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Peregrine wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
You use the asteroid as a constant, but we also don't know the exact dimensions of asteroid compared to each starship, or compared to each other. Nor do we know the composition of said asteroids. For all you know, the ST:TMP asteroid could have been tungsten or something as fragile as sulfur. Should we assume that, since you're a rabid Warsie with no ability to look at things objectively that the Trek asteroid was tissue paper the size of a suitcase while the ESB asteroid was the size of an aircraft carrier and made out of diamond?

Wow, "warsie", I haven't heard that one in a long time. Perhaps you have your own calculations for the scenes in question?

ANY calculations are useless with this many variables. What constants do we have in this equation, really? The size of the asteroid that's about to hit the Enterprise. I don't have speakers on the work computer, but I'm pretty sure they either mention the size of the asteroid or the mass of the asteroid. If they mentioned both, we'd have some good data to go by, but I'll have to look it back up with sound later. Anything else? Approximate energy needed to pulverize a solid piece of iron? Maybe. Size of the ESB asteroid? Nope. Composition of said asteroids? Nope. We don't have nearly enough data to make that a realistic comparison. I can see that, it's why I'm not a Trekkie despite being a Trek fan. You, however, are trying to use a formula that has a +/- in exponents. It's unrealistic and driven by fanboyism. That's why I said "Warsie".

Another thought: the Enterprise only used torpedoes because the warp drive malfunction made phaser fire impossible. So basically all Trek weaponry can destroy asteroids.

Peregrine wrote:

We also know that power can be redirected from any nonessential systems on a Starfleet starship upon command and used to increase power and performance of other systems. So even IF they were limited to 10 gigatons (which is a fraction of the power that a starship can produce) it would be child's play for them to redirect power to weapons and slice through the IDS like it was tissue paper.

That is not how it works. You can't just assume that component limits do not exist. For example, you can build a circuit that delivers the entire power supplied to your house through a single light bulb but that doesn't mean you can successfully increase its brightness to any arbitrary level.

And even delivering 100% of that 10 gigaton value to its guns, saving nothing for movement or defense (IOW, committing suicide to fire a shot), the Star Trek ship is still only getting 5% of the firepower of a single shot from a Clone Wars era transport. That's at least probably relevant on the scale of Star Wars combat and could maybe do damage eventually, but it's far short of effortlessly killing a star destroyer.

Except we've seen specific examples of EXACTLY that. Increased shield strength from redirected power? Yep. Tractor beam strength changed from redirected power? Yep. Weapon strength changed from redirected power? Yep. Hell, we've seen them modify the cool see through colored plastic thingies to increase output of whatever device they are using. It's not hard to see how they COULD get the weapons to overcharge, though it's not something sustainable, typically.

Also, where did the 10 gigaton value come from?

Not only that, you're also making some base assumptions about the armor rating of ISDs. Hand phasers can vaporize metal at maximum setting, why do you assume that a similar strike against ISD armor wouldn't net similar results? Is it magic armor? This is another example of where you're letting your personal fan feelings prevent objectivity. It's like all those DC fans that refuse to accept that Captain America can and would beat Batman.

Peregrine wrote:

So basically you dismiss everything from Trek as technobabble, but accept everything from a franchise built around space wizards with laser swords? Wait, sorry, plasma swords? That's what we call an unbiased analysis...

Yes, of course I dismiss technobabble as good writing. Star Wars has fantasy elements, but it just takes them for granted and doesn't over-explain them. It's a lightsaber, but we hear far more about the philosophy and history of the weapon than some nonsense "explanation" of how it works. Meanwhile Star Trek is entire episodes of that cringe-worthy "midichlorians" scene. I mean, which do you think is better writing:

Star Wars: "Enemy ship! Open fire!"

Star Trek: "The enemy appears to be using an inverse tachyon phase array to modulate their plasma signature! We must reverse polarize our warp core to produce a subspace energy field that will allow us to lock on to their ship!"

