Star Wars vs Star Trek

Discussion in 'SciFi & Fantasy' started by Pollux V, May 9, 2002.

?

Which universe would win?

  1. Star Trek

    227 vote(s)
    35.5%
  2. Star Wars

    268 vote(s)
    41.9%
  3. Spaceballs

    47 vote(s)
    7.3%
  4. Farscape

    12 vote(s)
    1.9%
  5. Dune

    50 vote(s)
    7.8%
  6. Stargate

    36 vote(s)
    5.6%
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  1. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly Nexarc - even with the numerical advantage, the Empire is still in a big pickle - the Rebels would most likely team up with the Federation and her Allies, providing all the information they would need to develop, essentially, hard counters for everything the GE could send their way.
     
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  3. Hellblade8 Valued Senior Member

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    Just about any lethal weapon where the enemy is unable to analyze it would be rather effective. Given that the Borg have sensors and can pass information throughout their collective, even the destruction of an entire cube or even a fleet means that the Borg could still obtain critical information.

    Why? What is the rationality behind this? These guys laugh off phasers? Do you want to know what the output of a phaser is? The DET component has been stated to be at least be 1.01 megawatts. Guess how powerful that is to the modern world? Well, first off, the modern NATO rounds, the 7.62x51mm rounds? Yeah, they top out at about 3.5 kilojoules. The US Navy? They're currently working to build an anti-missile defense gun that hopefully will have a megawatt of power in it. And it's a fairly narrow laser (technically, not even a full beam laser--its uses rapid pulses). Oh yeah, a megajoule laser blast? It can punch through twenty feet of steel in a second. In fact, the KE of a modern tank is ~12 megajoules.

    So yeah, the Borg are powerful enough that their shields can resist phasers to the point where using them is effectively useless. Hell, we even have an episode from Enterprise where Reed's response to the shields was to go to the armory and push the yield up to 10 megajoules (between 5-10 megawatts) and after a few shots, the Borg adapted their shielding to compensate.

    Oh yes, that's right. The Borg tanked energy on par with a modern tank (though it should be noted that the power of the tank's shell will be inflicted upon a larger area than a phaser pistol, so it's not saying that a Borg can laugh off a tank shell). So this idea that somehow the Borg will be completely and utterly fucked when people start killing them with guns is silly. It simply won't happen. After the first wave of drones die, they'll adapt their shields to deflect KE weapons. Even if the efficiency is 10% of what they're normally capable of, unless you have something in the range of AA guns, the Borg are simply going to march through the hailfire without any trouble.


    1) Yeah, no. In First Contact, when Picard leveled a fucking Tommy Gun at two approaching Borg, he basically had to empty the barrel in order to kill both drones. They were even able to walk against the hail of fire for a short duration before dying. Picard even had to close in to point blank range to finally overwhelm one. Let's see, both the Tommy Gun and the modern M1911 pistols use the .45 ACP. So, same ammo. The muzzle velocity of the pistol is 251 meters per second, where as the Tommy Gun's is 285 meters per second. Therefore, the Tommy Gun can not only pack a faster bullet, but we also know that a Tommy Gun on full auto is going to hurt a great deal more than a fucking pistol, not to mention it can hold a great deal more. So yeah, your handgun argument is literally wrong, even without shields.

    2) Assuming the Borg were even interested in Earth, they wouldn't beam down to the planet. They'll rip the cities from their roots and devour them. Didn't you ever watch Q Who?

    I'm sorry, but if the Borg are here, they'll curbstomp the Empire and the Vong without the other powers.

    Well, it appears that according to Wookipedia, Coruscant has ~1-3 trillion people living on it. In DS9's Statistical Probabilities, it was estimated by Bashir and his genetically enhanced friends that the UFP would suffer 900 billion casualties in their war against the Dominion if the Dominion won (and they thought it an eventuality). And they didn't expect the Dominion to even destroy Earth (they were intending to). Even if we assume horrific levels of slaughtering of civilians (which the Dominion as a rule didn't do--not unless it served some sort of greater purpose) and they slaughtered a full quarter of the Federation's population that would put the UFP at a population of 3.6 trillion. In all likelyhood, what we're looking at is probably a mere fraction of the population--probably about 10%.

    So while it's very much plausible that Coruscant is a massively huge population center compared to any planet in the UFP, it's simple ignorance to believe that the UFP's entire population is smaller than just Coruscant. Did you do any research? Memory Alpha could have revealed that fact pretty quickly.

    Actually, no. In fact, the Old Republic during the Clone Wars had to choose between manufacturing and equipping a few hundred thousand more Clones for their massive war--or feeding the poor. What's more disturbing was that one of those destitute poor people was a personal aid to a member of the Republic Senate. I mean, I don't expect to be making six digits when I'm working as an aid for a senator, but I expect that I'd be able to feed my family without government aid.

    Meanwhile, well, the UFP is fully capable of replicating food. They don't have to farm or harvest food, they can literally create it from energy. This is something that has been shown not to be economically viable to the Empire or the Old Republic. The UFP doesn't have to waste time growing food, treating food, transporting food, and selling food. In a capital world, they can walk to the kitchen and get anything they want. In a border colony world, the replicator is just down the street.

    Not to mention that at least planets in Star Wars faced massive food shortages from due to either lack of government assistance or blockades within short time frames (ie, a few days to weeks). Despite at two of them living on lush worlds.

    Actually, it's rather odd that in their massive galactic war, the main fighting force we see are the Battle Droids and the Clone Army. We know that the Clone Army numbered at about 3 million and according to Dooku (at the beginning of the war), his droid army outnumbered them a hundred to one. That's 300 million droids vs. 3 million clones. And again, creating and equipping a few hundred thousand more clones was a massive economical strain on the Republic's budget.

