. It would need a lot of ships, especially once the Rebellion began.

Why would Han have ever dealt with a front line battleship?

Personally, I haven't voted. There are *far* too many variables.
If the fleet is fairly new, it is also fairly thinly spread. Blockade runner fits the general job description of smuggler. Han has to be prepared for any Imperial ship, from the smallest to the largest. Never knows what will be waiting at the end of a jump.

chaos_engineer

Sep 25th, '03, 04:50 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Now does anyone remember how to convert joules into megatons and Damage Classes?

Stirling Westrup posted some numbers about that to the champ-l mailing list during a discussion about how strong to make starship shields. here's an excerpt.

"As an energy unit, a Megaton is defined to be 10^15 Calories (about 4*10^15 Joules) of energy.

1 Megaton is 4.19E+015 J. Equiv STR is 221 (44 dc) or 14.5d6 RKA
10 Megaton is 4.19E+016 J. Equiv STR is 237 (47 dc) or 15.5d6 RKA
100 Megaton is 4.19E+017 J. Equiv STR is 254 (51 dc) or 17d6 RKA
1 Gigaton is 4.19E+018 J. Equiv STR is 271 (54 dc) or 18d6 RKA

So even if I assume that futuristic 'tri-cobolt' bombs have 10 times the yield of todays biggest nukes, I still only need to withstand an 18d6 RKA.

So, barring any blatant errors in my math, I think this is the way I'm gonna go for my game. Now I just have to work out what kind of futurist weaponry the Imperial Space Fleet mounts that can expect to routinely crack 500 DEF sheilds..."

i hope you don't mind me posting this, Stirling:)

McCoy

Sep 25th, '03, 05:27 PM

So the Death Star's main weapon we're talking about 98 dc? Maybe round to 100?

chaos_engineer

Sep 26th, '03, 05:15 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
So the Death Star's main weapon we're talking about 98 dc? Maybe round to 100?

i guess. so would the Enterprise have that much firepower since it's supposed to be able to cook a planet? uffda! talk about over the top!

the hardest part of trying to do a write-up of these ships is just pinning down their exact capabilities. and when you consider all the self-contradictions & rubber science in each series, it seems pretty hopeless -- especially since i'm not well versed in the minutia of either universe.

the best i could come up with would be a ship like the Enterprise vs. a ship similar to a Star Destroyer. fun for me, but not likely to settle any bets:)

McCoy

Sep 26th, '03, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
i guess. so would the Enterprise have that much firepower since it's supposed to be able to cook a planet? uffda! talk about over the top!

the hardest part of trying to do a write-up of these ships is just pinning down their exact capabilities. and when you consider all the self-contradictions & rubber science in each series, it seems pretty hopeless -- especially since i'm not well versed in the minutia of either universe.

the best i could come up with would be a ship like the Enterprise vs. a ship similar to a Star Destroyer. fun for me, but not likely to settle any bets:)
If the Star Warriors are correct (and I have not checked their math), Death Star's main weapon generated about 5 x 10^17 Megatons, a photon torpedo is about 50 Megatons. So an energy equal to 10 quintillion photon torpedos. Let's say 1 per mil of that is enough to vaporize the surface, that brings it down to a trillion photon torpedos.

Anyone remember how many photon torpedos the Constitution class Enterprise carried? I keep seeing the figure "over 200" for the Enterprise A.

McCoy

Sep 26th, '03, 07:46 PM

Hit wrong button could edit, but I'll just continue here.

OK, taking the somewhat arbitrary and theoretical figure of 50 trillion Megatons to vaporize a planetary surface. "The Cage," Enterprise channeled enough power to "blast half a continent" in sixty seconds. Let's assume that Terra is typical, and half a continent is 1/2 of 1/7 of 1/4 of the planet's surface, we're doing back of envelope calculations here, so let's round to 1/50th, a trillion Megatons in 60 seconds. Five turns to a minute, Enterprise has a speed 4, so 50 billion Megatons per phase. Presuming that's with a 10 point push, and we get that a normal phaser blast is 12.5 billion Megatons, or 12500 Gigatons, 67 dc, 22d6+1 RKA, 335 AP for the phaser as opposed to 420 for the photon torpedos (16d6 RKA explosion 64 charges). Sounds about right.

feywulf

Sep 26th, '03, 09:33 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Hit wrong button could edit, but I'll just continue here.

OK, taking the somewhat arbitrary and theoretical figure of 50 trillion Megatons to vaporize a planetary surface. "The Cage," Enterprise channeled enough power to "blast half a continent" in sixty seconds. Let's assume that Terra is typical, and half a continent is 1/2 of 1/7 of 1/4 of the planet's surface, we're doing back of envelope calculations here, so let's round to 1/50th, a trillion Megatons in 60 seconds. Five turns to a minute, Enterprise has a speed 4, so 50 billion Megatons per phase. Presuming that's with a 10 point push, and we get that a normal phaser blast is 12.5 billion Megatons, or 12500 Gigatons, 67 dc, 22d6+1 RKA, 335 AP for the phaser as opposed to 420 for the photon torpedos (16d6 RKA explosion 64 charges). Sounds about right.

The problem with ST phasors being that strong is that they are regularly considered to do less damage than photon torpedos which are only in the 50-64 megaton range.

It could be that since technobabble works in the ST universe, planets have significantly less def or body than they do in the SW universe, so it takes less energy to destroy a continent.

Regarding the active points of phasors, shouldn't phasors be constant attacks, or is that a separate slot in the phasor multipower?

Agent X

Sep 27th, '03, 07:07 AM

Originally posted by feywulf
The problem with ST phasors being that strong is that they are regularly considered to do less damage than photon torpedos which are only in the 50-64 megaton range.

It could be that since technobabble works in the ST universe, planets have significantly less def or body than they do in the SW universe, so it takes less energy to destroy a continent.

Regarding the active points of phasors, shouldn't phasors be constant attacks, or is that a separate slot in the phasor multipower? You guys can do math all you want to. The Enterprise can take out a planet. The Death Star can take out a planet. Star Destroyers can't. Didn't Kirk once threaten use phasers to boil the oceans of a planet?

Dog Soldier

Sep 27th, '03, 07:29 AM

Boiling the oceans or even turning a planet into a big, smooth marble isn't the same as blowing it into medium sized chunks like the Deat Star did. Any of those would count as destroying a planet.

austenandrews

Sep 27th, '03, 08:00 AM

Doesn't Star Hero have BODY stats for a planet? If we assume the Death Star can blast a planet to bits with an average attack, it should be easy to assign a DC to it. Do the math to divide that DC by a thousand, and that equals Han Solo's estimation of a Star Destroyer's power. Use the megaton calculations for photon torpedoes to figure the offensive power of the Enterprise. Assume that phasers are less powerful than photon torpedoes, so just add another DC or two to the Enterprise for phaser power, and voila, we've got a comparison.

Not that I think it means anything - the Enterprise should still win, either way. ;)

-AA

chaos_engineer

Sep 27th, '03, 05:00 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
Regarding the active points of phasors, shouldn't phasors be constant attacks, or is that a separate slot in the phasor multipower?

phasers would be Instant powers, whether you did them as EB or RKA. it's the deflectors (Force Field) & engines (Flight) that would be Constant powers.

chaos_engineer

Sep 27th, '03, 05:10 PM

hey, i just remembered i have FASA's old d10 based Starship Combat Simulator boardgame that was meant to complement their Star Trek RPG. (it ain't Star Fleet Battles, but it's a passable rules-lite space sim.) anyway, it has some nuts-and bolts data for ST ships, including the Constitution class cruisers (that's the model we're talking about, right? i forget...). this may not be ST canon, but here goes.

Constitution Class XI Cruiser, Mark III

Total Power Available: 480 megawatts (200 mw from each warp nascelle, plus 80 mw from the impulse engine)

Phasers: 6 in 3 banks; maximum output: 50 million joules (each bank).

Photon Torpedoes: 2 launch systems; torp damage: 160 million joules (each).

Deflector Shields (ablative): resists a maximum of 160 million joules (per hex side).

now, have any of the SW RPG's included this kind of data for an Imperial class Star Destroyer? if they have could someone post it?

McCoy

Sep 27th, '03, 06:17 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
hey, i just remembered i have FASA's old d10 based Starship Combat Simulator boardgame that was meant to complement their Star Trek RPG. (it ain't Star Fleet Battles, but it's a passable rules-lite space sim.) anyway, it has some nuts-and bolts data for ST ships, including the Constitution class cruisers (that's the model we're talking about, right? i forget...). this may not be ST canon, but here goes.

Constitution Class XI Cruiser, Mark III

Total Power Available: 480 megawatts (200 mw from each warp nascelle, plus 80 mw from the impulse engine)

Phasers: 6 in 3 banks; maximum output: 50 million joules (each bank).

Photon Torpedoes: 2 launch systems; torp damage: 160 million joules (each).

Deflector Shields (ablative): resists a maximum of 160 million joules (per hex side).

now, have any of the SW RPG's included this kind of data for an Imperial class Star Destroyer? if they have could someone post it?
Um . . . . no.

Several sites give the "average" warhead of a photon torpedo as 1.5 kg of antimatter (they can be loaded with more or less). By Uncle Al's good ole E=mc^2, we find that the antimatter will anniliate an equal amount of matter, releasing 50 megatons of energy. That figure has been quoted often enough that I'm confident with it.

50 megatons, that's about 2.1 x 10^17 joules. Source above says 1.6 x 10^8, off by many orders of magnitude. So maybe this source is correct. Let's look. 1.6 x 10^8 joules. That's about the energy generated by four tons of TNT. Not megatons, not kilotons, tons. Can the Enterprise's shields be breeched by eight thousand pounds of conventional explosives? I think not.

As I am not willing to accep this source on the power of the shields or photon torpedos, I see no reason to accept it on the relative strength of the phasers, photon torpedos, or shields.