Kirk: *shoots the technobabble officer, sleeps with your mom* "DIE KLINGON S! OPEN FIRE!"

The one that is science fiction, as opposed to straight fantasy. Nothing about SW delves into the scientific realm, not even any sort of scientific base for what their technology does. I doubt Lucas thought that far into it. Trek at least goes for some semblance of science behind what it does. It may be unrealistically portrayed, but at least there is a base to build on. Magic plasma swords because magic plasma swords is far worse writing.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
OK.

A mug of tea.

Tea.

Earl Grey.

Hot.

Rather than boil water with fire and mix in leaves like some kind of barbarian, the Federation finds it much more efficient to convert some of the ship's excess energy to matter.

How much energy do they need to do that?

250 g of tea, plug it into E=MC^2

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/emc2

And get 22,468,879,468 megajoules. That seems like a lot of energy.

I wonder what that would be in explosive energy?

http://extraconversion.com/energy/megajoules/megajoules-to-tons-explosive.html

5,258,126 tons, or 5 megatons for short.

To.
Make.
Tea.
Earl Grey.
Hot.

I remember seeing an interview with the Captain of the USS Nimitz (a nuclear carrier). He mentioned that his top speed was 30 knots. But that he could only sustain that for... 20 years or so. Nuclear carrier y'know.

The Enterprise can spare 5 megatons of energy to make tea for each and every crewmember.

The Empire is not even playing on their level. It's not just coal dreadnoughts vs nuclear subs, it's more like sailing galleys vs nuclear carriers.

How does this get buried with no responses? This, combined with everything stated about FTL strafing runs, leaves this as a non-debate.


Actually, the game ender goes like this: The Federation does some in depth research about the personnel of the Empire, collecting everything from assignments to duty stations. They go to all the planets of the Empire, use the transporters to obtain the patterns of the sisters of all the Imperial ships' officers. Fly up, beam copies of them aboard the ship that houses their siblings, and when they open mouth kiss their siblings (This is canon, after all. It appeared on film.) the Federation ships use the distraction to take the Imperial fleet apart. Finis.

Sure, when the generation ships the Federation would need to use to REACH the SW galaxy finally get there in five hundred years or so. In the meantime Palpatine has already manipulated the various factions of the ST galaxy to fight to exhaustion and then either welcomed him as peacemaker (think an intergalactic 'Federation' to preserve peace)... or died in the war.

Assuming, of course, wormholes or assistance from one of the omnipotent beings of the Trek universe didn't expedite things. I could easily see Q flinging Picard into the Star Wars galaxy simply to see how he'd react to the situation.

 Vulcan wrote:
Yes we do. We see a turbolaser shot vaporize an asteroid during the Hoth asteroid field sequence. Just like we see a pair of photon torpedoes do the same in the wormhole sequence of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I couldn't remember it being two torpedoes, so I pulled up the video of the scene on youtube here at work. It's one torpedo.

 Vulcan wrote:
The weapons are demonstrated ON FILM as being comparable in destructive power. There is no arguing around this, it's RIGHT THERE ON FILM. So when ST weapons have trouble destroying a fighter or freighter, that just demonstrates that SW weapons of the same period will ALSO have a hard time destroying said fighter or freighter.

Of course, this assumes the weapon that is having trouble destroying freighters and/or fighters is the main battery turbolasers mounted on those turrets flanking the superstructure, and not the secondary batteries along the rim of the ship, which we see firing in RotJ at Endor. It may be a hit from a primary batter would vaporize the fighter with ease... and the Imperials didn't use them because they wanted prisoners to interrogate. Or maybe the primaries do, indeed, have major problems targeting a small ship; this is assumed in the RPG, but never explicitly stated anywhere in the movies.

It also assumes that it was the main battery vaporizing that asteroid and not a secondary battery. If it was a secondary battery, well, one can assume the main battery would be a LOT more powerful than the secondaries, and that means the Federation is in a lot more trouble.