    First off, Star Wars's ability to move across the galaxy and communicate is due to their massive, already established infrastructure. Communication systems and hyperspace routes have to be built and established. We saw that without established routes to the Outer Rim, the Old Republic was basically SOL in fighting the CIS in the Outer Rim. They had to court the Hutt Clan in order to get access to the hyperspace routes.

    And why should we assume that visuals are always better? We know that visuals are made by special effects people, who can and have made mistakes in the past. Hell, by your logic, Luke's hover car doesn't actually hover; it's got a wheel at the bottom that runs along a track. And in regards to your claims to high firepower for Star Wars--such as what? We didn't see that sort of firepower in the Clone Wars. Hell, when the evil Jedi General traitor had told them they'd be marching on a city that had megaton level weaponry defending it, their leader object to the idea on the basis that it was suicide.

    Kinda funny how not a single Clone raised this issue to Master Yoda in the movies.

    ...How? Star Trek has small tactical nukes that equal out to 1-2 tons of explosives that have multi-km range. The launcher itself is smaller than most kid telescopes and comes with a half dozen grenades per suitcase. They also have far superior sensor and torpedo ranges, which means that a base from one side of the planet can hit an enemy base on the other side. Or heck, the fact that Soran in Generations had a 50 gigawatt shield generator. Ever hear of the US MOAB? It's the second largest conventinal bomb ever produced. It has a yield of ten tons and is the size of a fucking bus. It's output is equal to 41.84 gigajoules. You literally cannot get through a small base camp with a small tactical nuke.

    Let's also consider that a 4.2 gigawatt generator is capable of powering a small phaser bank. Even without the disintegration effect, that's about a ton of explosives that can be channeled into a small phaser bank. Slap that onto a UFP military base and not even the entire 3 million clone army will get through it. They won't even get close.

    ...Kirk dropped a boulder on a Gorn and all it did was piss it off. Then he shot it with an improvised bazooka and all it did was wound it. Mirror Archer had to turn the gravity on the deck plating up to twenty gee's just so he could shoot it.

    ...Okay, and? How does that make him better than any other sort of engineer?

    So is Han Solo also a technical genius? Because we've also seen him conduct repairs. And the keyword there is that "Chewie helped". Big deal?


    That's funny when you consider that Spock was able to do the complex mathematical computations for time travel in his head and admitted to only being off due to having insufficient information. Second. while it's true that Starfleet doesn't have hyperdrive, they have massively industrialized replication and transporter technology. Star Wars...has not. The Vulcan Science Academy developed red matter, which when released, creates an artificial singularity capable of swallowing a planet in minutes. Starfleet has a bomb the size of a bowling ball that when detonated, will rip off half the atmosphere off a planet. Starfleet has a torpedo stated to be capable of collapsing a protostar or destroying a small planet. It fits inside a torpedo. The Empire...requires something on the order of a massive station to blow up a planet. One of Starfleet's most brilliant terraformers developed a means to reignite a star. The Empire has not. The Federation and the Dominion both have means of creating novas and supernovas--all of which can deployed by a shuttle or a torpedo. The Empire built that one ship and then lost it.


    Chewie wasn't ever portrayed as being exceptionally intelligent. In any sense of the word. He was at best, a grease monkey. Spock is an actual intellectual. Hell, Kirk is portrayed as more of an intellectual than Chewie ever was.

    ...Seriously? It's more rational to claim that Voyager stole the EMH from Red Dwarf than it is from Star Wars--the two aren't even remotely alike. Even the Doctor's original snappy attitude leveled off over time. We can't even understand half the shit that R2 says, let alone if he's being a smart ass. Next, let's look at that assertion. We know for a fact that Moriarty was created by the Enterprise D computer as a misunderstanding in regards to Geordie's request to having an opponent that could match Data. So obviously the technology exists. More so if we consider that the EMH has been deployed fleet-wide in Starfleet. As for Data, he is indeed more or less unique, but that's due to the problems inherit in his build type rather than powerful AI capabilities. Hell, ships are able to run numerous near-sentient beings at the same time on multiple holodecks. And Data himself is far, far more advanced than any android we've seen in Star Wars.


    ...Earth eliminated poverty centuries ago. Most other ST races in that regard are comparable.


    If you want to prove that the bolt perfectly burrowed into the ground with little to no energy loss that you can't even see any sort of low gigajoule firepower, then it is for you to prove it. You've done nothing but propose a possibility. We might also postulate that Han spread his ass checks so wide, that it instantly absorbed all obvious gigaton firepower from all space and time.

    But of course, one would be hard to prove that.

    Star Wars isn't very consistent about their shielding effects. It's rather silly to believe that someone didn't turn on their deflector shields. And that this happens every time we see battles in atmosphere.


    1) Who said that Star Wars shields have no form of particles? They clearly did in Phantom Menace when we saw they had a physical presence. If it were a field of pure energy, it would have roasted the battle droids. In fact:

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    You can even see the ripples created by the energy weapon impacts. If that shield was pure energy, it would cause an explosion of energy as the weapon hits the shield. Furthermore, this is the same type of energy that can keep out water. If the shield were made of energy, it'd be constantly burning the water, not simply keeping it at bay. We also see a similar effect with Droidkadea shielding; we see a Clone pass through the back of its shields in Point Rain and he wasn't roasted alive. There wasn't even a sizzle. This again, implies that the shields are made of some form of matter.

    2) Of course phasers are less effective against heavier metals. But then again, so is just about everything. That didn't stop the Eneterprise D from drilling down close to the planet's core within what, was it again?

    Oh yes, nineteen seconds.