BlackSword

Sep 27th, '03, 08:33 PM

Originally posted by McCoy

As I am not willing to accep this source on the power of the shields or photon torpedos, I see no reason to accept it on the relative strength of the phasers, photon torpedos, or shields.
Not to pick on you McCoy, you have made some good points previously, and maybe this is a valid argument. However, it proves one important point, "I don't like *this* evidence, so it doesn't count." As I said before, its *all* rubberband physics, and I hesitate even using the word physics to describe anything that happens in a ST or SW show. Both series have continuity problems which means you can't even translate one situation or ship to another place in its own universe because the rules change depending on season, phase of the moon, and what the writer had in his coffee that morning. The rules for the Star Trek universe or more complex than Dragon Poker.

feywulf

Sep 27th, '03, 08:42 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
You guys can do math all you want to. The Enterprise can take out a planet. The Death Star can take out a planet. Star Destroyers can't. Didn't Kirk once threaten use phasers to boil the oceans of a planet?

Is there a TOS example of a federation ship actually blasting a planet into an asteroid field with phasers? How many times does TOS indicate that a federation ship can "take out" a planet? Did the Death Star merely "take out a planet", or did it far exceed the energy output for taking a planet out?

I think that it hasn't been established that the Enterprise can produce comparable firepower as the Death Star.

McCoy

Sep 27th, '03, 09:11 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
Is there a TOS example of a federation ship actually blasting a planet into an asteroid field with phasers? How many times does TOS indicate that a federation ship can "take out" a planet? Did the Death Star merely "take out a planet", or did it far exceed the energy output for taking a planet out?

I think that it hasn't been established that the Enterprise can produce comparable firepower as the Death Star.
This is begining to resemble a moving goal post. Dog Soldier asked "Has there actually been an episode where the Enterprise actually razed a planet?" To my suprise, the answer was yes. Now you're further qualifying the question, original show only, phasers only, specific level of destruction. It's on record, the Enterprise destroyed a planet, the Death Star destroyed a planet, that's one documented kill each.

"How many times does TOS indicate that a federation ship can "take out" a planet?" I don't recall the phrase "take out" so I don't know why you're quoting it, but in at least "The Cage," "A Taste of Armagedon," and "Mirror Mirror" it was said that the Enterprise could destroy a planet (and in "Mirror Mirror," that she had). Currently researching some other episodes, think at least once in third season it was stated Enterprise could destroy a planet.

Gary Ciaramella

Sep 27th, '03, 09:15 PM

*Dancing around singing the "who gives a damn" song*

McCoy

Sep 27th, '03, 09:28 PM

Originally posted by BlackSword
Not to pick on you McCoy, you have made some good points previously, and maybe this is a valid argument. However, it proves one important point, "I don't like *this* evidence, so it doesn't count."
The assumption, since the first draft of Star Fleet Battles, is that what appeared on the screen is correct, and that books, technical manuals, and games that contridict the shows are to be ignored. "Balance of Terror" shows an "old-style nuclear warhead" detonating "less than 100 meters away" from the Enterprise without colapsing the shields, demonstrating that the shields are stronger than "a maximum of 160 million joules (per hex side)." The Starship Combat Simulator boardgame is therefore not recognized as an expert witness.

Agent X

Sep 27th, '03, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by Gary Ciaramella
*Dancing around singing the "who gives a damn" song* I don't give out damns. You have to earn it with me.;)

Agent X

Sep 27th, '03, 09:38 PM

Let me ask you guys this. Where in any of the Star Wars movies do you get any indication that a Star Destroyer could come close to destroying a planet? There are several remarks in Star Trek to the Enterprise being capable of such.

feywulf

Sep 27th, '03, 11:35 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
This is begining to resemble a moving goal post. Dog Soldier asked "Has there actually been an episode where the Enterprise actually razed a planet?" To my suprise, the answer was yes. Now you're further qualifying the question, original show only, phasers only, specific level of destruction. It's on record, the Enterprise destroyed a planet, the Death Star destroyed a planet, that's one documented kill each.

I'm not Dog Soldier, so i'm not sure why you think i'm moving his goal post. As for razing a planet, or a continent, that is far less than total planetary destruction.

To limit the question to the original show only is not a further limitation since the original challenge specifies the "original Enterprise".

The reason why i specified phasers is because in ship to ship combat in the ST universe(and thus presumably in a battle between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer), the primary weapons used by the Enterprise are photon torpedos and phasers. The photon torpedos typically carried by the Enterprise do not have suffiecient megatonnage to destroy a planet, so phasers are the only known alternative.

The reason why i specified a certain level of destruction is for the possible euphemistic interprestation of "destroy a planet" listed below.

"How many times does TOS indicate that a federation ship can "take out" a planet?" I don't recall the phrase "take out" so I don't know why you're quoting it,

Then you must not have bothered to read the text that i was replying to.

Originally posted by Agent X
You guys can do math all you want to. The Enterprise can take out(emphasis added) a planet. The Death Star can take out a planet. Star Destroyers can't. Didn't Kirk once threaten use phasers to boil the oceans of a planet?

but in at least "The Cage," "A Taste of Armagedon," and "Mirror Mirror" it was said that the Enterprise could destroy a planet (and in "Mirror Mirror," that she had). Currently researching some other episodes, think at least once in third season it was stated Enterprise could destroy a planet.

Often times the phrase end of the world is used to mean the end of human civilization or the world as we know it. It is possible that these references to destroying a planet may be a similar euphemism and not literally destroying a planet as the Death Star was shown to have done. If the Enterprise can literally destroy a planet then that is a valid consideration in the outcome of a battle between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer(although the method in which the Enterprise destroyed a planet, and the degree of destruction has not been described as far as i know), but based on what i have seen ships in the Star Trek universe do, i doubt that they have sufficient firepower to actually destroy a planet. Given the portrayal in ST series and movies other than TOS(which i'm not too familiar with), it seems to me that federation, romulan, and klingon ships don't have that kind of firepower.

This is not to say that they can't destroy a planet through other means than raw firepower. In one episode of TNG the Enterprise-D towed a moon. Towing a moon or other large asteroid to put it on a collision course with a planet is one way that a federation ship could do some serious damage to a planet sized target and potentially destroy one with sufficient velocity on the towed projectile, though it is not a technique that would work well against a mobile target like another spaceship.

btw, Is there a canon source describing how the Entrprise destroyed the planet refered to in Mirror Mirror?

Vanguard

Sep 28th, '03, 06:04 AM

What I want to know is why people are basically saying that a Star Destroyer can't destroy a planet simply because it's never been stated that it can. I mean come on . . it's called a STAR Destroyer. That right there should tell you something. Maybe it can't do exactly what the Death Star did and turn a planet into an astroid belt but if you burn off the oceans, and blow big smoking holes in the continents, then haven't you "destroyed" planet?

I think there should've been another choice on the Poll basically saying "Neither, there's not enough conclusive information about either ship to come to a fair and impartial decision".

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 07:02 AM

Originally posted by Vanguard
What I want to know is why people are basically saying that a Star Destroyer can't destroy a planet simply because it's never been stated that it can.

It's been specifically stated that it can't, that the entire fleet together couldn't do what the Death Star did
If a Star Destroyer could slag a planet, the Death Star is redundant, and the destruction of the Death Star would represent, at best, a symbolic victory for the Rebels rather than the destruction of a major threat.

Anyone claiming that a Star Destroyer could slag a planet needs to present supporting evidence from the cannon, then explain why the Empire would spend 20 years on a project to make a ship that can do what a thousand ships it already has can do. I am a great believer in the stupidity and ineffecency of governments, but that is just beyond belief.

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 28th, '03, 07:27 AM

To throw a couple more logs on the fire:

In the episode "The Changeling", Nomad 'sterilized' planets, without reducing them to rubble. As a matter of fact, when pressed on this issue by Kirk, Nomad specifically pointed out he hadn't destroyed the planets. In this same episode the Enterprise withstood several hits from Nomad's weaponry, though the shields were rapidly failing. Given that Nomad could sterilize a planetary surface, this is fairly impressive.

(In all fairness, though, we don't know how LONG or how many shots it takes Nomad to sterilize a planet. Also, even though Nomad stated later he had been carrying out a 'sterilization procedure' against the Enterprise, we don't know if this supremely logical machine would have scaled his weaponry back to only what was needed to destroy the ship, rather than unleashing the full planet-sterilizing blast. On the other hand, if Nomad HAD scaled it back, why didn't he increase the power of subsequent attacks after the first failed to do the job? All the attacks directed against the ship by Nomad were of the same strength.)

In "The Changeling" it is also stated that Nomad's bolts were equal to 90 photon torpedoes. Given that the Enterprise withstood several of these bolts, I've got to wonder why photon torpedoes are such feared weapons.

In "The Doomsday Machine", we encounter a device (ship?) that was EXPLICITLY shown to destroy planets by reducing them to rubble. We know it doesn't do it in one shot, but as a process...Dekker describes seeing the thing "hovering over the planet and slicing out sections with some kind of force beam." Once again, we see the Enterprise withstand several attacks from the same weapon, though not without consequences. Given the fact we KNOW this weapon CAN literally destroy a planet given time, and given that the phasers mounted on Constitution-class starships CAN damage or render inoperative each other in relatively few shots (see "The Ultimate Computer" for a 4-on-1 battle of the Enterprise vs. four of her sister ships), it's not a great stretch to equate the two weapons roughly in power. If that's the case, then a Constitution-class ship could, given time, reduce a planet to rubble.