I'll grant you Next Gen stuff is probably more potent. But as so much else in this discussion, there's no way to prove HOW MUCH more potent. And if we're going to argue eras... how much damage might those heavy cannon on the Dreadnaught or Snoke's flagship do, especially at the very short dogfighting ranges Star Trek ships prefer to fight at instead of at the VERY LONG range (for both universes) we see them used at in TLJ?

You're also assuming it took every ounce of destructive force of that torpedo to get the job done. It could be argued either way, so we still have no conclusive data to compare that holds up to scrutiny.

 Vulcan wrote:


Sure, when the generation ships the Federation would need to use to REACH the SW galaxy finally get there in five hundred years or so. In the meantime Palpatine has already manipulated the various factions of the ST galaxy to fight to exhaustion and then either welcomed him as peacemaker (think an intergalactic 'Federation' to preserve peace)... or died in the war.

Well if we're worried about that then the Federation already won seeing as the Empire ceased to exist 'a long time ago'.

We'd really have to talk about how the Federation will do against the Much Newer Republic or the 23rd Order

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:


Sure, when the generation ships the Federation would need to use to REACH the SW galaxy finally get there in five hundred years or so. In the meantime Palpatine has already manipulated the various factions of the ST galaxy to fight to exhaustion and then either welcomed him as peacemaker (think an intergalactic 'Federation' to preserve peace)... or died in the war.

Well if we're worried about that then the Federation already won seeing as the Empire ceased to exist 'a long time ago'.

We'd really have to talk about how the Federation will do against the Much Newer Republic or the 23rd Order

Or- by the time that happens, it's a Battlestar Galactica style time twist. The Galactic Empire destroyed the galaxy (using a succession of Death Galaxies), and eradicated most alien lifeforms before imploding. Then, a group of idealistic pacifist last survivors made it to a galaxy far, far, away and founded the Federation.

 Vulcan wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Are we still ignoring the 690 gigaton figure for photon torpedoes?

Depends. Are we going to ignore the turbolasers destroying an asteriod just like the photon torpeodes do?

No one's been ignoring that, so I don't know where that argument's coming from. The argument was that Star Trek couldn't hold a candle towards the Empire because the Empire had 200 gigaton turbolasers while Photon Torpedoes were a mere 64 megaton. The existence of the 690 gigaton figure for Photon Torpedoes was ignored by Peregrine until I'd pointed it out three times, and then it was hand-waved away as being "inconsistent". No one's been ignoring the turbolasers.

 Peregrine wrote:
Because it isn't a very compelling argument. It makes major assumptions about how replicators work, and even the 5 megaton conclusion is still well short of the 200 gigatons of a single shot from a Clone Wars era troop transport. The fact that it's "just tea" doesn't mean anything, it's quite possible that, like the aircraft carrier he mentions, the Enterprise's power supply runs at a fixed output 24/7. So when not firing weapons or using higher levels of engine power there's a lot of energy left over for frivolous things like making tea the stupidly over-complicated way. But that doesn't necessarily get the peak output up to Star Wars levels.

This, combined with everything stated about FTL strafing runs, leaves this as a non-debate.

The visual aspect is so it’s fun to watch. If the weapons are shown in real FTL we wouldn’t see them which would be boring to watch. Star Wars does the same things the lasers would be invisible to the human eye but are slowed down visually for good TV/film.

I have just started rewatching Star Trek and have lost count of how many FTL battles I have seen. How can you argue against it? Torpedo’s come in a lot of different versions some unable to make use of FTL and some clearly have FTL. If you listen carefully they sometimes declare which mark of torpedo is being fired and change the mark of torpedo being used. I have seen weapons in FTL hitting none FTL targets, none FTL hitting FTL and FTL to FTL battles. In one noticeable battle a powerful torpedo was about to hit the Enterprise which went into warp to try to escape and the torpedo jumped into warp after them and hit. In another case they took out the explosive weapons and use the FTL torpedoes to carry a passenger very fast from a Star base to a ship. The weapons have been very clearly described in show as FTL and used as FTL.

