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xiophen42 wrote:@andrewC the same 64 mton torps usually dont kill bird of presy ships the size of 40k bombers. it usually takes 2 torps to kill a bird of prey with 3 or 4 for a galaxy sized ship.
Now a escort destroyer or frigate is signifactly larger then either a bird of prey or a galaxy class. a cruiser is 3-5km long being composed of that same admantite weighing millions of tons to billions of tons. These same cruisers have survived taking 40k torps exploding inside them and still kept fighting but are gutted by a 64 megaton blast that cant even destroy a vird of prey?

Just had a thought on this, don't think of the torps being very bad but defenses as very, very good.

So if you had an enemy who exclusively relied on a laser for offense, which would you develop? An ultralight reflective armour or heavy polished plate? You go for the ultralight, because the other is unweildy and slow.

Also just realised, and this has taken 16 pages before doing so, Borg Ships are bigger than IoM ships! The longest IoM ship is what 12Km and perhaps 1km wide and tall, so app 12km3. A borg cube is symetrical, so a 3km cube is 27km3. 2 and a half times bigger than an IoM battleship, and that was oneshotted by Voyager at the end of the series using a Multiphasic torp(?)

Andrew

I meant to add this to Xiophen - you forget the structural integrity fields that all ST vessels use, which significantly increases the "strength" of the materials and reduces the damage caused.

AS the IoM has nothing even approaching this tht would be one way damage wouild be greater on IoM than on a comparable ST, for the same yield.

nosferatu1001 wrote:I have yet to see a GW "policy" on canon - if you could provide a link that would be useful? I know MANY people do not consider BL books as canon yet somehow in this thread they are? Why isnt BFG the only source of canon, given GW are a miniature company first and foremost?

There is this tidbit, from Marc Gascoigne of the Black Library;

Keep in mind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are worlds where half truths, lies, propaganda, politics, legends and myths exist. The absolute truth which is implied when you talk about "canonical background" will never be known because of this. Everything we know about these worlds is from the viewpoints of people in them which are as a result incomplete and even sometimes incorrect. The truth is mutable, debatable and lost as the victors write the history...

Here's our standard line: Yes it's all official, but remember that we're reporting back from a time where stories aren't always true, or at least 100% accurate. if it has the 40K logo on it, it exists in the 40K universe. Or it was a legend that may well have happened. Or a rumour that may or may not have any truth behind it.

Let's put it another way: anything with a 40K logo on it is as official as any Codex... and at least as crammed full of rumours, distorted legends and half-truths.

I think the real problem for me, and I speak for no other, is that the topic as a "big question" doesn't matter. It's all as true as everything else, and all just as false/half-remembered/sort-of-true. The answer you are seeking is "Yes and no" or perhaps "Sometimes". And for me, that's the end of it.

Now, ask us some specifics, eg can Black Templars spit acid and we can answer that one, and many others. But again note that answer may well be "sometimes" or "it varies" or "depends".

But is it all true? Yes and no. Even though some of it is plainly contradictory? Yes and no. Do we deliberately contradict, retell with differences? Yes we do. Is the newer the stuff the truer it is? Yes and no. In some cases is it true that the older stuff is the truest? Yes and no. Maybe and sometimes. Depends and it varies.

It's a decaying universe without GPS and galaxy-wide communication, where precious facts are clung to long after they have been changed out of all recognition. Read A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M Miller, about monks toiling to hold onto facts in the aftermath of a nucelar war; that nails it for me.

Sorry, too much splurge here. Not meant to sound stroppy.

To attempt answer the initial question: What is GW's definition of canon? Perhaps we don't have one. Sometimes and maybe. Or perhaps we do and I'm not telling you.

There is no link, as if I recall that was posted on the BL forum which no longer exists. That's the closest we have to an 'official' policy on canon anyway, take it for what it is!

Warhammer 40k wins because weapon yields measure in high teraton to petaton range.
Phasers are only good against organic matter.
Proof for weapon yields.
Weapons batteries (Otherwise known as macro cannons), loaded with a shell that weighs “several tons.” Going with the standard established velocity of 20,000 km/s for direct fire Imperial weapons weapons. At that mass/velocity, the kinetic energy of the projectile would be 400,000 terajoules, or just under 10 gigatons.

Conservative figures point to the Battleship firing “two hundred foot” torpedoes, which would be sixty meters long. Assuming that the diameter is 1/4 to 1/5 of the length, the torpedo would yield a diameter of around fifteen meters. To be further conservative, assume a density equal to water (yeah, I’m being ultra conservative here.) The mass of the torpedo in question would be between 6,800 and 10,600 tons.