On the other hand, during Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the Klingon commander Krug seems VERY eager to get his hands on "the Genesis torpedo", which he describes as a weapon able to wipe out everything on a planet's surface in seconds. Now, if the Klingons and Federation are supposed to have ships of roughly equal power, why would a weapon that can wipe away everything on the surface of a planet -- but not reduce the planet to rubble -- be such a big deal if the ships of the line were already capable of doing so? It is possible, of course, that what had Krug so excited was the short time (seconds) for the Genesis device vs. the relatively long period of time it's been implied that it would take a Federation (or presumably Klingon) starship to accomplish the same thing.

chaos_engineer

Sep 28th, '03, 07:39 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Several sites give the "average" warhead of a photon torpedo as 1.5 kg of antimatter (they can be loaded with more or less). By Uncle Al's good ole E=mc^2, we find that the antimatter will anniliate an equal amount of matter, releasing 50 megatons of energy. That figure has been quoted often enough that I'm confident with it. (...)

i agree that FASA's version is underpowered, but it's much more balanced than your interpretation. even taking the 50 megaton photorp as a baseline, which is fine by me, i don't see how you get from there to "a normal phaser blast is 12.5 billion Megatons". as austenandrews mentioned, phasers are portrayed in the show as being weaker than photorps. it seems to me you're arbitrarily trying to make phaser power match the energy needed to smoke a planet, rather than basing it on your estimate of photorp yield.

As I am not willing to accep this source on the power of the shields or photon torpedos, I see no reason to accept it on the relative strength of the phasers, photon torpedos, or shields.

i've found that the FASA game is balanced in play. so while i wouldn't argue with jacking up the megawatts/joules being spit out, i personally would keep the relative strengths of phasers/shields/torps about the same.

as an aside, i found some Full Thrust conversions of these ships.
<http://www.star-ranger.com/Stuff/Trek.htm>

Agent X

Sep 28th, '03, 07:45 AM

Originally posted by feywulf
I'm not Dog Soldier, so i'm not sure why you think i'm moving his goal post. As for razing a planet, or a continent, that is far less than total planetary destruction.

To limit the question to the original show only is not a further limitation since the original challenge specifies the "original Enterprise".

The reason why i specified phasers is because in ship to ship combat in the ST universe(and thus presumably in a battle between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer), the primary weapons used by the Enterprise are photon torpedos and phasers. The photon torpedos typically carried by the Enterprise do not have suffiecient megatonnage to destroy a planet, so phasers are the only known alternative.

The reason why i specified a certain level of destruction is for the possible euphemistic interprestation of "destroy a planet" listed below.

Then you must not have bothered to read the text that i was replying to.

Often times the phrase end of the world is used to mean the end of human civilization or the world as we know it. It is possible that these references to destroying a planet may be a similar euphemism and not literally destroying a planet as the Death Star was shown to have done. If the Enterprise can literally destroy a planet then that is a valid consideration in the outcome of a battle between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer(although the method in which the Enterprise destroyed a planet, and the degree of destruction has not been described as far as i know), but based on what i have seen ships in the Star Trek universe do, i doubt that they have sufficient firepower to actually destroy a planet. Given the portrayal in ST series and movies other than TOS(which i'm not too familiar with), it seems to me that federation, romulan, and klingon ships don't have that kind of firepower.

This is not to say that they can't destroy a planet through other means than raw firepower. In one episode of TNG the Enterprise-D towed a moon. Towing a moon or other large asteroid to put it on a collision course with a planet is one way that a federation ship could do some serious damage to a planet sized target and potentially destroy one with sufficient velocity on the towed projectile, though it is not a technique that would work well against a mobile target like another spaceship.

btw, Is there a canon source describing how the Entrprise destroyed the planet refered to in Mirror Mirror? You're only bringing convincing evidence for the Star Trek position. If the Enterprise can tow a moon, and Star Trek ships can divert power from shields to phasers, then how powerful does that suggest a phaser barrage can really get? Probably powerful enough to destroy a planet.

The stuff about "ending civilization" is reaching, considering the context of episodes which inform us about the Enterprise's destructive potential.

I cannot understand why you guys want to read something that is supposedly canon instead of just watching the episodes. I've seen all of TOS and I've seen all of Star Wars. I don't need a producer/director/writer to make comments to understand the show.

Agent X

Sep 28th, '03, 07:50 AM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
To throw a couple more logs on the fire:

In the episode "The Changeling", Nomad 'sterilized' planets, without reducing them to rubble. As a matter of fact, when pressed on this issue by Kirk, Nomad specifically pointed out he hadn't destroyed the planets. In this same episode the Enterprise withstood several hits from Nomad's weaponry, though the shields were rapidly failing. Given that Nomad could sterilize a planetary surface, this is fairly impressive.

(In all fairness, though, we don't know how LONG or how many shots it takes Nomad to sterilize a planet. Also, even though Nomad stated later he had been carrying out a 'sterilization procedure' against the Enterprise, we don't know if this supremely logical machine would have scaled his weaponry back to only what was needed to destroy the ship, rather than unleashing the full planet-sterilizing blast. On the other hand, if Nomad HAD scaled it back, why didn't he increase the power of subsequent attacks after the first failed to do the job? All the attacks directed against the ship by Nomad were of the same strength.)

In "The Changeling" it is also stated that Nomad's bolts were equal to 90 photon torpedoes. Given that the Enterprise withstood several of these bolts, I've got to wonder why photon torpedoes are such feared weapons.

In "The Doomsday Machine", we encounter a device (ship?) that was EXPLICITLY shown to destroy planets by reducing them to rubble. We know it doesn't do it in one shot, but as a process...Dekker describes seeing the thing "hovering over the planet and slicing out sections with some kind of force beam." Once again, we see the Enterprise withstand several attacks from the same weapon, though not without consequences. Given the fact we KNOW this weapon CAN literally destroy a planet given time, and given that the phasers mounted on Constitution-class starships CAN damage or render inoperative each other in relatively few shots (see "The Ultimate Computer" for a 4-on-1 battle of the Enterprise vs. four of her sister ships), it's not a great stretch to equate the two weapons roughly in power. If that's the case, then a Constitution-class ship could, given time, reduce a planet to rubble.

On the other hand, during Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the Klingon commander Krug seems VERY eager to get his hands on "the Genesis torpedo", which he describes as a weapon able to wipe out everything on a planet's surface in seconds. Now, if the Klingons and Federation are supposed to have ships of roughly equal power, why would a weapon that can wipe away everything on the surface of a planet -- but not reduce the planet to rubble -- be such a big deal if the ships of the line were already capable of doing so? It is possible, of course, that what had Krug so excited was the short time (seconds) for the Genesis device vs. the relatively long period of time it's been implied that it would take a Federation (or presumably Klingon) starship to accomplish the same thing. I'm thinking that the Enterprise can't make a planet explode with one burst of photon torps or phasers but that it wouldn't take anywhere near the number of ships Han Solo claims it would take of Star Destroyers for the Enterprise and her sister ships to accomplish what the Death Star could do.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 08:19 AM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
as austenandrews mentioned, phasers are portrayed in the show as being weaker than photorps.
Can you cite that? I've been looking for a TOS source comparing the two. What I've found so far is that ship-to-ship combat was less common in the first season than I thought it was.

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
it seems to me you're arbitrarily trying to make phaser power match the energy needed to smoke a planet, rather than basing it on your estimate of photorp yield.
My working hypothesis at this point is that photon torpedos have some advantages over phasers; charges, area effect, possibly indirect, and at least one limitation, extra time (looks to me like a phaser blast is virtually instant, no matter the range, and a photon torpedo has at least a phase delay). But I am assuming the active points in both weapon systems would be about the same. Now I'm looking to see (a) if I can find a TOS comparison between phasers and torps and (b) do phasers have any advantages that the torps don't have?

Possibly the most "realistic" solution is to build the weapon system as a VPP, and give Scotty a 33- skill roll for switching it. Given extra time, he could make that weapon system do ANYTHING!

(Now do you understand why we don't "just do a write-up of both ships using TUV. then fight a best two out of three bout"? This is just the Enterprise, we haven't started on the Star Destroyer yet.)

chaos_engineer

Sep 28th, '03, 11:15 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Can you cite that? (...)

in "Obsession" the following exchange takes place:

"Kirk: Fire phasers, Mr. Chekov.
Chekov: Phasers ineffectual, sir.
Kirk: Photon torpedoes. Minimum spread pattern.
Chekov: Minimum pattern ready, sir.
Kirk: Fire photon torpedoes."

that fact that Kirk orders the launch of torps after the phasers prove useless suggests that they are a more powerful alternative.

My working hypothesis at this point is that photon torpedos have some advantages over phasers; charges, area effect, possibly indirect, and at least one limitation, extra time (looks to me like a phaser blast is virtually instant, no matter the range, and a photon torpedo has at least a phase delay).

sounds good to me.

But I am assuming the active points in both weapon systems would be about the same.

that's your prerogative, but do you have any reason why you assume that? if the weapons are so uniform doesn't that make torps redundant, just as the Death Star would be redundant if the Imperial fleet could fry a planet?

Now I'm looking to see (a) if I can find a TOS comparison between phasers and torps and (b) do phasers have any advantages that the torps don't have?

considering how inconsistant the show is i doubt you'll get any firm answers;)

Possibly the most "realistic" solution is to build the weapon system as a VPP, and give Scotty a 33- skill roll for switching it. Given extra time, he could make that weapon system do ANYTHING!

that'd work, but IMO the Multipower model does a better job capturing the feel of the show.

(Now do you understand why we don't "just do a write-up of both ships using TUV. then fight a best two out of three bout"? This is just the Enterprise, we haven't started on the Star Destroyer yet.)

hey, at least i got people thinking about the subject in HERO terms:) and if they're built using the same number of points the design differences shouldn't be that big a deal.

Lezentauw

Sep 28th, '03, 11:58 AM

Someone asked about the SW ship that can stop FTL travel. It is called an Intradictor Cruiser. It was introduced with Grand Admiral Thrawn, in the Heir to the Thrown series.