    Except visuals in Star Trek are faulty. The visuals in Star Wars tend to be...well, the visuals. Unless you have a G or T canon quote that gives us reliable STL speeds?


    Since when?

    False Equivalence. We know that certain crates in Star Trek are capable of absorbing phaser fire. That does not mean that Storm Trooper armor can absorb phaser fire.

    ...So? We see them disintegrate man-size holes fairly easily.

    1) We see it plenty enough to know that the setting still exists in canon. That's all we need to know.

    2) Those "rarely leaves more than a scorch mark" tends to instantly kill a man-size target with a single hit, save for shitty Voyager writing. Even glancing blows will in all likely-hood claim someone's limb, even with quick medical treatment.

    3) After you spend five seconds setting up the kill setting, you're good to go.


    Again, false equivalence. That's like saying because we've never seen Legolas miss, but US missiles have missed targets in the past, that obviously Legolas is a better shot.

    ...And this means...what?

    Ah yes, the classic tale of the Prequels, which almost every SW fan universally hates.



    Nice, both Poisoning the Well and Appealing to Authority. Got anything else?


    Good, then you'll be happy to accept the correction that the Acclamator doesn't actually have any guns in T and G canon.

    Oops.


    The idea that a TIE fighter would provide any sort of support for a ship that can hurl numerous 200 gigaton bolts is outright laughable. If a Venerator fired a single volley from just its heavy turbolasers, it would ensure that everyone on the North American continent who had exposed skin would suffer immediate third degree burns. And those would be the lucky ones.

    Their super weapons include massive, over-sized stations that are easily targeted and destroyed and one star killer that was built once and lost. Star Trek on the other hand has biological weapons that can kill in a matter of seconds, weapons capable of ripping off half a planet's atmosphere, destroy a amoeba that measures in the light year range, has created novas, has created supernovas, and minature black holes that eats planets. And that's just the UFP. All of said weapons are rarely larger than a torpedo or several torpedo's worth and are easily used by any ship.

    And it's spelled Betazoid.

    How? It's a slow moving station the size of a small moon. Even if you wanted to argue that they had gigaton weaponry, someone launching a gravimetric warhead would cause the entire station to collapse in upon itself.


    You mean add in all of your favorite superweapons? Well, then I might add in my own? The 31st UFP. They're part of the Trek Universe as well. The Empire ceases to exist as a Time Agent murders Palpatine in his sleep.

    When he's three. Or releases his identity and plan to the Jedi or the public.

    Of course the Galaxy Gun is useless because it can't hit anything in another universe, the Sun Crusher is forever lost and even if it wasn't, it isn't that tough either and is but one ship, the Death Star is a massive waste, the Eclipse (while tough), is also a massive target and a waste, the world devastators can be shot down, and of course each ISD costs more than a single output of a planet's yearly economy. I wonder just how bad the losses would be when the UFP starts blasting them apart left and right, as well as their massive money sink superweapons.




    Except they're probably not made out of plastic if they can easily resist shots that at worst, will cost you a limb (maybe your life) and on its highest showing, disintegrate small sections of a rock wall.

    Again, false equivalence. Unless you prove that Storm Trooper armor is more durable than ST packing crates, you're blowing hot air out of your ass. And when we consider that said packing creates can resist weapons that have been shown to disintegrate people--well, that says a great deal.

    Of course, if it were a Star Trek base, you would have detected the dozens of assembled life forms outside, identified them, and realized that something was up and taken appropriate actions. You also could have protected the area with a shield to ensure that no one would have even managed to get in or even close without you detecting them. Hell, you would have been able to track them while they were on the planet, given the lack of other intelligent, humanoid life forms.



    My God man, you've must have gotten spunk all over your keyboard with that sentence. It's adorable, really. Tell me son, just how strong do you think 200 gigatons is?

    ...The Falcon is much larger than 2 meters.


    What does this have to do with the Falcon?

    It's called hyperbole you fool, look it up. At most, the author's make an analogy to fusion energy. At worst, he's probably just saying it produces lots and lots of energy.


    No, I remember where the DBZ characters were too stupid to understand why a MIRV weapon works the way it works.


    Wow...just...wow. The stupidity here is absolutely priceless. So, despite the fact that an ISD's engine expends more energy crossing the galaxy than energy it takes to blow up a planet, they had to build the Death Star up to the size of a fucking moon just so it could blow up a planet? Hell, according to the novel Death Star, it uses technobabble to boot! Without its hypermatter booster, it would "only" scorch the surface of a planet. Kinda funny that something that big with so much power in one gun can't perform the same task as supposedly an ISD could perform in an hour, tops.


    Does that keyboard even work with all those layers of jizz?

    Lol, what.

    And the evidence for this is...?

    That's not proof of a planetary shield. Please provide proof that Aldeeran had a planetary shield.

    And this proves that Aldeeran had a shield because...because...?

    The ICS is not considered G canon. G canon is very specific; what George Lucas says, the movies, the radio plays, and some of the novels. That is all. T canon is the TV shows. C canon is the novels and technical manuals.

    That's funny, because then it would also imply that Yoda willingly and knowingly sent Clone Troopers up against ships whose defensive armaments included terajoule level weaponry and would have ended with their enemies firing half a dozen shots at their clones, killing them all, and then laughing as they left. Hell, it's also rather odd that they didn't fire any of those gigajoule level lasers at the bad guys either.

    Yeah, because Yoda is totally the kind of guy who would send Clones mercilessly to their deaths. Even though he clearly values them in the first aired episode of the Clone Wars.

    If the Russians were such bad foes, why didn't the US just nuke them?

    Dipshit.

    Yeah...send a bunch of probes into Dominion space that could be easily intercepted by any sort of planetary defense or ship and destroyed, as well as commit massive acts of genocide against both the willing and unwilling members of the Dominion and kill maybe...well, a few billion before the Dominion hurls its full weight against you and steam rolls you into oblivion.