Thus the kinetic energy of a torpedo is about 12,400,000,000 petajoules (Staggering really) with a momentum (Measured by calculating the speed and weight of the torpedo) between 6.6e16 kg*m/s and 1.05e17 kg*m/s.

Giving a single Torpedo a staggering yield of 2963 teratons (Or 2.9 petatons)

Take note of how the ship has to compensate engine thrust to counter recoil – in a vacuum!

I would generally assume “close to light-speed” to mean at least 80-90% of C. The size of a Nova cannon shell is never given precisely, but the diameter of the shell is given in other sources (Fifty meters in “Warriors of Ultramar”), though a 30 meter diameter nova cannon is mentioned. Mass can be derived by assuming the length is at least equal to the diameter, or (more probably) a multiple of the diameter (2-3x longer than the diameter, for example. A fifty meter diameter shell would be a hundred and fifty meters long).

Example: Going by a 50×150 meter shell made of Iron (assume 30% solid, its supposed to be packed with explosive of unknown type and density) fired at .9c yields a shell mass of around 770,000 tons and and a kinetic energy rating of 90,000,000,000 petajoules (Holy gak!).

Giving the blast of a Nova cannon (The most powerful ship mounted Imperial weapon) a staggering yield of 22 petatons.

Or for those less fantastically inclined, two to three million times the combined explosive power of every nuclear weapon on Earth throughout history.
Naval combat in the realms of 40K can take weeks, in the case of the Damnation Crusade, Chaos and Imperial Vessels were engaged for a whole month above a single planet before any noticeable gain was made in terms of naval dominance.
In one instance (I think it may been the Damocles Crusade) an Imperial Battleship activated her void shields within the immediate proximity of a nearby Planet (Void shields should be reserved for deep space) out of sheer desperation. The force given off as the tear shaped shield impacted the surface was sufficient as to literally vaporize most of the Planet upon contact, placing the output within the realms of 240 nonillion joules (2.40 x 10E+32), or a yield of 57,000,000,000 petatons. Of course without knowing the grade, scale, rotation and composition of the Planet in question, these are only optimistic estimates at best.

Naval combat in the realms of 40K can take weeks.

I read a story where an Imperial Oberon class Battleship engaged a Chaos Battleship(don’t think it said what class) near a Chaos infested planet. The two ships battled it out for at least a week. Just continuously pounding the crap out of each other. It ended with the heavily damaged Imperial Oberon ramming the Chaos ship and overloading her Warp engines. The resulting explosion obliterated both ships and completely devastated the nearby planet, wiping out all life and turning it into a Dead World.
So here my claim and that's for Imperial warships,imagine the Necron ship who defeated ten retributions alone.

Rube; lots of interesting stuff there, which boils down to that BL can be, is and will be factually false at some point and there is no way of telling which is true and which is false. The statement of 'what is canon' comes from an individual not authorised to speak for the parent company whos' product we are debating.

Good work finding it, bad luck those people using it to support their cause, because we have just been told there is no backup of factuality about it.

Ivan; as we've just discovered all your figures are now suspect, because the source information is not factual under the caveats given above. The Oberon snippet while interesting doesn't really help, the closest we can come to a ST episode is a BL book, so if it is not reproduced elsewhere we really shouldn't use it as an ability. I also think that, as you pointed out, it was an act of desperation as the ship risked destruction by switching them on in the first place.

All of a sudden we've went full circle and back to the start

Andrew

AndrewC wrote:Rube; lots of interesting stuff there, which boils down to that BL can be, is and will be factually false at some point and there is no way of telling which is true and which is false. The statement of 'what is canon' comes from an individual not authorised to speak for the parent company whos' product we are debating.

On what basis do you think he doesn't have authority to speak on GW's behalf?

IvanTih wrote:In one instance (I think it may been the Damocles Crusade) an Imperial Battleship activated her void shields within the immediate proximity of a nearby Planet (Void shields should be reserved for deep space) out of sheer desperation. The force given off as the tear shaped shield impacted the surface was sufficient as to literally vaporize most of the Planet upon contact, placing the output within the realms of 240 nonillion joules (2.40 x 10E+32), or a yield of 57,000,000,000 petatons. Of course without knowing the grade, scale, rotation and composition of the Planet in question, these are only optimistic estimates at best.

As usual, the IoM's super shields and superweapons evidence does more to cast doubt on its own case than anything else.

So on the one hand, the most powerful gun in the IoM tops out at 22PT or 9.19x10E+25J, yet void shields are outputting at 2.4x10E+32J sustained. This would seem to indicate that the most powerful gun in the IoM is over a million times weaker than the shields it is meant to beat. To add to this... if ships are able to sustain novacannon hits, this should make torpedoes at 1.24x10E+10J output (nearly 16 magnitudes weaker) completely ineffective, however, torpedoes are shown in canon to be able to destroy IoM ships with cumulative hits.