The other thing about Star Trek Defence systems is they run on the principle it doesn’t matter how powerful or how much energy the weapon uses it’s the type of energy that matters. The shields/hull can absorb unlimited amounts of damage if configured against that type.

In the show they don’t even need shields to defend against lasers the deflector just deflect them without harm when shields are down. Another example they use Metaphasic shielding to withstand the pressure, radiation and energy of a star's corona which is far higher energy levels than turbolasers. Shields are often configured to be immune to certain weapons or certain energy types its a key part of Star Trek. Star Trek use phasors as lasers and Ion weapons are seen as obsolete and harmless no matter the power level.

It seems to me all the Federation have to do is create artificially gravity wells and stay in FTL and they could destroy the Empire without firing a single weapon. The gravity wells will shut down all the major hyperspace lanes and without them the Empire would collapse. Its also been established that gravity wells don't effect warp drives but stop Star Wars ships from FTL. Fed ships can use gravity well weapons to effectively disable Empire ships and then the fed ships can stay in FTL and pick off the Empire ships one at a time safely. Not that they need to as a bunch of cloaked Klingons dropping artificially gravity wells on major hyperlanes would disrepute the Empire.

I think there's also a difference between STOS and the other series on power levels. In STOS nukes are no biggie, ships routinely vaporize other ships when Shields are down, have the capacity to bombard all major cities on a planet, can stun everyone on a multiblock area, a hand phaser can kill thousands or one shot the side of a building, etc.

I don't think Emporer Palatine would be able to con the Federation, because Commander Troi would sense hostility in him.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think Emporer Palatine would be able to con the Federation, because Commander Troi would sense hostility in him.

Commander Troi generally could only 'sense hostility' after whoever she was sensing finished threatening to blow up the Enterprise, usually while they were foaming at the mouth.

Palpatine, on the other hand, concealed that he was a Sith Lord from every. single. Jedi. Master. for. years. And not by keeping them at a distance, mind you; he interacted with many of them on a regular basis.

Not ONE of them had a clue.

Lwaxana, on the other hand.... maybe. Especially if she found him 'intriguing'...

The problem with Palpatine is that he lost any subtlety he had after RotS. The Empire is pretty much build around being evil for evil's sake. He is also so arrogant that he takes massive unnecessary risks because being wrong isn't something he can imagine.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think Emporer Palatine would be able to con the Federation, because Commander Troi would sense hostility in him.

Commander Troi generally could only 'sense hostility' after whoever she was sensing finished threatening to blow up the Enterprise, usually while they were foaming at the mouth.

Palpatine, on the other hand, concealed that he was a Sith Lord from every. single. Jedi. Master. for. years. And not by keeping them at a distance, mind you; he interacted with many of them on a regular basis.

Not ONE of them had a clue.

Lwaxana, on the other hand.... maybe. Especially if she found him 'intriguing'...

Yeah, but the prequel jedi were written so poorly that he could have been dancing around the jedi temple with a top hat, monocle and lightsaber cane whilst shooting lightning and singing about how great it is to be a sith and they'd still have managed to not realise.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think Emporer Palatine would be able to con the Federation, because Commander Troi would sense hostility in him.

Commander Troi generally could only 'sense hostility' after whoever she was sensing finished threatening to blow up the Enterprise, usually while they were foaming at the mouth.

Palpatine, on the other hand, concealed that he was a Sith Lord from every. single. Jedi. Master. for. years. And not by keeping them at a distance, mind you; he interacted with many of them on a regular basis.

Not ONE of them had a clue.

Lwaxana, on the other hand.... maybe. Especially if she found him 'intriguing'...