    But hey, Starfleet loves genocide, right?

    Wow, holy fuck, the stupidity...it's...it's reached toxic levels.

    Yeah, I'm sure Starfleet is going to target Hoth, the military base of Rebels fighting against the Empire, as a blow against the Empire. Also, you clearly don't understand how Genesis works; Genesis turns the planet into whatever they want it to be turned into. It is literally them rearranging the planet's surface matter to suit their needs. If Starfleet wanted to blow up a planet, they'd have much easier and inexpensive ways of doing it than launching a damn Genesis torpedo at it.

    Second, if these guns on the ISD are so badass, then why were the captains in ESB wary of going into an asteroid field? It would seem that they wouldn't be if they could toss out teratons of firepower per second. It also baffles me as to why such asteroids in Downfall of a Droid would be considered obstacles to the Republic fleet if they have teratons of firepower. You saw that episode, right? Where Grievous specifically states that their flanks can't be attacked because the rocks would protect them? You know, it was right before all those AT's tore through those frigate hulls like a hot knife through butter.

    Or how about the Zilllo Beast? Where we see a large ass bomb strapped to the bottom of a Y-Wing so that it drops down and does a small, mushroom cloud that obliterates the opposing army and wins the day. If they could do that with said bomb and their lasers and torpedoes are supposed to be even more powerful, why not use those? Hell, that way the entire Y-Wing could have fired and destroyed the opposing army without a care in the world. In fact, the few times we see bombers doing heavy bombings, they don't produce such powerful effects--rather they produce much less impressive ones.
     
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  5. USS Athens Very Special Senior Member Valued Senior Member

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    Oh my. I haven't been on this thread in years (or SciForums for that matter). Have you guys debunked the Star Wars ICS yet? It would seem I lack the patience to to through all of the pages of this thread to see how the debating has gone. Has TW made any resurgences since my leaving?
     
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  7. alpinedigital Registered Senior Member

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    Easiest way to defeat the whole argument is with using a species with disadvantages we know little about, like Species 8472. We know they have their own realm of space they can hide in, though, and since Scorpion episode shows them coming out of fluidic space and popping a Borg cube in 3 seconds, it stands to reason they can track targets, and even coordinate a planetary attacks from within fluidic space before emerging with weapons ready and aimed. They popped a planet just 15 seconds after emerging...

    So with everything else set aside, because even if Star Wars managed to destroy everything else in the Star Trek galaxy, Star Wars would STILL be left with getting haunted by this species that are clearly faster and more maneuverable in normal space than anything Star Wars has, and normal space is where all the battle scenarios take place. 8472 CAN get to Star Wars strategic targets, but the Empire can't do the same.

    Another problem for Star Wars is - Janeway pretty much allied with 8472 the last time they were together, trading technology. She also has a Borg with knowledge of countless species and technology and some pretty ruthless nanoprobe discharge weapons and attacks capable of dispersing them across 5 lightyears. Star Wars may be capable of destroying enemies, but Star Trek could infest an entire star system with zero risk. It wouldnt take long before the wrong person got assimilated, his knowledge of technology, and the weapons and ships he had access to, and any strategic/tactical information.

    It'd be like taking candy from a baby. Starfleet with Borg knowledge, teamed up with Species 8472, with access to a separate realm of space... And lets not forget, Star Wars knowledge of their galaxy is wide-spread. Star Trek galaxy knowledge is limited to a few select species so the likeliness of acquiring strategic knowledge from someone you 'bump into' is quite slim. And lets also not forget that without star maps for Trek galaxy, Star Wars is starting out wandering around at very very slow sublight speeds. They cant just aim towards a highly congested area of space and jump to lightspeed. However, there are a number of 'faster than standard warp' methods available for Trek species to use for scouting the SW galaxy. I think Species 116 would be a great choice, as they can pick up languages and decipher encryption better than most.

    STAR TREK'S TIME TRAVEL

    I dont know if Time Travel is just frowned upon in general as it most likely is by Star Wars side. I'm sure they just love to eliminate it entirely from debate with the 'alternate timeline' argument. This was one of the first things that interested me about SW v ST debates because the alternate timeline concept only relates to actions that would result in creating an alternate timeline. Time travel is not limited only to the simple-minded concepts like changing the past... and right away I contemplated 2 or 3 different uses that would NOT create an alternate timeline. It didn't even take long, and while I was at it, I also proved the Grandfather Paradox is a faulty concept, something else that only took a moment or two of contemplating. I mean, it TRULY amuses me that it stuck around long enough to have developed a title, because it's actually ridiculous enough to be an embarrassment to anyone who suggests the concept as a possibility.

    No, traveling back in time is in no way a risk to your own existence. Just so you know.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2013
  8. raremon Registered Member

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    5
    well I would say star wars would win in open ground but star trek would win in a space battle
     
  9. USS Athens Very Special Senior Member Valued Senior Member

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    1,265
    Yes, I suppose I could agree with that assessment. But this is partially due to what we have seen on screen. At least in the Star Wars films we have seen a diverse variety of powerful land vehicles, while in the Star Trek universe the only display of a land army could be seen in the DS9 episode Siege of AR-558. Unfortunately it's difficult to extrapolate an entire army based on the small contingent of forces seen in that episode, so I'd have to give land combat to the Star Wars universe (at least the Empire).