To put things in perspective: estimates place the entire output of our sun at 3.846 × 10E+26 watts (that's J/s guys), this would indicate that void shields are outputting over a million times this on a sustained basis, and Novacannons are firing at around 10% of the sun's output per shot. Of course, the IoM has super secret advanced fusion tech which (in canon) enables them to both sustain continuous void shield operation and fire their weapons simultaneously, all powered by a fusion reactor that is much less than < 12km^2 in size. Even if the IoM reactors are more efficient than the common Trek reactor types (anti-matter/matter reactors of the UFP or the singularity powered reactors of the Romulan Star Empire), fusion reactors having a million sun rating (suns being natural fusion reactors) may be a bit of a stretch. Ergo, given the fact that the figures make about as much sense as the Chewbacca defense, it might be concluded that for any of these figures to be right, some of the figures must be wrong. The void shield one is the most out of whack. Take that one away and the reactor drops to a one sun rating (which is still ridiculous), but makes the novacannon actually effective. However, to reconcile with the effectiveness of torpedoes, you're either looking at reactor power of not more than 1.0x10E-12 sun rating at best, making the novacannon a mere 1000x more powerful than torpedoes, or making torpedoes 1.0x10E+7x more powerful (which seems less likely).

Rube wrote:

On what basis do you think he doesn't have authority to speak on GW's behalf?

From your heading before the quote.

from Marc Gascoigne of the Black Library

not Marc Gascoigne of Games Workshop. ergo he has no authority.

Andrew

What are you smoking? Black Library is a division of Games Workshop. It would seem the guy in charge of the division dealing primarily with fiction would be the right one to let determine what is canon and what is not. Rick Priestley certainly no longer gives a damn.

Omegus wrote:What are you smoking?

Something very good for my health thanks to the new state laws

Omegus wrote:What are you smoking? Black Library is a division of Games Workshop. It would seem the guy in charge of the division dealing primarily with fiction would be the right one to let determine what is canon and what is not. Rick Priestley certainly no longer gives a damn.

I wish I was.

BL is a seperate company in the same way FW is a seperate company. One has the authority to act within the remit of the parent company but does not have the authority to speak for the parent company. In this case the tail is trying to wag the dog rather than the other way round.

I'm not dissing the statement, just pointing out that the person making it doesn't have the authority. Does that make sense?

Andrew

Asherian Command wrote:

Omegus wrote:What are you smoking?

Something very good for my health thanks to the new state laws

Ham?

Omegus wrote:What are you smoking? Black Library is a division of Games Workshop. It would seem the guy in charge of the division dealing primarily with fiction would be the right one to let determine what is canon and what is not. Rick Priestley certainly no longer gives a damn.

BL /= Citadel Miniatures.

Citadel Miniatures is the parent, anyone working for a legally sperate company, despite being wholly owned, does not from a legal standpoint have the authority to speak for the parent.

Not to add that, even if he CAN speak for the parent, he states they make stuff up as they see fit! - which entirely removes ANY BL/Citadel Miniatures source of fluff being considered as reliable - about the only time you can consider something reliable if it is repeated over periods of time.

So one of stories are suspect - never mind the analysis performed which shows that *somehow* fusion reactions are operating at >sun efficiency in order to keep shields going that are a million times more powerful than the most powerful weapons...in other words: everything 40k is suspect.

It may be time to call this quits from a "hard facts" standpoint - 40k has no real world comparator for crtitical elements, such as hull strength, suspect figures suggesting that something is made up, and an admission from an unsupported person that they make stuff up as they see fit.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
It may be time to call this quits from a "hard facts" standpoint - 40k has no real world comparator for crtitical elements, such as hull strength, suspect figures suggesting that something is made up, and an admission from an unsupported person that they make stuff up as they see fit.

About this, I entirely agree. Let me see if I can sum up everything we know for sure about Imperial starships;

1. They're big.

2. They fly.

3. They've got lots of guns.

I think that about covers it.

BeRzErKeR wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
It may be time to call this quits from a "hard facts" standpoint - 40k has no real world comparator for crtitical elements, such as hull strength, suspect figures suggesting that something is made up, and an admission from an unsupported person that they make stuff up as they see fit.

About this, I entirely agree. Let me see if I can sum up everything we know for sure about Imperial starships;

1. They're big.

2. They fly.

3. They've got lots of guns.

I think that about covers it.