Agent X

Sep 28th, '03, 12:01 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
in "Obsession" the following exchange takes place:

"Kirk: Fire phasers, Mr. Chekov.
Chekov: Phasers ineffectual, sir.
Kirk: Photon torpedoes. Minimum spread pattern.
Chekov: Minimum pattern ready, sir.
Kirk: Fire photon torpedoes."

that fact that Kirk orders the launch of torps after the phasers prove useless suggests that they are a more powerful alternative.

sounds good to me.

that's your prerogative, but do you have any reason why you assume that? if the weapons are so uniform doesn't that make torps redundant, just as the Death Star would be redundant if the Imperial fleet could fry a planet?

considering how inconsistant the show is i doubt you'll get any firm answers;)

that'd work, but IMO the Multipower model does a better job capturing the feel of the show.

hey, at least i got people thinking about the subject in HERO terms:) and if they're built using the same number of points the design differences shouldn't be that big a deal. I had always thought that photon torpedoes were more powerful. The other thing about photon torpedoes is that once they are charged, and this isn't just because I played SFB, I got the impression that they would hold their charge for a while. Meaning shields could keep more juice while they are fired. Of course, if phasers don't work and all you have is a kitchen knife, you're gonna try to use anything you've got.:)

I'm thinking the Enterprise can destroy the habitability of planets with a lengthy barrage of phasers and/or photon torpedoes.

I'm thinking that Star Destroyers can harrass planetary populations and destroy manufacturing centers, etc. But I don't think Star Destroyers, as they are portrayed, suggest any ability to dramatically threaten the habitability of a planet.

The Death Star, of course, fires once and planet goes kablooie.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 01:30 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
in "Obsession" the following exchange takes place:

"Kirk: Fire phasers, Mr. Chekov.
Chekov: Phasers ineffectual, sir.
Kirk: Photon torpedoes. Minimum spread pattern.
Chekov: Minimum pattern ready, sir.
Kirk: Fire photon torpedoes."

that fact that Kirk orders the launch of torps after the phasers prove useless suggests that they are a more powerful alternative.
Suggest they are different, not necessarly more powerful. Now I'm wondering if, despite the name, the actual damage done by photon torpedos might be from the disintegrated ions of the housing hiting the target at superluminal speeds, in Champions terms phasers vs ED, torps vs PD (or in Star Wars phasers vs ray shields, torps vs partical shields).

Would make sense if Starfleet has an "approperate force" policy, escalation of force must be deflectors, phasers, torps, in order, but AFAIK that's as much a supposition as anything I've put forth.

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
that's your prerogative, but do you have any reason why you assume that? if the weapons are so uniform doesn't that make torps redundant, just as the Death Star would be redundant if the Imperial fleet could fry a planet?
My assumption is more Champions based than Trek based, equal active poins fit better in a multipower. Probably should go equal real points instead.

No, I don't think equal active poins makes either system redundant. Phasers can be targeted to disable specific systems, disable an enemy ship without destroying it. Photon torpedos are (IMHO) area effect, can hit targets too small or fast moving for a phaser lock. They do not draw power away fron the shields or warp engines. They can be given the trigger advantage and deployed as mines.

Humm, now I'm wondering if both phasers and torps should have variable advantage (as well as megascale extended range).

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
that'd work, but IMO the Multipower model does a better job capturing the feel of the show.
In mine too. Guess I should have put a smiley on that, it was intended facetiously.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 02:43 PM

Don't know how I missed this before. In "A Taste of Armageddon" Scotty says "We can't fire full phasers with our screens up. We can't lower our screens with their disruptors on us. I could treat them to a few dozen photon torpedoes."

Looks like shields and phasers may be in the same multipower, but torps a seperate system altogether.

As far as photon torpedos being more powerful, can anyone cite an TOS example of the torpedos harming something the phasers hit and didn't harm? I'm still looking for one.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 05:26 PM

Like Alice with the flamingo, just when I think I've got ahold of it, it wiggles loose.

"Elaan of Troyius" Elann, the Dohlman of Elas, says to Kirk "With this ship, you could completely obliterate Troyius." Once again, someone says a Constitution class star ship could "take out" a planet.

But weapons situation is confusing. Warp power was sabatoged, and Enterprise had no power for phasers or photon torpedos, but had full shields.

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 28th, '03, 05:43 PM

Eh. Again, working off memory here...someone may need to check me on this...

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (that counts as "original", right?) when the engine imbalance near the beginning of the movie creates a wormhole and sends a small asteroid careening toward the ship, Commander Dekker countermands Kirk's order to fire phasers at the asteroid, ordering photon torpedoes instead. Afterward, when Kirk demands an explaination, Dekker explains that phaser power has been increased by channeling it through the warp engines (or the engines through the phaser banks, can't remember which) and that when the engines went into imbalance, the phasers were automatically taken off line. This would tend to imply that the warp engines were NOT directly linked to the phasers prior to movie #1, so loss of warp power should still have left the phasers operational.

Further, during "The Apple", when Scotty all but wrecks the ship (and damages *all* the engines) trying to pull away from Vaal's tractor beam, the phasers are STILL in working order later on, and there appears to be PLENTY of power to use them against Vaal's shields, causing Vaal to exhaust its power defending itself. Again, this would tend to indicate a working warp drive is not necessary for the phasers to be used at high power.

Don'cha just love contradictions in the series?

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 28th, '03, 06:15 PM

Re: the battle in "The Ultimate Computer" for purposes of comparing effective strength of phasers vs. the force beam of the Planet Killer from "The Doomsday Machine":

I just re-watched the battle in which M-5 takes the Enterprise against the Lexington, Hood, Potempkin, and Excalibur.

The first shot against the Lexington is shown on-screen as two short bursts, though we only see the Lexington rocked by a single explosion. Just prior to this Kirk said "If that thing cuts loose at unshielded ships..." implying that the task force ships would NOT have their shields up at the beginning of the "war game." If so, this first attack could have inflicted considerable damage to the Lexington.

The next shot (also shown on-screen as two short bursts) is reported as hitting the Excalibur. It's not said if her shields were up or not, but given the fact that the Lexington had a moment ago been hit by a full-strength phaser attack, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that ALL the ships in the task force raised their shields after that first shot, so the Excalibur's shields were probably up when she was hit.

The next shot (we hear the sound of only a single burst) hits the Lexington again. Once more I feel safe in assuming that by this point, her shields would be up. Commodore Wesley reports 53 dead on the Lexington and 12 on the Excalibur.

The fourth shot hits the Excalibur again. This shot is a longer sustained burst of nearly 1 sec. duration.

The fifth shot hits the Potempkin.

Wesley calls Starfleet asking for permission to destroy the Enterprise. He reports ALL ships in the task force damaged (when did the Hood get hit?) and that the Excalibur's Captain and First Officer are dead.

Several minutes of dialouge elapse. We do not hear or see the Enterprise phasers fire again. Sulu reports that the Excalibur "looks dead." Kirk, speaking to the M-5, says "You have rendered one starship either dead or hopelessly crippled." Kirk then asks the M-5 to "Scan the starhip Excalibur, which you destroyed." M-5 reports no life on board.

In this context, "destroyed" clearly means "no longer capable of being an effective vessel of war", since the Excalibur is still visible and is recognizable as a Constitution-class ship. However, two phaser hits at full power (against a ship that presumably had its shields up) killed everyone on board. Given that individual sections of the ship can be sealed off in the event of hull breaches, this means that EVERY section of the ship must have been exposed to vacuum, or filled with toxic vapors of some kind, to kill everyone. So either the attack was so swift and so violent the sections could not be sealed, or EVERY seal and bulkhead in the ship was blown open or compromised! It seems that phasers are incredibly powerful!

Now, in comparison, how many times does the Enterprise get hit by the force-beam of the Planet Killer? That's a weapon that we KNOW can chop a planet into rubble, given time. If we compare the number of hits by the force beam (and I suspect it's a higher number) I'm sure we'll find that phasers can be seen to be either equal in power to or more powerful than the force beam. If that's the case, this would clearly imply that the phasers found on Constitution-class ships (and by extension a Constitution-class ship like the Enterprise herself) can literally destroy a planet, pulverizing it into debris. (We still don't know how long this would take, however.)

I don't have "The Doomsday Machine" handy to do a hit-count against the Enterprise by the Planet Killer; could someone out there oblige? I'd really like to know if this "phasers could physically destroy a planet given time via comparison with the Planet Killer" argument holds water or not.

Agent X

Sep 28th, '03, 06:16 PM

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Eh. Again, working off memory here...someone may need to check me on this...

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (that counts as "original", right?) when the engine imbalance near the beginning of the movie creates a wormhole and sends a small asteroid careening toward the ship, Commander Dekker countermands Kirk's order to fire phasers at the asteroid, ordering photon torpedoes instead. Afterward, when Kirk demands an explaination, Dekker explains that phaser power has been increased by channeling it through the warp engines (or the engines through the phaser banks, can't remember which) and that when the engines went into imbalance, the phasers were automatically taken off line. This would tend to imply that the warp engines were NOT directly linked to the phasers prior to movie #1, so loss of warp power should still have left the phasers operational.

Further, during "The Apple", when Scotty all but wrecks the ship (and damages *all* the engines) trying to pull away from Vaal's tractor beam, the phasers are STILL in working order later on, and there appears to be PLENTY of power to use them against Vaal's shields, causing Vaal to exhaust its power defending itself. Again, this would tend to indicate a working warp drive is not necessary for the phasers to be used at high power.

Don'cha just love contradictions in the series? That's almost always going to be a problem with a television series. The thing I would say to those about to pounce on this is that the series has been fairly consistent about the implications of what the Enterprise can do to a planet.:)

Space Cadet

Sep 28th, '03, 07:31 PM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
Someone asked about the SW ship that can stop FTL travel. It is called an Intradictor Cruiser. It was introduced with Grand Admiral Thrawn, in the Heir to the Thrown series.

Sorry to be a nit-picker here, but the title was Heir to the
Empire, and the Imperial ship was called an Interdictor
Cruiser (italics used to highlight proper spelling of the ship type).