Yeah, but the prequel jedi were written so poorly that he could have been dancing around the jedi temple with a top hat, monocle and lightsaber cane whilst shooting lightning and singing about how great it is to be a sith and they'd still have managed to not realise.

True, but let's face it, many a Federation starship crew has been just as poorly written, leading to their demise in quite foolish ways. It's only the 'main character' crews who demonstrate any real competence, much less excellence, on screen.

This would lead to the Empire giving Star Fleet quite the drubbing until the 'current series' captain showed up to save the day, with technobabble and basic competence.

I hope I didn't just kill the thread.. I was having fun!

Nope all good.

The more productive discussion is which blue drink is better: blue milk or Romulan Ale.

Romulan Ale is contraband, so we may never know.

But what if we only use it for medicinal purposes?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Romulan Ale is contraband, so we may never know.

Gotta love how it's illegal but literally every ship has some on board for the weekly shindig. I have always wondered - are they replicating it? Who has the authority?

Synthohol

It's been said one drinks Romulan ale for the same reason one drinks moonshine. To show you can.

 Just Tony wrote:
But what if we only use it for medicinal purposes?

It's a great memory restorative (Just like jaegermeister).

It makes you remember why you stopped drinking it.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Gotta love how it's illegal but literally every ship has some on board for the weekly shindig. I have always wondered - are they replicating it? Who has the authority?

I always figured it was illegal in the same way that Cuban cigars are in the US; meaning "illegalish".

 Vulcan wrote:

Which was prearranged, as they were going to Naboo to hide from assassins for an extended period. That is, an extended period ON NABOO, not in transit.

If hyperdrive is so fast that transit time is not a consideration, why can she not zip back to Coruscant for an important vote? Attempts were made on her life, sure, but then stay in orbit on a starship crewed by people you trust (who you can pick up on Naboo) and use the HoloNet to appear live on the Senate floor. Hell, just use the HoloNet to appear live on Senate floor from Naboo. Palpatine was using something like that method to appear allover the galaxy.

Granted this is the Naboo government that couldn't afford a spare T-14 hyperdrive generator for the royal starship, but a junk dealer on Tatooine somehow has one; so money may be an issue.

 Peregrine wrote:
Because it isn't a very compelling argument. It makes major assumptions about how replicators work, and even the 5 megaton conclusion is still well short of the 200 gigatons of a single shot from a Clone Wars era troop transport.

Do you not understand how ridiculous 200 gigatons is?

The Tzar Bomba was .05 gigatons, extrapolations for a 1 gigaton bomb dropped on the UK include all of Western Europe, tidal waves and the alteration of orbits.

The number you're talking about means that a stray shot blows up a planet, at best, and it is therefore ridiculous because it means the Death Star has no reason to exist.

Don't bring logic, science, or mathematics into the Star Wars side of things.


*slowly waves hand*

There are no logical fallacies in the Star Wars Universe.

*slowly waves hand*

These are not the facts you are looking for.

*slowly waves hand*

Something about "technobabble".

*slowly waves hand*

Move along.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Romulan Ale is contraband, so we may never know.

Gotta love how it's illegal but literally every ship has some on board for the weekly shindig. I have always wondered - are they replicating it? Who has the authority?

Guess this settles things, no one ever risked jail for Bloo Milk.

Hola fellow Nerds.

Been off in a field scrapping over the weekend, hence I’ve not weighed in.

But I was randomly perusing Facebook, and clocked a Star Trek alien called a ‘Neptunian’ which I wasn’t familiar with. Turns out, it was an invention of the Mego Toy Company.

In finding that out, (thanks, Google!), I found this nugget.

At Warp 4.5, a ship can travel from Neptune to Earth and back in 6 minutes

With that in mind, we can work out the MPH of Warp 4.5, as that’s a canon from Enterprise. Now. According to the Internets, there’s 2.7 billion miles between the two. So at Warp 4.5, and not allowing for any turning speed (because Enterprise sucks, so I’ve not watched the episode), that’s 5.4 billion miles in 6 minutes, or, unless my maths is off, 54,000,000,000 MPH, yes?