    As for space combat, I'd have to agree with your statement as well. If you watch closely to ship-to-ship battles that take place in the Star Wars universe, ships remain relatively stationary, and seem to engage in broad-side style combat, due the ship's long hulls. If memory serves, I remember Star Wars vessels (i.e. an Imperial Star Destroyer) being compared to the dreadnought battleships of the early 20th century. The Empire has raw sheer firepower. In comparison, Federations starships are far smaller, and are more akin to the cruisers and destroyers of modern navies. While their close range weaponry is far inferior to those of the battleships of decades past, their long range weaponry is far more sophisticated, and effective (i.e. cruise missiles).

    Also... Damn I've been gone along time. Saquist is now banned and Kittamaru became a moderator? What else happened?
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2013
  10. LoRaan Registered Senior Member

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    166
    How can you debunk something that Lucas claims is canon. The only time we see a Turbolaser fired on anything not another starships in the Asteroid cloud scene in ESB. Even then these bolts were instantly vaporizing any asteroids struck. So trying disprove the firepower of a weapon by saying it is not doing overwhelming damahe against armor and shields specifically made to counter them the epitome of pointless.
     
  11. USS Athens Very Special Senior Member Valued Senior Member

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    1,265
    There is a stark difference between approving a book for licensing, and carefully reviewing every statistic, number, and power generation figure to fit a grand design. Just because Lucas approved the book to bear the licensing and name of "Star Wars" doesn't mean he personally endorses every figure and word in that book as something to be taken seriously.

    The targeted age range for those IC books was 4 to 8 years old for pete sake. If this book is to be taken to heart, should action figures as well as other toys be counted in this canon too? Hell, why not cereal boxes while we're at it? Naturally, any reasonable person would figure that such things shouldn't be counted as a form of canon. These children's books, toys, cereals, are all merchandise; something for Lucasfilm Ltd to sell. Something to be played with, enjoyed in a light hearted manner. Something to, potentially be collected and serve as a nice thing to have or look at. This goes the same for the Clone Wars Incredible Cross Sections book. The only reason you defend it so adamantly is because the figures give you an edge in It's nice to look at, but when you get down to it, it's really just a children's book.

    Interesting. Do you know what these asteroids were composed of? In the Voyager episode "Rise", total vaporization of a 40,524,189 metric ton nickel-iron asteroid was expected by a single photon torpedo.
    (This did not happen due to the interior of the asteroid secretly being composed of tritanium alloys [among other things as the asteroid was in fact manufactured] which are used in starship construction.)

    What were the asteroids in ESB composed of? And how large were they?

    Explanation for the asteroid scaling can be found here: http://st-v-sw.net/STSWrise.html

    Blue = Confirmed Fact
    Red = Visual Speculation based on on-screen evidence
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2013
  12. LoRaan Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    166
    Okay, was or was not the author of said book a respected in his field astrophysicist? yes he was.

    Second your fallacy that a childrens book cannot be correct is just that, a fallacy. You cannot prove the book was incorrect. Thus you claim it must be incorrect because the target audience was children. I'm sorry but your argument hold no validity whatsoever. If you could prove that EVERY children's book is full of fallacies then you would have an argument.



    According to several other novels in the EU, the asteroids were a mixture of man of the materials used construction of durasteel and dura-armor. Both substances highly resistanct to heat and damage from energy weapons.

    As for information concerning the "Rise" Asteroid.

    While Chakotay expected vaporization, Ensign Kim, who would have superior understanding of physics, expected only a shattering of the asteroid. True he expected only debris of at most a centimeter, but he did not expect vaporization at all.

    I would also note that Voyager's sensors were fooled into thinking this asteroid was nickle-ferrous even when a cursory examination of the debris was enough to determine they were not.

    Triadium was the alloy not tritanium. Of course we are not given a clue as to the durability of triadium or even if it a structural alloy or simply a metal used for superconduction. Still this shows that the vaunted sensors of the Feneration are not nearly as fine tuned as everyone claims.

    Also we are not told if the Photon Torpedo used for Rise was standard or not. Given that they fired only one, I am inclined to believe it was a specially prepared torpedo, but will make no claims that it was or wasn't. With the lack of clear evidence this episode gives, it is hardly a benchmark of Photon Torpedo firepower.
     
  13. krash661 [MK6] transitioning scifi to reality Valued Senior Member

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    2,973
    Interesting topic.
     
  14. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Only thing is, if the Turbolasers are as powerul as you say, and the shields of an ISD could withstand turbolaser fire... yet the weapons of a fighter are capable of damaging an ISD... but fighters are able to ward off at least a few attacks from their own weapons, yet a ground based tank is able to obliterate a fighter in one shot... then why is it a shot from that same tank doesn't leave any kind of impact on the ground from a missed shot? It barely even scorches it...

    As for the Asteroid in Rise not being made of what they thought it was... do recall, you are talking about a Federation starship flung into the furthest reaches of deep space with no way to rearm, resupply, or repair except what they had on board. Not to mention that they fully expected a rather standard asteroid... why would they make a more thorough analysis of it? I mean, admittedly they could have, but why would they? And why would them firing "only one" be cause for it to be a specially prepared torpedo? That hardly makes sense... every time in the show they have fired an altered or specialty torpedo, they have made a scene about them altering it (or at least saying they are). The only likely alterations they made to the torpedo was to reduce how much antimatter they put into it, since being so far from any point of resupply antimatter would be a semi-precious resource that they would want to attempt to conserve.
     
  15. data2.0 Registered Senior Member

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    I haven't read of this because, you know, it's impossible but shouldn't we be assuming in this situation that when colliding with another universe the people would choose to try and preserve their own people and universe rather than let the foreigners dominate. So why would we assume that the rebels would join with the federation. The battle is supposed to be between Star Wars and Star Trek, we can't just mix them all together and call if a free for all. I mean if we looked at it that way, in star trek the federation's special ability is always coalition building so they would easily get the dominion and everyone in the alpha and beta quadrants with them and probably have the major species and organizations in the star wars universe. This should be kept simple and not force ourselves to try and imagine all the political and ethical decisions they would make as we have no real backing for it.
     