Space Cadet :cool:

feywulf

Sep 28th, '03, 07:46 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
You're only bringing convincing evidence for the Star Trek position. If the Enterprise can tow a moon, and Star Trek ships can divert power from shields to phasers, then how powerful does that suggest a phaser barrage can really get? Probably powerful enough to destroy a planet.

The Enterprise-D was able to tow a moon which had been perturbed out of its normal, stable orbit and is about to spiral into the planet and cause mass havoc. Tractor beams alone weren't enough for the Enterprise-D, Georgi had to manipulate the warp field to lighten the moon, and shield's had to be down at the time. If Kirk's Enterprise can destroy a planet, then the Enterprise-D could have easily destroyed the moon, and thus prevented it form crashing into the planet.

Diverting shield power to the phasers is not an option if you are being fired upon by a Star Destroyer.

The stuff about "ending civilization" is reaching, considering the context of episodes which inform us about the Enterprise's destructive potential.

Ending the civilization on that planet would still apply.

I cannot understand why you guys want to read something that is supposedly canon instead of just watching the episodes. I've seen all of TOS and I've seen all of Star Wars. I don't need a producer/director/writer to make comments to understand the show.

TOS does not say how the Enterprise destroyed a planet, only that it did. The lack of specific details is the reason why i asked for another canon source regarding that incident.

There are a few situations where TOS says a federation ship can destroy a planet. The numbers for how powerful phasers are while shields are up compared to the power of photon torpedos indicates that photon torpedos are stronger. Photon torpedos are not nearly powerful enough to destroy a planet. Thus either while shields are up, phasers can't destroy a planet, or Star Trek is incredibly inconsistent on the power level of Federation Technology.

The examples of Federation phasers not being strong enough to accomplish planetary destruction out number the cases where TOS says that they can. Which inconsistent interpretation makes more sense to keep?

If phasers can destroy a planet, then they are so powerful that photon torpedos would be pointless, yet the Federation still uses photon torpedos. If phasers are sufficiently less effective against shielded targets than planets that photon torpedos make sense to use, then the alleged abbility of phasers to destroy planets is irrelevant to how well they would fare against a Star Destroyer.

feywulf

Sep 28th, '03, 07:52 PM

Originally posted by McCoy

Anyone claiming that a Star Destroyer could slag a planet needs to present supporting evidence from the cannon, then explain why the Empire would spend 20 years on a project to make a ship that can do what a thousand ships it already has can do. I am a great believer in the stupidity and ineffecency of governments, but that is just beyond belief.

I don't know of any canon examples of Star Destroyers being able to slag a planet, but a local system could more easily build enough ships to fight off one or two Star Destroyers than it would take to fight off the Death Star without having the advantage of finding a flaw by examination of the Death Star blueprint. Emperor's like to build monuments. Palpatine wanted a monument to military might and rule by fear.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 07:53 PM

Agent X

Sep 28th, '03, 08:42 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
The Enterprise-D was able to tow a moon which had been perturbed out of its normal, stable orbit and is about to spiral into the planet and cause mass havoc. Tractor beams alone weren't enough for the Enterprise-D, Georgi had to manipulate the warp field to lighten the moon, and shield's had to be down at the time. If Kirk's Enterprise can destroy a planet, then the Enterprise-D could have easily destroyed the moon, and thus prevented it form crashing into the planet.

Diverting shield power to the phasers is not an option if you are being fired upon by a Star Destroyer.

Ending the civilization on that planet would still apply.

TOS does not say how the Enterprise destroyed a planet, only that it did. The lack of specific details is the reason why i asked for another canon source regarding that incident.

There are a few situations where TOS says a federation ship can destroy a planet. The numbers for how powerful phasers are while shields are up compared to the power of photon torpedos indicates that photon torpedos are stronger. Photon torpedos are not nearly powerful enough to destroy a planet. Thus either while shields are up, phasers can't destroy a planet, or Star Trek is incredibly inconsistent on the power level of Federation Technology.

The examples of Federation phasers not being strong enough to accomplish planetary destruction out number the cases where TOS says that they can. Which inconsistent interpretation makes more sense to keep?

If phasers can destroy a planet, then they are so powerful that photon torpedos would be pointless, yet the Federation still uses photon torpedos. If phasers are sufficiently less effective against shielded targets than planets that photon torpedos make sense to use, then the alleged abbility of phasers to destroy planets is irrelevant to how well they would fare against a Star Destroyer. I'll go with the inconsistency that has been repeated over and over. As to reasoning out about phasers being too weak, the examples you are giving are pretty much ship to ship combat and the idea is to keep it dramatic, right? So, they're going to "fib" a little or a lot to keep it exciting. Much like all those Star Wars fights that probably shouldn't have happened the way they did, like the Stormtroopers who are so accurate that Obi Wan Kenobi can tell it wasn't Sandpeople who attacked the Jawas but none of the Stormtroopers could hit two droids in a narrow tunnel, and later two smugglers in a hallway.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 09:35 PM

"The Doomsday Machine," after the destruction of the Constilation Matt Decker wants to use phasers at point blank range against the neutronium carrot. No mention of photon torpedos at all in this episode. Either (1) Decker believed phasers packed more power than the photon torpedos or (2) the carrot's energy damping field that was "deactivating" antimatter (without effecting it's own anti-proton beam) would have kept them from detonating. Anyone got the original script? Would be interesting to see if a comment about the torps ended up on the cutting room floor. The carrot was destroyed (in this case rendered non-functionable) by a nuclear explosion of 97.835 megatons, 2 photon torpedos if my math is correct.

Then in two consecutive episodes, "Obsession" and "The Immunity Syndrome, " antimatter explosions destroy the creature, in the case of the Vampire Cloud after photon torps prove ineffective.

Speaking of which, "less than one ounce of antimatter" should have yielded an explosion of less than 137 kilotons. Anyone want to check my math? The vampire cloud had previously shrugged off 50 megatons. Must have been vulnerable while it was reproducing.

As far as The Apple, I thought the phasers were way depowered when blasting Vaal's force field. Should have slagged a contenent if they had been at full power.

"The Ultimate Computer," haven't reviewed that one yet, but suspect this was not normal phaser fire from a Constitution class ship; suspect the M-5 had lots and lots of levels in Find Weakness.

McCoy

Sep 28th, '03, 10:39 PM

OK, believe I have now reviewed all episodes of TOS with ship-to-ship or ship-to-planet combat. Did not find a single example of photon torpedos taking out anything previously unharmed by phasers.

Apparently photon torpedos are the Starfleet equlivent of watching the bullets bounce off Superman's chest, then throwing the empty gun at him.

Lupus

Sep 29th, '03, 01:52 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
OK, believe I have now reviewed all episodes of TOS with ship-to-ship or ship-to-planet combat. Did not find a single example of photon torpedos taking out anything previously unharmed by phasers.

Apparently photon torpedos are the Starfleet equlivent of watching the bullets bounce of Superman's chest, then throwing the empty gun at him. When trying to come up with rules for gaming in the ST universe, I had to think about how phasers and torps differed. Reviewing episodes during a marathon on cable, in next gen, I figured torps were more powerful than phasers. In OST, however, judging by comments on this thread, phasers seem to be more powerful than torps; but for the game, I decided that phasers were better at draining and/or cutting through shields. I'll keep my comments to OST, however - it and NG have significant differences in many areas.

If phasers are more powerful, then we have to figure out why torps are used. It's unlikely that the feds would have, much less use, a useless weapons system. :) Can't be an AOE explanation - phasers seem to be pretty much area of effect themselves. Part of it is shields - but since phasers are used in combat, obviously phasers can be used with shields up to some extent. Therefore, I can only conclude that photorps, despite being less powerful than phasers, are possibly much better at punching through shields. Shields seem to be able to be modulated against energy types - so phaser energy, despite being so vast, may well be easily dispersed. But photorps are basically just explosive, so are perhaps much harder to defend against. Might be represented as a PD vs ED thing?

It's an idea, anyway. :)

austenandrews

Sep 29th, '03, 06:30 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Apparently photon torpedos are the Starfleet equlivent of watching the bullets bounce of Superman's chest, then throwing the empty gun at him.

*heh* Awesome analogy.

-AA

Dr. Anomaly

Sep 29th, '03, 10:41 AM

In Star Trek V, Kirk called for a photon torpedo strike on "God", even though his party was standing right next to the target. Of course they survived without any problems at all... :rolleyes:

Maybe these photon torpedo thingies aren't as powerful as we think?

I suppose one could make the argument that a huge amount (say, 99%) of the energy of the torpedo was "absorbed" by "God" in the process of doing damage to "him", leaving very little left over to bother Kirk & Co., but I think that's stretching it.

Of course, there were so many things wrong with that movie it's hard not to say "this thing doesn't count as cannon or continuity", isn't it?

austenandrews

Sep 29th, '03, 10:56 AM

Do the terms "canon" and "continuity" actually apply to Star Trek? Good luck trying to reconcile even the "primary sources" - TV shows and movies - much less anything else. :)

-AA

feywulf

Sep 29th, '03, 11:27 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
Now I'm going off memory, but wasn't that option discussed, and dismissed as it would have created a number of smaller impacts with the same energy as one big one?

I don't recall such a conversation. That kind of discussion may have happened in the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon, or at least in Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy review of that film.

The episode in question is TNG Season 3, "Deja Q". Maybe someone can look up the script somewhere.

feywulf

Sep 29th, '03, 11:36 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
I'll go with the inconsistency that has been repeated over and over. As to reasoning out about phasers being too weak, the examples you are giving are pretty much ship to ship combat and the idea is to keep it dramatic, right? So, they're going to "fib" a little or a lot to keep it exciting. Much like all those Star Wars fights that probably shouldn't have happened the way they did, like the Stormtroopers who are so accurate that Obi Wan Kenobi can tell it wasn't Sandpeople who attacked the Jawas but none of the Stormtroopers could hit two droids in a narrow tunnel, and later two smugglers in a hallway.