Now what I’m not sure is whether or not Warp Speeds are ‘ranked’ in the same way as the Richter Scale - so Warp 5 being twice as fast as Warp 4.

Is there anyway we can use that canonical info to work out the top speed of Warp 9.9?

No. Also, that Warp 4.5 was the Enterprise NX-01, which means it used the "old" Warp factor system. TNG and onwards uses a different Warp scale.

They do?

Yes they do, if I remember correctly and I may/probably be horribly wrong, in the old system each warp was a logical progression. Warp 1 was Speed of light, warp 2 was twice that etc. However with the advent of TNG they realised that the Federation was so big it would take 50 odd years to get to the Romulan border (Courtesy of the StarTrek RPG I think) so the warp system became a power system.

Warp 1 was the speed of light, warp 2 was (2*2) four times the speed of light, warp 3 was (3*3*3) nine times the speed of light and so on.

It has probably changed again.

Cheers

Andrew

It has been established that objects traveling at warp speed collide with a ship in star wars and instantly destroy it.

Since photon torpedoes can be fired at warp speeds, they would instantly destroy any Star Wars ship.

EDIT- this was in reference to the picture on the front page. Although, i would actually have to check the mass of a photon torpedo.

We also have a Gallifrey light transport jumping to lightspeed and going SPLAT! on the hull of Vader's Imperial Star Destroyer in Rogue One. So I think the mass and structure of the impacting object and the object hit might have a weee bit to do with it...

As I recall from the old technical manuals, Warp Speed in TOS was a cube function. Warp one was 1*1*1=1; lightspeed. Warp 2 was 2*2*2=8 times lightspeed; Warp 9 was 9*9*9= 729 times lightspeed. The transwarp drive could hit warp 14; 2,744 times lightspeed.

After the first season of TNG, they released the TNG technical manual. The new Enterprise used an Ultra-warp drive drive which functioned on the fifth power. Warp one was still lightspeed, but Warp two was 2*2*2*2*2= 32 times lightspeed, and Warp 9 was 59,049 times lightspeed. Call it 60,000 light years per year of travel.

The Milky Way is around 100,000 light-years across, so the Enterprise-D could, in theory, travel across the galaxy in back well within a five-year mission.

The trick is, this is directly contradicted in at least one episode and the entire Voyager series.

Contrast this with the Millennium Falcon, which covers half a galaxy in less than 18 hours. A lot less. Even if the SW galaxy is quarter the diameter the size of the Milky Way (25,000 light years), and the Falcon is ten times the speed of an ISD in hyperspace, and the Falcon actually takes the full 18 hours to travel the distance (All quite pessimistic assumptions, don't you think?)...

Well, the ISD that might theoretically have followed the Falcon just went 12,500 light years in 180 hours - 7.5 days. So that year-long trip for the Ultrawarp Enterprise D at 59,049 times the speed of light? An ISD makes it in 36 days; a full ten TIMES faster.

And that's the pessimistic calculation. In the West End Games version the ISD has a x2 hyperdrive, which means the x0.5 hyperdrive on the Falcon is only four times as fast. In the Thrawn books an ISD can make .4 past lightspeed, but we have no information as to whether that is faster or slower than .5 past lightspeed. So it's possible (but unlikely) that the military-grade hyperdrives are actually FASTER than the Falcon. And it's quite possible that instead of being smaller than the Milky Way, the SW galaxy is more like galaxy IC 1101, at twenty times the diameter of the Milky Way.

Indeed, the very speed of the hyperdrives combined with the large amount of unexplored space in SW canon argues for a much larger galaxy; however fast you can travel somewhere it still takes time to explore and chart a cubic parsec...

That transport had not jumped to light speed yet. It just hit at sublight speeds.