  16. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    13,938
    Data, let me fill you in:

    To make things "simple" we set two examples: In the first, it's ALL of Star Trek vs ALL of Star Wars. Battle Royale, each side bringing all of their best to the table. The problem here is, we need to eliminate certain beings... simply because things like "Q simply snaps his fingers and the Star Wars galaxy never flared into life" would make things VERY short and, well, not fun.

    The second was "Star Trek vs Star Wars with each side acting as they really would". In a situation like this, the Federation + Allies would likely join sides with the Rebels, the Empire + "territories" would probably be on their own, the Vong would be on their own, the Borg would be on their own (or possibly team up with someone, depends) etc... it gets complicated quick XD
     
  17. LoRaan Registered Senior Member

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    166
    How can you debunk something that the controller of Star Wars canon supports. Kinda hard. It's be like arguing with Gene when he was alive. You just can't win.
     
  18. LoRaan Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    166
    First: We see in TPM that while shields are up fighters are less than useless. Every case where a fighter has damaged a capital ship it has been becuase shields were already hammered down by other capital ships in said location.

    Second: Watch the scene again, the fighter was unshielded and was hardly obliterated until it hit the ground seconds later. In fact the craft looked in pretty good shape meaning in all likelihood the tank cannon had merely had a lucky hit and damaged some vital bit that kept the fighter under control. As for not leaving scorch marks we were not at the proper angel to see anything it might have left. Tank guns are known for penetration so any impact it may have had would have simply drilled a hole in any material not designed to spread the energy of it's surface

    At this point they had been making trades and resupplying from other warp capable cultures. The race they were melping were advanced enough to have space elevators just no warships.

    So you admit they were lazy. Any idiot would have made a detailed scan determined fracture points, calculated trajectories all in an effort to save precious fuel. Why strike an object twice when you can study it and strike it once to much greater effect.

    As for it being specially prepared, why would they make a scene of it when it was not central to the story? There would havee been no drama to be had while making the torpedo as they all knew exactly what it was for and the plot hook had not been discovered.

    As for why they might add antimatter to a torpedo...well it's much easier to get that second or even third ounce of antimatter than the 150lbs of material for the torpedo casing and parts, many of which you likely cannot replicate in a ships replicator. Even if you could I'd bet it would take more ounces of antimatter to make the casing for a second torpedo than you would have put in a special one.
     
  19. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    *blinks* how... would an explosive ionized composite round "penetrate" the ground? And if that were true, then why do we see AT-PT shots simply explode and splinter trees? Course, we also see AT-AT rounds dissipate harmlessly into a snowbank on Hoth so... yeah.

    And I would contend about fighters being useless against capital ships... Y-Wings and B-Wings are specifically designed to tackle Capital ships after all.

    As for adding/removing antimatter to the torpedo - that's kind of my point. They are variable-yield weapons... heck, take even the precursor, the Photonic torpedo:

    The variable yield was described by Malcolm Reed as being able to "knock the com array off a shuttlepod without scratching the hull, or put a three-kilometer crater into an asteroid." Antimatter to the warheads on NX-class starships was provided by the ships antimatter reserves. (ENT: "The Expanse", "Hatchery")

    So, yeah, is an old Photonic torpedo can put a 3km crater into an asteroid... I'm pretty sure they don't have to make any special modifications to obliterate a sub 1km asteroid.
     
  20. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    13,938
    I would also like to submit the following:

    Just how powerful are the weapons of Star Trek?

    A good question, and one without any easy answer. Different sources point to different figures, and the intent of this article is to list the evidence, outline the contradictions, and suggest a solution. Some of the thinking contained within is original to myself, but much is not. I have discussed this subject many times with the residents of various newsgroups and with those of you who contact me via the website over these kinds of issues, and the following could be considered to be a summation of those discussions. There's no way I could begin to remember the names of everybody with whom I have discussed this topic over the last few years, so I will just have to say a general thank you to all those involved who have helped make this article as (hopefully) useful as it is.

    In the original Star Trek series there is, surprisingly, a near total lack of any data on how powerful photon torpedoes are. This is because we were only ever given a very vague idea of how destructive these weapons could be.

    In 'A Taste of Armageddon', for example, Kirk is captured whilst on the surface of the planet Eminiar VII. Eminiar is fighting a computer-simulated war with its neighbouring planet, Vendikar. When the computers register a person as a casualty they are expected to report to one of numerous disintegration chambers and immolate themselves. Determined to stop the war, Kirk manages to get a message to Scotty in which he orders him to implement General Order 24. Scotty issues the following ultimatum to the Eminian civilisation :

    Scotty :
    'All cities and installations on Eminiar VII have been located, identified and fed into our fire control system. In one hour forty five minutes the entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed.'
    This is not the only time the Enterprise is claimed to be capable of this level of devastation. In 'Bread and Circuses', Kirk talks to the leader of a world whose civilisation has paralleled that of Earth, but with one important difference : on this world, the Roman Empire never fell. The leader, Marcus, captured a Federation ship's crew some six years earlier and convinced its commanding officer, Captain R.M. Merrick, to work with him. In a conversation with Kirk, Marcus says :

    Marcus :
    'From what I understand, your vessel could lay waste to the entire surface of the world.'
    Marcus is not himself an expert in Starship capabilities of course, but he has had a ship's captain as his advisor for some six years and so is certain to have a good general idea of the capabilities of the ship.