The combat effectiveness of phasers has been repeated more frequently than the abbility to destroy planets by some unstated means.

If in practically every combat situation they "fib" over the power of phasers to make things dramatic, but only on a few occaisions say that the Enterprise can destroy planets, maybe it is the abbility to destroy planets that is the "fib" for dramatic intent.

Originally posted by McCoy
Don't know how I missed this before. In "A Taste of Armageddon" Scotty says "We can't fire full phasers with our screens up. We can't lower our screens with their disruptors on us. I could treat them to a few dozen photon torpedoes."

Full phasers can't be used while shields are up. If phasers are the means used to destroy planets, but they can't be used at full power when the shields are up, then the abbility to destroy planets doesn't bear much relevance to a battle in which shields would have to be maintained.

McCoy

Sep 30th, '03, 08:16 AM

Originally posted by feywulf
Full phasers can't be used while shields are up. If phasers are the means used to destroy planets, but they can't be used at full power when the shields are up, then the abbility to destroy planets doesn't bear much relevance to a battle in which shields would have to be maintained.
However, if photon torpedos take out the ability of the planet to shoot back, shields can then be dropped and the planet taken apart with phasers at their lesure. "The Cage" and "The Apple" no one was shooting back.

McCoy

Sep 30th, '03, 08:35 AM

Originally posted by Lupus
If phasers are more powerful, then we have to figure out why torps are used. It's unlikely that the feds would have, much less use, a useless weapons system. :) Can't be an AOE explanation - phasers seem to be pretty much area of effect themselves. Part of it is shields - but since phasers are used in combat, obviously phasers can be used with shields up to some extent. Therefore, I can only conclude that photorps, despite being less powerful than phasers, are possibly much better at punching through shields. Shields seem to be able to be modulated against energy types - so phaser energy, despite being so vast, may well be easily dispersed. But photorps are basically just explosive, so are perhaps much harder to defend against. Might be represented as a PD vs ED thing?

It's an idea, anyway. :)
Had considered the ED vs PD, may yet go with that one.

Only indication in TOS I see that torps are more powerful is that phasers are tried before torps, implying an escalation of force. But the escalation is never stated, and this can be equally explained by a virtually unlimited supply of phaser shots (they use END, as long as you have power you have phasers) as compared to a finite number of photon torpedos.

Begining to wonder if the torps might be a "legacy" weapons system. I believe in the retcon series their primary weapon system is missles with nuclear warheads (not watching regularly, could be wrong). This could have been developed into the photon torpedos. Then the phasers added, but the "tried and true" system left in place. By Next Gen, the torpedos could have had a system upgrade.

Strangely, the two episodes where (IMHO) the torps would have been the most effective, "Balance of Terror" and "The Doomsday Machine," they were never mentioned.

feywulf

Sep 30th, '03, 12:17 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
However, if photon torpedos take out the ability of the planet to shoot back, shields can then be dropped and the planet taken apart with phasers at their lesure. "The Cage" and "The Apple" no one was shooting back.

Agreed. If the Enterprise can stop retaliation then it doesn't need to keep its shields up, but can photon torpedos and/or less-than-full-power phasers take out a Star Destroyers' abbility to retaliate? Is Kirk willing to lower shields in order to initiate a "take out a planet" attack?

How do SD turbolasers compare in firepower to photon torpedos? The numbers that i have seen indicated that an SD's turbolasers are stronger than photon torpedos, have a higher rate of fire, and the energy they release is focused in a beam instead of spread in an explosion(half of which would blast away from the target).

McCoy

Sep 30th, '03, 12:33 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
Agreed. If the Enterprise can stop retaliation then it doesn't need to keep its shields up, but can photon torpedos and/or less-than-full-power phasers take out a Star Destroyers' abbility to retaliate? Is Kirk willing to lower shields in order to initiate a "take out a planet" attack?

This is where the Picard maneuver comes in handy. All the Star Wars web sites I've seen agree turbolasers (and TIE fighters) are not superluminal. A series of superluminal half moves and attacks (and I am aware that FTL does not allow for half moves, working onit), staying at least 4 light seconds from the Star Destroyer, should be safe at minimum shielding. Vader or the Emperior may be able to tell where a randomly moving superluminal target will be four seconds in the future, no one else on the Star Destroyer could. Only drawback is Decker's implication that the power of phasers may be reduced by range.

Surviving the first hit from a turbolaser should give the crew of a Constitution class ship enough sensor data to develop that plan.

[added in edit] And again, we are assuming a Constitution class ship vs a Star Destroyer, not Kirk & crew vs Vader. Kirk vs Vader is a no brainer, Vader cannot win no matter what temporary advantage he may enjoy.

chaos_engineer

Sep 30th, '03, 05:04 PM

McCoy

Sep 30th, '03, 05:30 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
in a discussion on champ-l on how to build an ability like that, Filksinger suggested "Duplication, with special Limitations and SFX, plus Danger Sense", which is as good a way to do it as any i can think of. i'd also consider requiring either an activation roll, or a skill roll if PCs are involved.

on that note, i recall someone once suggesting Power Skill: Warp Stunts to account for Scotty and/or La Forge's amazing feats;)

Moment of Pedantry: just to give credit where it's due, i believe the so-called "Picard maneuver" was first dramatized in Jack Chalker's great novel "A Jungle of Stars"(1976).
Warp Stunts sounds approperate, but for now I'm going to put it in with my VPP for weapons system idea.

My idea was teleport with enough megascale to get it up to 10^10 meters, with the "must cross interveining space" limitation. By my calculations that gives about a 17 light seconds half move.

Agent X

Sep 30th, '03, 07:17 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
The combat effectiveness of phasers has been repeated more frequently than the abbility to destroy planets by some unstated means.

If in practically every combat situation they "fib" over the power of phasers to make things dramatic, but only on a few occaisions say that the Enterprise can destroy planets, maybe it is the abbility to destroy planets that is the "fib" for dramatic intent. I think you're reaching on the "fib" part. Action is often exaggerated. The actual statements of what is possible in the setting are more rarely exaggerated. I think it is a mistake to ever let fight scenes overrule the rest of a show.

Lezentauw

Sep 30th, '03, 09:58 PM

Sorry about the spellings errors in my ealier post.

feywulf

Oct 1st, '03, 11:02 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
This is where the Picard maneuver comes in handy. All the Star Wars web sites I've seen agree turbolasers (and TIE fighters) are not superluminal. A series of superluminal half moves and attacks (and I am aware that FTL does not allow for half moves, working onit), staying at least 4 light seconds from the Star Destroyer, should be safe at minimum shielding. Vader or the Emperior may be able to tell where a randomly moving superluminal target will be four seconds in the future, no one else on the Star Destroyer could. Only drawback is Decker's implication that the power of phasers may be reduced by range.

And that dedicating power to warp hops prevents that power from being allocated to the phasers. How quickly can the Enterprise make turns while executing warp hops? Would a Federation crew from Kirk's era be aware of the Picard maneuver to even attempt to use it? How long can the Enterprise sustain jumping in and out of warp and firing phasers?

Surviving the first hit from a turbolaser should give the crew of a Constitution class ship enough sensor data to develop that plan.

It wouldn't be just one shot. Given the rate of turbolaser fire, how many shots would hit the Enterprise after the first one before they develop this plan? With no seat belts and the getting tossed around by battle damage, there would be a significant delay, imho.

Of course given the scenario in the first post of the thread, the crews of both ships might be fully aware that this is a battle to the death situation, no diplomacy allowed. If shield are up at full, they might not be tossed around too much and may be taking evasive maneuvers to reduce the number of hits recieved.

[added in edit] And again, we are assuming a Constitution class ship vs a Star Destroyer, not Kirk & crew vs Vader. Kirk vs Vader is a no brainer, Vader cannot win no matter what temporary advantage he may enjoy.

The first post specifies the original Enterprise(not just any Constitution class federation ship from the TOS era) and the original Star Destroyer. This could mean that Kirk & crew and Vader are present.

I do not consider Kirk vs Vader to be a no brainer. Kirk's abbility to cheat death and win isn't any greater than any other Good Guy's plot influenced survival. Also Kirk's survival doesn't require the survival of his ship.

feywulf

Oct 1st, '03, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by Agent X
I think you're reaching on the "fib" part. Action is often exaggerated. The actual statements of what is possible in the setting are more rarely exaggerated. I think it is a mistake to ever let fight scenes overrule the rest of a show.

So we shouldn't take into consideration how the Enterprise does in battle to determine how well it would do in battle against a different foe?

The few occaissions where it was said that federation ships can destroy planets is hardly the entire rest of the show. Fight scenes should be the primary source of information on how well the Enterpise would do in battle. To let non-combat scenes override the actual fights in regard to combat capability is absolutely ludicrous.

Agent X

Oct 1st, '03, 01:09 PM

Agent X

Oct 1st, '03, 01:13 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
And that dedicating power to warp hops prevents that power from being allocated to the phasers. How quickly can the Enterprise make turns while executing warp hops? Would a Federation crew from Kirk's era be aware of the Picard maneuver to even attempt to use it? How long can the Enterprise sustain jumping in and out of warp and firing phasers?

It wouldn't be just one shot. Given the rate of turbolaser fire, how many shots would hit the Enterprise after the first one before they develop this plan? With no seat belts and the getting tossed around by battle damage, there would be a significant delay, imho.

Of course given the scenario in the first post of the thread, the crews of both ships might be fully aware that this is a battle to the death situation, no diplomacy allowed. If shield are up at full, they might not be tossed around too much and may be taking evasive maneuvers to reduce the number of hits recieved.

The first post specifies the original Enterprise(not just any Constitution class federation ship from the TOS era) and the original Star Destroyer. This could mean that Kirk & crew and Vader are present.