4. Their guns are big.

5. They can blow up continents.

6. They're bad-arse.

[quote=nosferatu1001
I'll give you a hint for the hard-of-reading: memory alpha and memory beta links. ANd quotes. Many of them. I will NOT repeat the same links just because you are too lazy or inconsiderate to spend the 5 minutes necessary to scan through the thread and find them, as that is doing your work for you.

And I thought this debate was finally closing......

But please remember, Andrew that just because they're bigger that doesn't mean they're better. Borg cubes seem to be mostly empty space, with relatively thin walled construction. This means that they are not nearly as dense as an Imperial battleship, no matter how big they are. Imperial weapons, designed to pierce metal plate often dozens of meters thick will have no trouble punching through the Borg cube. Finally, you have to remember that Starfleet always had the ability to destroy Borg cubes with conventional non transphasic weapons. The transphasic weapons just give them an advantage SPECIFICALLY against the Borg, simply do to the defensive mechanism the Borg rely upon, which is configuring their shields to perfectly reflect the 'phase' of the weapons being used against them. As we saw in First Contact, the Borg have little to no protection against a simple machine gun (most likely because physical projectiles have no phase to adjust to....why photon torpedoes do is a complete mystery to me ). A transphasic is effective against the Borg only because it constantly switches its 'phase' and as such can not be perfectly reflected by the Borg, allowing it to easily penetrate the Borg's thin armor and destroy the vessel by taking out vital systems. Please don't say the Borg 'have no vital systems in their vessels' because we saw very clearly in First Contact that they do.

And Nosferatu here is a quote describing Star Trek canon completely quoted 2nd hand from Gene Roddenberry.

Gene is the authority. And when he says that the books, and the games, and the comics and everything else, are not gospel, but are only additional Star Trek based on his Star Trek but not part of the actual Star Trek universe that he created... they're just, you know, kinda fun to keep you occupied between episodes and between movies, whatever... but he does not want that to be considered to be sources of information for writers, working on this show, he doesn't want it to be considered part of the canon by anybody working on any other projects. (Richard Arnold)

It clearly states that anything outside the movies and TV shows is not Star Trek canon, while Games Workshop, through its subsidiary Black Library, has declared anything published by them with the 40k symbol on it is 40k canon. Of course, there is a propaganda list to things said by CHARACTERS, but I do believe the narration can be viewed as relative truth. As long as that narration is not by a character (e.g. 1st person stories like Ciaphas Cain). And Nosferatu...you do realize that at this point Paramount is to Star Trek as George Lucas is to Star Wars and Games Workshop is to 40k, right? They own it, so they can do whatever the hell they want with it, and the fandom has to accept their canon rulings.

Finally, Nosferatu, the amount of antimatter is given in a mass unit, kilograms. That means that no matter HOW dense you store the material, if you store it denser than a neutron star, there will not be anymore atoms in those 1.5 kg than before. The size of the antimatter mass would have changed, but not the amount of atoms of antimatter. In an antimatter-matter annhilation, it is the number of antimatter atoms that count, and we have fixed a photon torpedoes warhead at 1.5 kg of antideutrium, giving us a max yield of 64 megatons.

Klawz wrote:4. Their guns are big.
5. They can blow up continents.
6. They're bad-arse.

Nosferatu was posting undisputed information. Your No 4. is unmistakable.

Regarding No. 5: Only the potential for widespread surface devestation is certain. Your use of the technical term: "blow up continents" requires clarification. Both "blow up" and "continents" requires further detail regarding scope. Please outline expected level of damage output, preferably in J with supporting calculations and evidence and we may move No 5 into the list of undisputed information.

Regarding No 6: As the technical term bad-arse is unquantifiable, I would move that No. 6 be inadmissable, unless you'd like to educate us further.

Here's something about phasers.
Phaser is an ergonomic nightmare in every respect. No safety or trigger guard, no sights, is exceedingly difficult and painful to aim, the shape of its handgrip forces you to either hold your wrist in an uncomfortable position or hold it far too low to sight down its barrel, also the clip is hidden beneath a panel in the underside of the handle or body (like batteries in a remote control), so you can visualize the difficulty of changing it. A Soldier would have to turn it upside down, and use his other hand in order to open the carefully hidden panel and then replace the clip. The idea of doing this during the heat of battle is absolutely insane; it would entail taking the weapon away from the aimed position and partially disassembling it! Real-life weapons and training techniques are carefully designed to minimize such disruptions to the soldier’s concentration in battle. Anyone who has even a basic clue about the use of firearms, knows that ergonomics comes as one of the highest pantheons of weapons design.
Onto the matter of firepower itself it seems that an in-depth observation demonstrates that Phasers are nowhere near as powerful as the first glance of the untrained and hyperbolic eye suggests.