    Both of these examples are phrased somewhat vaguely. Certainly neither could be taken as proof that the Enterprise could 'destroy a planet' in the sense of blasting a whole world into fragments, as the destruction of the Veridian star did to the planets of that system in 'Star Trek : Generations'. Nor could one conclusively assume that the ship could vaporise or melt the entire surface of a planet. But it is certain that at the very minimum the original series Enteprise could eradicate the entire population of a developed world by destroying every significant structure on the surface. Even for a world as 'primitive' as present day Earth this would comprise some thousands of cities and many times that total targets.

    We cannot know for sure how much of this kind of massive attack would have been done with phasers as opposed to how much with photon torpedoes. It is conceivable that the phasers would account for the vast majority of the firepower, leaving photon torpedoes as a relatively weak weapon. But this hardly seems credible - if photon torpedoes were really so weak in comparison to phasers then what would be the point in equipping a ship with them? Photons are certainly used to attack other spacecraft on several occasions during the original series, and although it is hard to properly judge the relative effectiveness of the weapons they do seem to be on a par with phasers.

    This would indicate that the total yield of the photon torpedo complement of the Enterprise is at least comparable with the entire present day nuclear arsenal of the world, if not considerably greater. To judge individual weapon yields we would have to have an idea of just how many torpedoes the ship could carry, and unfortunately the only reference we have to this is vague indeed - in the aforementioned 'A Taste of Armageddon' Scotty muses that he could treat the Eminians to 'a few dozen photon torpedoes', thus establishing that the ship has at least this many. The upper limit can only be guessed at; the much later, larger and more advanced Enterprise-D carried approximately 250 torpedoes, so it seems unlikely that Kirk's ship would carry significantly more than this.

    At the height of the cold war the nuclear powers of the Earth held arsenals with a total yield well into the thousands of megatons. If the Enterprise at least matches this total with only two hundred or so warheads, then each weapon would have a yield well in excess of ten megatons. Weapons with this kind of yield are well within the capabilities of present day science - indeed, bombs with yields of some 50 megatons were successfully tested several decades ago. Producing such energy with a matter/antimatter charge should be relatively straightforward for 23rd century technology. With the recent advent of photons in the tens of megatons range on Enterprise, set a century before Kirk's time, it seems certain that the weapons in use during the original series were at least this powerful. See later on for more details of the Enterprise weapons.

    It's worth repeating that this represents virtually the minimum yield that photon torpedoes could have and still fit in with the above episode statements. Higher yields are perfectly possible and indeed quite likely if we are to take phrases such as 'lay waste to the surface of the world' at face value. At least one original series episode points to an even greater level of destruction than this; in 'Whom Gods Destroy', Captain Kirk is trapped in a Federation lunatic asylum which has been taken over by one of its inmates, Garth. The whole planet is covered by a planetary shield, and in the following dialogue the crew consider trying to blast through it :

    Scotty :
    'Mister Sulu. What do your sensors show?'
    Sulu :
    'We can't beam anybody down sir. The forcefield on the planet is in full operation and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off. '
    Scotty :
    'Aye... we could blast our way through the field but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba II.'
    McCoy :
    'How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless!'
    Somewhat remarkably, this indicates that the surface of the planet would be totally devastated even by the collateral damage of blasting through the planetary shields! This would would presumably be only a small portion of the total attack, indicating a total firepower much greater than a mere few thousand megatons - perhaps even several orders of magnitude greater.
     
  21. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    13,938
    And also:

    The next interesting use of torpedoes comes in the Deep Space Nine episode 'The Die is Cast'. In this episode a fleet of twenty Romulan and Cardassian vessels have been constructed by the intelligence agencies of those powers. These ships pass through the Bajoran wormhole and proceed under cloak to the Omarian nebula in order to attack the home planet of the Founders. During the run up to the attack the following dialogue takes place between Enabren Tain, Elim Garak, and the Romulan Colonel Lovok :

    Tain :
    'Our plan is to wait until we've entered orbit of the Founder's planet, then decloak and begin massive bombardment.'
    Lovok : 'Computer analysis indicates that the planet's crust will be destroyed within one hour and the mantle within five.'
    On arrival at the planet the fleet launches a bombardment lasting some few seconds. We see the impacts of the weapons on the surface, resulting in shock waves which travel over a significant section of the planet's surface. The following dialogue accompanies the attack :

    Tain :
    'So much for the Dominion. Open fire!'
    Woman : 'The first barrage is complete.'
    Tain : 'Effect?'
    Woman : 'Thirty percent of the planetary crust destroyed in opening volley. No change in life form readings.'
    Tain : 'What? That's impossible. Some of them had to be killed!'
    Woman : 'Our sensor readings have been confirmed by three other warbirds. There's no change in the number of life signs on the surface!'
    Garak : 'They're using an automated transponder to send back false sensor readings. The planet's deserted!'
    It soon transpires that Colonel Lovok is a changeling infiltrator placed within the Romulan intelligence service in order to encourage this attack so that the fleet could be led into an ambush; moments after the above dialogue a force of 150 Jem'Hadar ships emerged from the nebula and attacked.

    It has been claimed by some that the damage projections made by Lovok were a lie and that the damage done to the planet was an illusion generated by the Founders. However, these claims make little sense. There seems to be no reason for Lovok to tell such a lie - it doesn't gain the Founders anything to have Tain and Garak think that the attack will be ten or a hundred times faster than it really would or could be. And even a basic knowledge of military technology on the part of Tain or Garak would have been enough to allow them to see through such a lie, putting the Founder's whole plot at risk. Simulating planetary scale damage would also be a difficult and pointless business. Immense fireball explosions and atmospheric shock waves are clearly visible on the surface of the planet; simulating these would involve holographic projections covering hundreds of millions of square kilometres! And what would it accomplish? The fleet was already in the Founder's trap at this point, the Jem'Hadar were moments away from launching their attack, so making Tain and co. think that their attack was succeeding is pointless.