I do not consider Kirk vs Vader to be a no brainer. Kirk's abbility to cheat death and win isn't any greater than any other Good Guy's plot influenced survival. Also Kirk's survival doesn't require the survival of his ship. Kirk took on cosmic level entities and skated. Vader had to have an old Jedi Knight fall on his sword to beat him. Vader had to grab an old Sith Lord from behind and toss him into something nasty. In both cases, the mighty Vader did not face a standup fight. If he had, he probably wouldn't have beat the Emperor and the Emperor isn't anything like Star Trek's Space Apollo and not as powerful as Kirk's buddy ?Gary? in the second pilot. We could go on with the mighty foes faced by Kirk but do we have to?

lemming

Oct 1st, '03, 01:43 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
In both cases, the mighty Vader did not face a standup fight.
Well, he seemed to be an OK match with Luke. Just seems that Jedi vs. Jedi battles tend to drag. (Note I haven't seen the new movies)
And the missile deflection, etc... used against Han in Empire Strikes Back seemed useful.

chaos_engineer

Oct 1st, '03, 02:20 PM

Originally posted by McCoy
My idea was teleport with enough megascale to get it up to 10^10 meters, with the "must cross interveining space" limitation.

but isn't the whole point of the Picard maneuver the fact that the ship is in two places at once (or in terms of Star Trek rubber physics, "appears" to be in two places at once)?

Vanguard

Oct 1st, '03, 03:26 PM

Alrighty . . I'm not the indepth guru (as may have been evident) that just about everyone posting on here is but I will toss in my other .2 cents worth and then bow out of the debate.

Some people have talked about inconsistances with both shows and while I haven't seen that much inconsistancy with Star Wars, I have seen it with Star Trek. I would consider Star Wars a much more "stable" than ST.

Now, it was mentioned back there somewhere that you shouldn't take just the fight scenes into consideration and that you should take the whole shebang when dealing with ST. Unfortunately, that, I don't think, can be done since in one episode the Enterprise can do X and in the other it can't. This is dramatic licenses used to the hilt (we see this in comics all the time). So I don't think there's anyway you can manage to get anything really useful out of it because you have the "fore" crowd going "Episode X, Y, Z says this" and then you have the "against" crowd going "Ahhhh . . but then they turn around in A,B, and C and can't".

SW I don't think has that type of flaws or erraticness. There are official books out there that list (however theoretical) the abilities of all the ships/equipment in the universe. While ST does the samething, you have to rummage through several different "offical" books, most of which contradict themselves (if I recall correctyl, they altered how Warp worked in several different instances).

We are told we can't use the fact that a SD isn't said to be able to destroy a planet so therefore we can't use the idea that it MIGHT be able to. And as for why they would need the Death Star if one ship or a couple ships can do it? Well, like it was said. One or a couple might just be able to wipe life off the planet while the Death Star can blow a planet into bite sized little chunks. They're built it for the fear factor and the terror (It's a huge terrorist weapon).

I will say that while the information you have to draw from ST is much more vast but I feel that that is due to the fact that ST was done up as a weekly TV series and then later as a series of movies. SW was done as 3 seperate movies. Can Vader do much more then it was shown? Sure . . just read some of the books and the EU to see what a Jedi/Dark Jedi Master is capable of and you'll get an idea. What happened to Vader in the movies was done for suspense and dramatics. Kirk did all the things he did because he was the star of the show (and the good guy). If you put Vader in his place and taking the role as "Hero/Good Guy" he would've been able to do the samethings, pull the same stunts, and escape by the skin of his teeth, err respirator, just like Kirk. So you shouldn't just say "Kirk would win, Vader's a wuss" 'cause he's not.

A couple posts up it says Kirk took on cosmic level entities and skated . . and I say . . Only because he's the good guy and having the star of your show smoked on the first episode kinda ruins it for everyone.

What it all boils down to is that the Star Trek vessels can do what they need to do in order to complete the mission and that varies from mission to mission, story to story, and writer to writer. Because Star Wars is/was done as a series of movies, it's only got one writer and because it doesn't stretch some 20+ years there's a lot less consistancy issues.

Anyway, that brings my total to .4 cents and that's probably about all it's worth so GAME ON!!

Lezentauw

Oct 1st, '03, 03:32 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
So we shouldn't take into consideration how the Enterprise does in battle to determine how well it would do in battle against a different foe?

The few occaissions where it was said that federation ships can destroy planets is hardly the entire rest of the show. Fight scenes should be the primary source of information on how well the Enterpise would do in battle. To let non-combat scenes override the actual fights in regard to combat capability is absolutely ludicrous.

I agree. There was a post at the very beginning of all this, that compared the actual write-ups of how powerful the corresponding weapons to each ship are. It listed the damage in how many mega tons the main weapons of each ship does.

It seems that some people are getting hung up on campaign specific details. Those details may very well change as the two ships moved to another universe. In the mentioned post, the SD turbo lasers carried more of a punch than the Enterprises phasers. So IMO, if the SD was in the ST universe it could all of a sudden blast away planets with greater ease than the Enterprise. If the Enterprise went to the SW universe it would not be able to destroy a planet. Sure it could make it inhabitable, which IMO is destroying a planet, just not disintegrating it like is being suggested that the Enterprise can do.

I vaguely remember a certain episode, I am not sure which era though, that the Enterprise had to use its phasers to drill a tunnel 10KM deep so they can use their transporters. If I am remembering correctly, that took a quite some time. So I am kind of perplexed that the Enterprise has the firepower to shatter a planet, if it took them any amount of time to bore only 10KM.

The original post asked for comparisons with the original ships, at that time the Picard maneuver did not exist. Just like maneuver's that Grand Admiral Thrawn used, did not exist.

Then if you really want to get technical, the Enterprise could not leave and come back. The original poll said that both ships could not leave. IMO, I take that to mean that neither ship can leave the engagement. Once they start, it must be seen through to the end. So that makes the whole firing in FTL a mute point, as just going to FTL can be considered leaving the engagement. That would also remove the Warp hit and run tactics... In a straight up fight, the SD just out guns the Enterprise.

Like I stated before, the Enterprise will win because they are the good guys, even though they should not. You will find tiny errors in both universes, that the writers took a creative license to ensure that things like this happens...

Agent X

Oct 1st, '03, 04:02 PM

Originally posted by Vanguard
I would consider Star Wars a much more "stable" than ST.

We are told we can't use the fact that a SD isn't said to be able to destroy a planet so therefore we can't use the idea that it MIGHT be able to. And as for why they would need the Death Star if one ship or a couple ships can do it? Well, like it was said. One or a couple might just be able to wipe life off the planet while the Death Star can blow a planet into bite sized little chunks. They're built it for the fear factor and the terror (It's a huge terrorist weapon).

I will say that while the information you have to draw from ST is much more vast but I feel that that is due to the fact that ST was done up as a weekly TV series and then later as a series of movies. SW was done as 3 seperate movies. Can Vader do much more then it was shown? Sure . . just read some of the books and the EU to see what a Jedi/Dark Jedi Master is capable of and you'll get an idea. What happened to Vader in the movies was done for suspense and dramatics. Kirk did all the things he did because he was the star of the show (and the good guy). If you put Vader in his place and taking the role as "Hero/Good Guy" he would've been able to do the samethings, pull the same stunts, and escape by the skin of his teeth, err respirator, just like Kirk. So you shouldn't just say "Kirk would win, Vader's a wuss" 'cause he's not.

A couple posts up it says Kirk took on cosmic level entities and skated . . and I say . . Only because he's the good guy and having the star of your show smoked on the first episode kinda ruins it for everyone.

What it all boils down to is that the Star Trek vessels can do what they need to do in order to complete the mission and that varies from mission to mission, story to story, and writer to writer. Because Star Wars is/was done as a series of movies, it's only got one writer and because it doesn't stretch some 20+ years there's a lot less consistancy issues.

Anyway, that brings my total to .4 cents and that's probably about all it's worth so GAME ON!! I deleted some of your remarks.

Star Wars, the movies, are definitely more stable. There is less material to deal with so that stands to reason.

The one time the Star Destroyer's destructive capability was mentioned in Star Wars, by Han Solo, it suggests that the power of the Star Destroyers is far, far inferior to the Death Star; I would go so far as to say it argues a more practical reason to build the Death Star than to simply inspire fear. This is in response to your characterization, in my words, that we are working off a vacuum of information concerning the Star Destroyer's capabilities. We aren't. We are using the commentary in the movies.

Don't buy your Vader argument. Both Star Trek and Star Wars are Space Opera but the reason I like Star Wars more is that, even though much broader in scope of imagination, the characters can't do "everything." One of the things that causes me to argue that the Enterprise is more powerful than a Star Destroyer is that Star Trek lets the characters and technology do too much.

What do I like better? Star Wars. What ship wins in combat? Enterprise with Kirk or Vader with Star Destroyer? Kirk and the Enterprise.

Seenar

Oct 1st, '03, 04:23 PM

I would say that ST changed from TOS to TNG, losing power as it went.

In TOS, they fought at Warp Speeds most of the time. The game Star Fleet Battles is based soley on TOS, and they fight at war, (or at worst, light speed, which is the maximum for impulse).

The ranges used when fighting at Warp speeds are insane. They are not used in the Movies or TNG because you cannot see both ships in scene at the same time. Think about it. In TOS that was an advnatage to low budgets.

Now, if you range of your heavy weapons is 8 light seconds, your weapons cover that in less than a second, I think that the Enterprise would wipe out a Star Destoyer since it would never get shot. Further, if its weapons could penetrate the Death Star's shields (and since a fighter can get through, it seems a photon torpedo projectile could get through) the Enterprise could take out the Death Star.

feywulf

Oct 1st, '03, 04:58 PM

Originally posted by Agent X
When the subject comes up of whether or not the Enterprise can blow up planets and the answer is always in the affirmative while the scale of power the Enterprise demonstrates varies according to what would look good on screen "in the moment" I am saying you probably ought to go with the consistent statement of what the Enterprise can do and with the combat scenes that agree with these statements. Otherwise, you can't apply any standard for what the Enterprise can do.