1) First let us analyse the known efficiency of Federation phase weapons. The Phaser is not a direct energy transfer weapon (Lasers, kinetic energy weapons, plasma weapons, chemical explosive weapons, etc) as the latter generally release their energy in an indiscriminate manner, in fact a Phaser presents none of the known characteristics of direct energy transfer; the most prominent of which is collateral energy. In fact official literature states that “the basic phaser mechanism remains the strong nuclear force liberation method found in the nadion effect, and it also states that “almost no classical thermal or other unwanted EM effects are present in the discharge beam.” The Star Trek official technical literature is clearly in agreement that the basic mechanism of phaser operation is not thermal or electromagnetic in nature. This relates once again to the official Star Trek literature which states that the matter/anti-matter annihilation in Federation technology is not 100% efficient (Somehow they overlooked such a major flaw); in fact 85% of the Phaser inefficiently turns into pions, so instead of producing wasted thermal and electromagnetic energy you have a case in which much of the subatomic mass is lost to the atmosphere. Taking the 74% conversion efficiency from the DS9 technical manual and ignoring the pions/neutrino problem you get at most 34% effectiveness from a handheld Phaser model.

2) Inherently this relates back to the mechanics of the Phaser itself. To explain the behaviour of phasers, they must fire special “phaser particles” (Nadion radiation), which can be verified by the previous source. These particles disintegrate atoms into a shower of neutrinos, therefore a small portion of the mass must transform into new nadion particles (probably with slightly less energy than the original particle, since the chain reactions don’t go on indefinitely beyond the parameters of the host). Low-energy phaser bursts seem to have very different effects from high-energy phaser particles: below the nucleus disruption force threshold, they seem to be capable of causing a variety of effects ranging from simple heating to electrical shock effects for stunning a target. The particles must have mass because phaser beams are known to propagate at distinctly sublight speeds in certain situations (particularly hand phaser beams), and they appear to be very short-lived, hence their apparent inability to propagate through gases (where the large inter-atomic spacing apparently causes enough of a delay to prevent continuation of a chain reaction), or across the gaps between a victim’s shoes and the ground (Not even the contact areas between a flat shoe and the carpet are unaffected). This suggests that a phaser beam incorporates some sort of containment or suspension field to keep the particles from decaying- perhaps it is this field (possibly related to subspace?) which accounts for the ability of phasers to be effective against shields in spite of the absence of matter for the reaction.

What most here have failed to notice is that phasers act independently of the mass of the target. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated on any scientific basis. In “The Vengeance Factor” we actually saw Riker increase the power setting on his hand phaser to maximum, before using it to disintegrate a diminutive female humanoid, probably no more than 50 kg in mass. However, we know that hand phasers on maximum setting can also disintegrate large adult male humanoids, in excess of 80 kg in mass. In both cases, there is just enough energy to disintegrate the entire body, and there is no excess energy to damage the ground under the victim’s feet, or spill over to damage other solid objects in the victim’s vicinity. This can only make sense if the energy for this reaction somehow comes from the victim’s mass, so that the reaction continues until it runs out of mass but does not continue afterwards. Otherwise, if the energy all comes from the phaser, there should either be a deficit of energy when shooting at large targets, or a surplus of energy when shooting at small targets. Therefore, we know that the phaser reaction most likely transforms matter into neutrinos, and that it must occur in a chain reaction which feeds off the victim’s mass.

But what fact have I already stated in regards to neutrino reactions? They don’t scale up in density. Thus carbon based life forms should be easy to disintegrate because they are dominated by hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen (atomic numbers 1, 6, and 8 respectively), and light elements like this are probably very susceptible to a neutrino chain reaction. Silicates and silicon-based life forms should be more difficult to disintegrate. This is substantiated by what we saw in the episode “Devil in the Dark”, when a silicon based life form proved to be more resistant to phaser fire than a carbon based life form. We have also seen that high alloy density body armour (Around the thickness of a Flak Jacket) is extremely resistant to phasers, as we can tell from “Way of the Warrior”, in which repeated phaser blasts did only minor cosmetic damage to plated armour at disintegration setting. Therefore, it is quite obvious that the material composition and density of the target has an enormous effect on the effectiveness of hand phasers. Since we already know that phasers operate on some sort of chain reaction, and that they must derive much of their energy from the target itself, this is not a surprise. The pattern appears to favour atoms with very high nucleon counts, such as heavy metals. Apparently, the higher the atomic number, the less susceptible an element is to the effects of the Phaser. This is also consistent with “Devil in the Dark”, since silicon has a higher atomic number than carbon (14 as opposed to 6).