    So it seems beyond reasonable doubt that both the damage projection and the attack were genuine. Given this, we can work up a few figures concerning the yield of the weapons used.

    We can only make guesses about the relative sizes of the crust and mantle, the materials within them and the damage expected to be inflicted upon them. As usual for Star Trek the Founder's planet has a Human-habitable surface and identical gravity to Earth's, and so is likely to be approximately the same size and density as Earth.

    On Earth, the crust has a surface area of about 510 million square kilometres. Its thickness ranges from about 5 kilometres under the ocean to about 70 kilometres in the continents; since there is about three times as much ocean as continent, the average thickness would be about 21 kilometres. So we're looking at over ten billion cubic kilometres of rock massing about 2.9x1022 kg. The Earth's mantle is about one hundred times the volume of the crust and is somewhat denser; it is 3,000 kilometres thick, with a volume of over nine hundred billion cubic kilometres and a mass in excess of 4.25x1024 kg.

    To give an idea of the range of possibilities, I am going to present 'high end' and 'low end' cases. In the 'high end' I will make assumptions that tend to lead towards torpedoes with the maximum yield consistent with this episode. In the 'low end' I will make assumptions that tend to lead towards torpedoes with the lowest yield consistent with the episode.

    First, the 'high end'. Here I will use Lovok's damage predictions of the whole crust and mantle being destroyed during the attack. I will assume that by 'destroyed' he meant 'vaporised'.

    In vaporising any substance, you have to heat it up to its melting point, then give it sufficient energy to turn it from a solid to a liquid, then heat it up to its boiling point, then give it sufficient energy to turn it from a liquid to a gas. The mantle of a planet is typically close to its boiling point anyway and since the mantle is far larger than the crust, I am going to concentrate solely on the last stage. It's hard to find out just how much energy it takes to turn a given mass of rock from liquid to gas, but for comparison it's about twenty thousand Joules per kilogram for Helium or about five million Joules per kilogram for Copper.

    Vaporising the mantle would therefore take on the order of 1030 Joules - an attack equivalent to 1014 Megatons. This would be the weapon output of the entire fleet throughout the whole attack, from both beam weapons and torpedoes. In line with my aim to make the yield of the weapons as high as possible in this example, I will assume that the torpedoes were expected to contribute the entire energy of the attack. We know that the Galaxy class Starship carries approximately 250 torpedoes, so assuming that the Cardassian and Romulan ships have comparable arsenals the whole fleet would carry 5,000 weapons. So each of these weapons would have a yield of 20 billion Megatons.

    So much for the upper case, what about the lower end? Looking at the actual attack itself, it was reported that thirty percent of the crust was destroyed in the opening volley. This time we are after the lowest weapon yields possible, so we will minimise the damage by assuming that 'destroyed' does not mean 'vaporised' as before, and that in fact the attack did not even shatter the crust into pieces. Rather, let's see what numbers we arrive at if we just look at an attack which simply damaged one third of the surface of the planet.

    Again taking the planet to be roughly Earth-sized, the damage would cover 170 million square kilometres. To further reduce the yield of our torpedoes I'm going to assume that 90% of this was done by the beam weapons, with only 17 million square kilometres affected by torpedoes. And to cut the numbers down even more I'm going to assume that the damage inflicted was of the most feeble kind. According to the High Energy Weapons Archive quoted above, for any given weapon yield the most widespread effect is thermal - meaning any nuclear bomb will start fires at far greater distances than it will knock down buildings. So for my low end estimate I am going to say that the 17 million square kilometre area was only affected to the extent of having fires started on it.

    The fleet launches only ten torpedoes to cause this damage, so each one accounts for 1.7 million square kilometres. This means that each torpedo has lit fires over an area of about 735 kilometres radius. Using the above equations we can get an idea of the yield required to do this damage :

    r_thermal = Y0.41
    735 = Y0.41
    7352.44 = Y
    Y = 9,793,653.38
    This is in multiples of 2.5 kilotons, so the overall yield would be :

    Yield = 9,793,653.38 x 2,500
    = 24,484,133,461.48 tons
    = 24,484.13 Megatons
    Giving each torpedo a yield of 'only' 24 thousand megatons.

    It is worth reiterating that this represents virtually the lowest possible yield of the weapons used in the attack; the attack was described as 'destroying' thirty percent of the planet's crust, but to generate this figure we are assuming that the torpedoes only contributed 10% of this, and that rather than 'destroy' the crust all the torpedo attack did was light fires over the affected area! Yet even with this exceptionally weak interpretation of what was seen, the yield of each weapon is well into the tens of thousands of megatons.

    So we can reasonably expect that the weapons used in 'The Die Is Cast' have yields somewhere between about 25 thousand and 20 billion Megatons. The 'real' figure will depend on where you pitch your assumptions between the two extremes I have used here; for example if you took ten torpedoes as doing one half of the damage in the actual attack, via blast rather than thermal effects, then each weapon would have a yield of about 14 million Megatons. Even then there are some factors I have neglected in this analysis - for example all of these figures assume that the entire energy of every weapon is expended in a useful (i.e. destructive) manner, whereas in fact some of it would be radiated away into space. This alone would increase the yields here significantly.
     
  22. krash661 [MK6] transitioning scifi to reality Valued Senior Member

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    2,973
    that pole is a tough decision(x out dune).
     
  23. spocklore82 Registered Member

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    2
    Star Trek wins, when ENTIRE universes are arrayed against one another. As has been mentioned before, the Q are all that is needed. Q equals more than total destruction. Destruction would be ontological. The Q would make it so that the enemy had never existed... with a single thought.
     
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