But they never say "blow up planets" they say "destroy planets" and they don't say how. They don't mention how long it takes, or what method is used.

A battle between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer is a combat scene. The Enterprise's performance in combat is the relevant yard stick.

Agent X

Oct 1st, '03, 05:35 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
But they never say "blow up planets" they say "destroy planets" and they don't say how. They don't mention how long it takes, or what method is used.

A battle between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer is a combat scene. The Enterprise's performance in combat is the relevant yard stick. And in combat, the Enterprise has demonstrated a speed, maneuverability, and versatility that a Star Destroyer simply can't cope with. Also, the destructive capability of an Enterprise that can destroy a planet, however it does it, sure does sound like more destructive capability than Star Destroyers that Han Solo explains don't, cumulatively in the entire Star Fleet, match the destructive potential of a single Death Star.

McCoy

Oct 1st, '03, 06:31 PM

Originally posted by chaos_engineer
but isn't the whole point of the Picard maneuver the fact that the ship is in two places at once (or in terms of Star Trek rubber physics, "appears" to be in two places at once)?
Yeah, I'm actually misusing the term. The hit-and-warp I was describing is not the Picard maneuver. But the effect is simular. Warp half move, fire, opponent gets a weapon lock, half move again, and the weapons pass through where the ship was four seconds ago.

McCoy

Oct 1st, '03, 06:45 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
And that dedicating power to warp hops prevents that power from being allocated to the phasers. How quickly can the Enterprise make turns while executing warp hops?
Pretty quick. I think full reverse, no turn mode, and sideways maneuverability was deminstrated in TOS. Giving the command to maneuver seemed to take more time than executing it.

Originally posted by feywulf
How long can the Enterprise sustain jumping in and out of warp and firing phasers?
Given that we are talking second-and-a-half hops at between Warp 2 and Warp 3, a long, long time.

Originally posted by feywulf
I do not consider Kirk vs Vader to be a no brainer. Kirk's abbility to cheat death and win isn't any greater than any other Good Guy's plot influenced survival. Also Kirk's survival doesn't require the survival of his ship.

You said it yourself. Kirk's the Good Guy. Vader must, ineveably, loose. (And remember what happened when the Enterprise didn't survive, Kirk's crew took the Bounty so efforlessly that the entire operation took place off screen. I would still count that as them winning.)

McCoy

Oct 1st, '03, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by feywulf
But they never say "blow up planets" they say "destroy planets" and they don't say how. They don't mention how long it takes, or what method is used.

Yes, no, and yes. They do say "destroy," without defining the term. I have somewhat arbitrarily decided that means rendering the planet lifeless and uninhabitable, slaging the surface and probably boiling off the atmosphere, and that this takes 1/1000 of the energy the Star Warriors say went into the destruction of Alderan. If you find those assumptions unreasonable, state others.

As far as time, a planetary rotation or less. Two examples previously cited that we are talking hours, not weeks or days.

McCoy

Oct 1st, '03, 08:05 PM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
I agree. There was a post at the very beginning of all this, that compared the actual write-ups of how powerful the corresponding weapons to each ship are. It listed the damage in how many mega tons the main weapons of each ship does.

And they contradict what we see on the screen, and therefore are ignored.

Originally posted by Lezentauw
It seems that some people are getting hung up on campaign specific details. Those details may very well change as the two ships moved to another universe. In the mentioned post, the SD turbo lasers carried more of a punch than the Enterprises phasers. So IMO, if the SD was in the ST universe it could all of a sudden blast away planets with greater ease than the Enterprise. If the Enterprise went to the SW universe it would not be able to destroy a planet. Sure it could make it inhabitable, which IMO is destroying a planet, just not disintegrating it like is being suggested that the Enterprise can do.

Where do you stop with that? If the laws of physics are different from universe to universe, as Star Wars was originally big screen and Star Trek small screen, maybe when they meet the Enterprise is too small for Vader to perceive, and can fly inside his head al la Fantastic Voyage, and blow his brains out from inside his skull. [/scarcasm]

Assume a level playing field

Originally posted by Lezentauw
I vaguely remember a certain episode, I am not sure which era though, that the Enterprise had to use its phasers to drill a tunnel 10KM deep so they can use their transporters. If I am remembering correctly, that took a quite some time. So I am kind of perplexed that the Enterprise has the firepower to shatter a planet, if it took them any amount of time to bore only 10KM.

Don't remember this episode, but would point out that a precision implosion of a building takes a lot longer, but not less explosives, than droping a bomb.

If they wanted to use the transporters, there was something more than 10 km below the surface they wanted, correct? Given Trek, it was probably crew. So you need to drill this hole 10 km deep without:[list=1]
Cooking the people you wish to rescue
Seting off planetquakes causing 10 kn of rock to fall on them
cracking open a fault and flooding their cave with melted rock
colapsing the sides of your hole, forcing you to start over
damaging the ecology of the planet if it was inhabited
[/list=1]
Lot more involved in that case than sheer firepower available.

Originally posted by Lezentauw
Then if you really want to get technical, the Enterprise could not leave and come back. The original poll said that both ships could not leave. IMO, I take that to mean that neither ship can leave the engagement. Once they start, it must be seen through to the end. So that makes the whole firing in FTL a mute point, as just going to FTL can be considered leaving the engagement. That would also remove the Warp hit and run tactics... In a straight up fight, the SD just out guns the Enterprise.
Um, no, using superior maneuverability and hit-and-run is not leaving.

Lezentauw

Oct 2nd, '03, 10:05 AM

Originally posted by McCoy
Where do you stop with that? If the laws of physics are different from universe to universe, as Star Wars was originally big screen and Star Trek small screen, maybe when they meet the Enterprise is too small for Vader to perceive, and can fly inside his head al la Fantastic Voyage, and blow his brains out from inside his skull. [/scarcasm]

Assume a level playing field

Let me put into game terms, so that you may see the point I was trying to make. The creators for both universes are very much like GMs. If in one universe, the BODY and DEF of a planet were twice as high as the other universe, then yes it would take a ship with a magnificent amount of firepower to destroy it.

To push the story into a more 'realistic' feeling, for the need of a Death Star, Lucas made the planets harder to destroy. It was done for the dramatic effect.

I have not seen any evidence that the Enterprise can destroy a planet the way that the Death Star can. I also see no evidence that a Star Destroyer cannot destroy a planet, to the point where it is no longer inhabitable. I view both as destroying a planet. I tend to believe that the Enterprise cannot utterly destroy a planet. Here is my reasoning why. The Klingons big Mother Bird ships, should have as much firepower as the Enterprise. What would stop that ship from going cloaked to the home world of whatever nation it wanted to, uncloak and destroy said home planet? If you then say that the Klingons were to honorable to do that, then what about the Romulans using that strategy against the Vulcans? The closest Star Trek comes to showing something with the firepower to destroy a planet, is using the Genisis Project. So that then puts the destruction from the Enterpise of a planet, to the level of making it inhabitable.

There is a certain amount of relativity that needs to be looked at in every case. Campaign specifics can and do change what we perceive as truths. If one campaign limited defenses to 2 for every d6 of the attack limit, while the other limited them to 5 for every d6 of the attack limit. Would you not perceive the first campaign as more powerful, even though the second may have its attacks limits set two times higher?

If you want to assume an even playing field, then I can do that as well.

Both ships have the same weaknesses or strengths when it comes to shields, weapons, firing at warp, as they are now not limited by campaign restrictions and use the same set of rules. The only differences left, is the size of the ships, the maneuverability, and how each ship chooses to utilize its weapons systems.

Agent X

Oct 2nd, '03, 01:16 PM

Originally posted by Lezentauw
Let me put into game terms, so that you may see the point I was trying to make. The creators for both universes are very much like GMs. If in one universe, the BODY and DEF of a planet were twice as high as the other universe, then yes it would take a ship with a magnificent amount of firepower to destroy it.

To push the story into a more 'realistic' feeling, for the need of a Death Star, Lucas made the planets harder to destroy. It was done for the dramatic effect.

I have not seen any evidence that the Enterprise can destroy a planet the way that the Death Star can. I also see no evidence that a Star Destroyer cannot destroy a planet, to the point where it is no longer inhabitable. I view both as destroying a planet. I tend to believe that the Enterprise cannot utterly destroy a planet. Here is my reasoning why. The Klingons big Mother Bird ships, should have as much firepower as the Enterprise. What would stop that ship from going cloaked to the home world of whatever nation it wanted to, uncloak and destroy said home planet? If you then say that the Klingons were to honorable to do that, then what about the Romulans using that strategy against the Vulcans? The closest Star Trek comes to showing something with the firepower to destroy a planet, is using the Genisis Project. So that then puts the destruction from the Enterpise of a planet, to the level of making it inhabitable.

There is a certain amount of relativity that needs to be looked at in every case. Campaign specifics can and do change what we perceive as truths. If one campaign limited defenses to 2 for every d6 of the attack limit, while the other limited them to 5 for every d6 of the attack limit. Would you not perceive the first campaign as more powerful, even though the second may have its attacks limits set two times higher?

If you want to assume an even playing field, then I can do that as well.

Both ships have the same weaknesses or strengths when it comes to shields, weapons, firing at warp, as they are now not limited by campaign restrictions and use the same set of rules. The only differences left, is the size of the ships, the maneuverability, and how each ship chooses to utilize its weapons systems. This is hard to respond to because your POV is so different from mine.

If someone asks me who wins in a fight? Superman or Sipowitz. I'm going to say Superman instead of asking whether the fight happens in NYPD Blue or the Superman TV show. My whole point about why the Enterprise wins is because of the scale that is chosen in both milieus.