Now before you argue this (Despite official literature stating otherwise), how do you explain these characteristics?

A) Phasers at maximum power make a human being “disappear” in a flash of light, without debris or gas clouds. People can stand right next to a person being disintegrated and not be affected.
B) Phaser disintegrations occur slowly, taking a significant amount of time even after the phaser beam stops: anywhere from one to two seconds.
C) Maximum-power phasers disintegrate a human body in its entirety, regardless of mass, and no excess energy ever spills into the environment.
D) Phasers can heat rocks until they become luminescent, allowing away-teams to keep themselves warm.
E) Phasers can shatter large amounts of rock, knocking very large boulders loose and causing explosive reactions.
F) Phasers are ineffective against heavy armour (they have historically only been effective against light silicates).

3) Once again this is demonstrated by the fact that packing crates and other light metals are resistant to Phaser fire, even the walls of the Enterprise herself remain immune throughout fire fights, demonstrating only small electrical and thermal reactions to beam impacts. In fact the DS9 Technical Manual states that 2.4 terajoules of energy is required to vaporize a cubic metre of tritanium (The alloy used in the construction of ships), yet a handheld Phaser requires the continuous application of a highly concentrated beam (Similar to a cutting torch) over a matter of minutes to heat, melt and remove a rectangular section of starship plating. This suggests a beam far weaker than 2.4 terajoules, which is indicative of a second upper limit of Phaser power.

4) According to the technical manuals (Pg 19), the Federation cannot construct a 600m long ship which won’t sag like Joan Rivers’ wrinkled tits in Earth gravity, even during Warp Speed a “structural integrity field” is required to survive faster than light travel. In the Star Wars universe a 19km Star Destroyer was stored beneath a mountain could escape the gravity well of an Earth sized planet with ease (Which goes down to Star Destroyer, Victory class, Acclamator), remain stable at speeds millions of times faster than Warp and survive multiple gigaton blasts to the structure (A Heavy Turbolaser blast is 3,125 times more powerful than the max theoretical output of a Photon Torpedo). They could build a city twice the size of San Francisco and suspend it above the gravity well of a Jupiter sized planet. Jupiter, that’s a gravitational field strength in the upper atmosphere of 24.66Nkg^-1, more than twice that of Earth. The superior structural integrity of the materials used in the Star Wars universe can sustain stresses that the Federation cannot even fathom in their comparatively primitive construction methods (The Death Star is ample proof of this). In lieu of this, it is certainly viable that a 2.1 mega joule laser could damage the hull of the Enterprise.


5) Whilst destroying rock seems impressive, the energy required for uncoupling or shattering a 10m diameter boulder (With a volume of 500m squared) is only one ton of explosive power. Which is nowhere even near the scale of rock destroyed in the Trek series. In fact it took a heavy mounted Phaser weapon to bore a hole through a boulder that was only over two meters in diameter.

6) Now according to the Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual, the optimum output of the Main Phaser array of the Enterprise-D is measured at 3.6 gigawatts (Approximately 5.1 megawatts per emitter). Obviously this is representative of Federation Capital Class ship based weaponry rather than the infantry level small arms such as the Type-II Phaser, but it certainly gives us an impression of an upper level limit to work with. This of course is substantiated by the TNG episode “Conundrum” where a laser (Not a Phaser – but a direct energy weapon) damages the hull of the Enterprise-D whilst being described as a mere 2.1 mega joule weapon. Although it may seem a tempting solution to suggest that hand held Phasers are far more powerful than their ship mounted equivalents, it is fallacious to do so for several obvious reasons that should not have to be clarified for the sake of all that is intelligent.

7) Once again, according to the DS9 technical manual, the battery/clip (It is unique for utilizing an assault rifle-esqe cartridge) storage capacity of a Type-III phaser (Also known as a phaser rifle, which is the most powerful hand-held weapon carried aboard Federation starships) is 67.5 terajoules.
Now before you say to yourself “Hey, that’s greater in value than the Main Phaser Array!” there are a few points that must be remembered:

A) 67.5 terajoules is the max “theoretical” amount of energy that can be stored. Anyone who understands even the basics of how potential storage systems work knows that no battery is 100% efficient, thus it is unlikely to utilize the total sum of energy in the conversion process. If anything, the larger Phaser arrays are probably more efficient in the conversion process due to a mechanism compatible with scaled systems, thus requiring less input.
B) The reactor of the entire vessel has an output of only 4 billion gigawatts , thus demanding greater levels of efficiency for capital weapons. Hand held Phasers and their clips/batteries could quite likely be charged over a prolonged period of time
C) The clip has to displace and lose this energy over multiple varying levels of shots (During “First Contact”, crew members are never seen reloading or carrying spare clips even during extended engagements, suggesting their capacity to be quite high). Phaser can be scaled in power according to the demand of the user; stun shots require only small amounts of energy, whilst disintegration shots take up vastly larger amounts. Thus the depletion of energy is never as uniform as conventional magazines.
Also the issue with something like a wide-beam phaser is similar to the “inverse square law”, although the formula will be different, because that rule applies to non-directional energy releases, like bombs. In that case, if you double the distance from the bomb, the target takes one quarter as much energy from it. Triple the distance, one-ninth of the energy. Expand as needed.
A cone-shaped beam from a phaser won’t drop in power as quickly as that, but it will drop nevertheless. In practice, the best we’ve seen a wide-beam phaser do is stun a group of people at a range of less than ten meters. In actual battle situations, Federation personnel invariably use only narrow beams, so we can reasonably conclude that wide beams aren’t that useful.
D) Efficiency. As stated previously, Phasers are far from 100% efficient, in fact the greater majority of inputted energy into each burst is lost to the environment. Due to the inevitable prospect of energy lost through repeated use, the total amount that reaches a target is far less than that required to generate the Phaser burst.
E) According to the DS9 TM, a Phaser can be set to overload and explode violently (Killing anyone nearby) if the battery input of the charged phase burst reaches 9 terajoules. So whilst discharging over 60 terajoules of energy in a single burst may seem to be a tempting resolution to any conflict, exceeding the material limit of the container by a significant amount causes the firearm to erupt.

This of course all refers to the Type-III Phaser, which is the more powerful variant of the Phaser firearm model; in fact the magazine of said firearm is a lot larger than the entirety of the Type-II Phaser itself. This ultimately suggests that it contains far less energy and is nowhere near as powerful as a result due to the Phaser mechanics conversion method.


In conclusion we must remember that given a system with an initial energy state (A), final energy state (B), and energy input (C), how do you think you determine the energy input? Note that you cannot simply infer or assume energy state (B); you must measure it to attain a measurable result.

Ultimately the Phaser proves to be an effective weapon against specific organisms due to the physical mechanism of the Phaser beam itself, unfortunately (As witnessed) the effectiveness of said beam greatly diminishes as you scale up the target itself due to the fact that the Phaser is not a direct energy weapon in latent terms. Evidence states that it’s actually a form of mass reactive radiation, which whilst potent against weaker atomic bonds, proves to be terrible against denser materials; in fact hand-held Phasers only very rarely overcome denser alloys given plot specific reasoning (Such as connecting the Phaser to the reactor of the ship itself).

keezus wrote:

Klawz wrote:4. Their guns are big.
5. They can blow up continents.
6. They're bad-arse.

Nosferatu was posting undisputed information. Your No 4. is unmistakable.

Regarding No. 5: Only the potential for widespread surface devestation is certain. Your use of the technical term: "blow up continents" requires clarification. Both "blow up" and "continents" requires further detail regarding scope. Please outline expected level of damage output, preferably in J with supporting calculations and evidence and we may move No 5 into the list of undisputed information.

Regarding No 6: As the technical term bad-arse is unquantifiable, I would move that No. 6 be inadmissable, unless you'd like to educate us further.

Internet Sarcasm is sarcasm.

ChrisWWII wrote:Finally, Nosferatu, the amount of antimatter is given in a mass unit, kilograms. That means that no matter HOW dense you store the material, if you store it denser than a neutron star, there will not be anymore atoms in those 1.5 kg than before. The size of the antimatter mass would have changed, but not the amount of atoms of antimatter. In an antimatter-matter annhilation, it is the number of antimatter atoms that count, and we have fixed a photon torpedoes warhead at 1.5 kg of antideutrium, giving us a max yield of 64 megatons.

Chris: This is a pet peeve of mine. Considering your insistence that the photorp yield calculation is so strictly adhered to and the VOY numbers are discounted, isn't it a bit hypocritical to be so accepting of Imperial fusion reactor power outputs? Even given the BL's "magic" super science, and limiting the output to a single "sun level" output (as opposed to a million sun rating), since the sun is also a fusion reactor, the Imperial reactor would have to be greater than 1.18x10E+15 times more efficient given the size of the IoM ships compared to the sun. On the one hand, you are stating that it is impossible to get additional yield (to roughly 10xE+4 times greater) by "enriching" the warhead (by admittedly unknown means), but you are asking the UFP supporters to accept fusion efficiency in the neighbourhood of 10xE+15 greater than the sun (by equally unknown means).

ChrisWWII wrote:Finally, Nosferatu, the amount of antimatter is given in a mass unit, kilograms. That means that no matter HOW dense you store the material, if you store it denser than a neutron star, there will not be anymore atoms in those 1.5 kg than before. The size of the antimatter mass would have changed, but not the amount of atoms of antimatter. In an antimatter-matter annhilation, it is the number of antimatter atoms that count, and we have fixed a photon torpedoes warhead at 1.5 kg of antideutrium, giving us a max yield of 64 megatons.

Chris, a photon torpedo, after Star Trek voodoo enhancement, has a maximum possible yield of 690 gigatons. That's canon. You can justify it however you please, but it happens.

BeRzErKeR wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:Finally, Nosferatu, the amount of antimatter is given in a mass unit, kilograms. That means that no matter HOW dense you store the material, if you store it denser than a neutron star, there will not be anymore atoms in those 1.5 kg than before. The size of the antimatter mass would have changed, but not the amount of atoms of antimatter. In an antimatter-matter annhilation, it is the number of antimatter atoms that count, and we have fixed a photon torpedoes warhead at 1.5 kg of antideutrium, giving us a max yield of 64 megatons.

Chris, a photon torpedo, after Star Trek voodoo enhancement, has a maximum possible yield of 690 gigatons. That's canon. You can justify it however you please, but it happens.

Ahh no the quoe that noferatu posted was in reference to the anti matter pods exploding. then making the assumption that we will see this applied to torps. when you follow the link he posted with it discussing the large sized torp it directly referencing the anti matter pod.

IvanTih wrote:

wrote war & peace

Ivan, we dropped the debate over phasers quite a while ago.

At present we are trying to now settle the power of a photon torpedo 64MT vs 690GT

Chris, I think it was yourself that said that the purest form of energy production is not fission or fusion but antimatter annhilation. It may not have been I can't remember. IoM does not use antimatter but the energy sources above, without resorting to "but it says so in a book" a defence being denied to SF supporters, how can you explain the production of power far exceeding the sum mass of the components, when the purest form of energy release won't achieve the same thing?

As for IoM weapons, chances are they would just go straight through a borg cube without stopping, it would be like shooting fog, but I digress from the matter at hand. From what I can see/find transphasic weapons did not give them an advantage specifically against borg, but were simply that destructive. They were to be used as a last resort when other methods failed because they were concerned that the borg would learn and adapt their shielding accordingly. The transphasic torpedo, for a better word, was/is intangible and didn't penetrate armour in the physical sense it simply went past it. This is the bugbear I have about this sort of debate, until ground rules for technology can be established it goes nowhere.

Canon. GW has never ruled anything outside their 'core package' as canon, but then again they have never ruled anything outside of that package as non-canon. BL has never ruled anything produced by them as canon. FW have never claimed anything by them by canon. Pure canon are the rule books, codecii, armybooks. As Gascoigne said "Yes, No, Maybe" as much as it is a clever answer it is one avoiding a definitive answer.

Andrew

AndrewC wrote:This is the bugbear I have about this sort of debate, until ground rules for technology can be established it goes nowhere.

I'd like to second this.
'
I don't really care on the outcome, but everyone's arguements need to be held to the same standard.

xiophen42 wrote:

BeRzErKeR wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:Finally, Nosferatu, the amount of antimatter is given in a mass unit, kilograms. That means that no matter HOW dense you store the material, if you store it denser than a neutron star, there will not be anymore atoms in those 1.5 kg than before. The size of the antimatter mass would have changed, but not the amount of atoms of antimatter. In an antimatter-matter annhilation, it is the number of antimatter atoms that count, and we have fixed a photon torpedoes warhead at 1.5 kg of antideutrium, giving us a max yield of 64 megatons.

Chris, a photon torpedo, after Star Trek voodoo enhancement, has a maximum possible yield of 690 gigatons. That's canon. You can justify it however you please, but it happens.

Ahh no the quoe that noferatu posted was in reference to the anti matter pods exploding. then making the assumption that we will see this applied to torps. when you follow the link he posted with it discussing the large sized torp it directly referencing the anti matter pod.

If you actually bothered to read the quote properly, you'd notice that they explode with a force EQUAL to that of an antimatter pod rupturing...

AndrewC wrote:

IvanTih wrote:

wrote war & peace

But you gotta admit it is a good text.

IvanTih wrote:
But you gotta admit it is a good text.

That I don't deny. I don't agree with it, but I wont deny it

Andrew

Tolstoy's massive snoozer is even worse in the original Russian.

Terminus wrote:Tolstoy's massive snoozer is even worse in the original Russian.

Er,what?